The freeCodeCamp Podcast

On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast we're talking with software engineer Ihechikara Abba, who has a chess ELO rating of 2285, putting him among top competitive chess players. We just published his freeCodeCamp course on chess end games, and an accompanying handbook. We talk about: how learning chess can make you a better developer tips for getting into embedded systems development with Arduino how contributing to open source can serve as an alternative to building up a social media presence Links from our discussion: Ihechikara's checkmate patterns handbook: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/checkmate-patterns-in-chess-for-beginners/ Ihechikara's Arduino embedded systems handbook: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-arduino-handbook/ Links from community news segment at the beginning: freeCodeCamp just published a GameDev for beginners course that will help you build your first 2D platformer game. First you'll learn the basics of the open source Godot game engine, and its Python-like GDScript programming language. Then you'll dive into Godot's editor, custom tile sets, game mechanics, scoring, checkpoint systems, and more. By the end of the course, you'll have your own game that your friends can play in any browser. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-game-development-by-building-your-first-platformer-with-godot/ freeCodeCamp just launched our daily coding challenges. You can solve these programming puzzles using Python or JavaScript. Build up your data structures + algorithms skills each day, right in your browser or in the freeCodeCamp iPhone or Android app. We're launching with a backlog of 30 challenges that are live now. See how many you can solve. (article with more details): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-freecodecamp-daily-python-and-javascript-challenges-solve-a-new-programming-puzzle-every-day/ Learn how to build your own secure PHP web apps using the popular open source Symfony framework. This intermediate course is taught by Beau Carnes, who has many years of experience as a software engineer and as a high school special ed teacher. He'll quickly fill you in on Symfony's security features, which enable you to query encrypted data without ever even needing to decrypt it on your MongoDB database server. You can code along and home and build your own secure personal finance app while applying these new concepts. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-secure-web-applications-with-php-symfony-and-mongodb/ I also recommend reading this quick post by a freeCodeCamp community member on the importance of Hackathons. They opened all sorts of doors for him in his job search. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-every-student-should-join-hackathons/ I also recommend you watch this video essay on Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" explaining the physics behind why the song breaks some laptop hard drives when played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3RGeaxksY And the song of the week is 1989's Rhythm Nation by a then 23-year-old Janet Jackson. The song's great but you really want to watch the video version, with its awesome dance choreography. I've linked to it in the description. Listen to it after the podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAwaNWGLM0c Support also comes from the 10,889 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate  

For this week's interview, we've got a special treat. I'm talking with two legends in the self-taught developer community. Danny Thompson worked for 10 years at a Tennessee gas station, frying chicken for people to eat, sometimes working 80 hour weeks just to provide for his family. And yet, Danny had ambition. He taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He built his network through local tech events. And eventually, he landed his first job as as software developer. He's since worked at tech companies like Google. Leon Noel grew up with everyone telling him he had to become a doctor, lawyer, or dentist. He skipped college, taught himself programming, and had a successful exit with a startup. Leon then turned his attention to helping folks who were struggling during the pandemic. He started 100Devs, a charity which has helped thousands of people learn to code. Danny and Leon run the Programming Podcast which you can find in the podcast player freeCodeCamp iPhone or Android app, along with other podcasts we recommend. The following 45 minute conversation is almost entirely focused on the developer job market - perfect if you're looking to getting a new job. You'll learn common misconceptions people have about Résumés, Recruiters, Applicant Tracking Systems, Knock Out Questions and more. We also talk about the Commit Your Code conference happening September 25 and 26 here in Dallas. Tickets are super cheap and all proceeds go to charity. I'll be there and I hope you'll be there, too. A massive thank you to every single on of the 10,706 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our charity and our mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org/ Links from our conversation: - The Commit Your Code Conference: https://www.commityourcode.com/ - The Programming Podcast (listen in the freeCodeCamp iPhone / Android app) - Danny on X/Twitter: https://x.com/DThompsonDev - Leon on X/Twitter: https://x.com/leonnoel News items: freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will help you learn about AI-assisted coding, straight from a software engineer who's maintained freeCodeCamp's platform and infrastructure for the past 7 years. Mrugesh was initially skeptical of AI tools but has recently used them to great effect. And he wrote this handbook to help you do the same. He says experienced developers can complete tasks faster with AI assistance. But they need to know how to use these tools effectively. And they also need strong foundational programming skills. This handbook is a no-nonsense guide to emerging tools and best practices. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-become-an-expert-in-ai-assisted-coding-a-handbook-for-developers/ freeCodeCamp also published a course on building your own AI agent from scratch using Python. You'll implement the agentic loop. Then you'll endow your agent with the ability to read, write, and execute code. Finally, you'll supervise your agent as it goes through and makes fixes to an intentionally buggy codebase. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-ai-coding-agent-in-python/ The freeCodeCamp community also just published our first-ever Mandarin Chinese course. It's aimed at absolute beginners. It'll teach you fundamentals of the language and help you prepare for the standardized HSK exam. As you may recall, we've published beginner courses on Spanish and German as well. We eventually hope to have courses on a wide range of world languages at many levels of proficiency. I started learning Mandarin 23 years ago and I can tell you this course just scratches the surface. But it should be a good starting point for you if you're curious. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mandarin-chinese-for-beginners-full-hsk-1-level/ Learn the graph algorithms that power Netflix's video recommendation engine and Google Maps' routing logic. This Python tutorial will introduce you to Breadth-First Search, Depth-First Search, Dijkstra’s Algorithm, and other key computer science concepts. It includes plenty of code examples to help you understand these powerful programming structures. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/graph-algorithms-in-python-bfs-dfs-and-beyond/ This week I read a pretty well researched article on the role of AI codegen in actually getting things done as a developer. The author has more than 25 years of experiencing building software. And he argues that if AI tools really gave devs a big productivity boost, we should see this in the numbers. Specifically, shovelware, which is essentially fast, cheap software projects. And he says we don't really see this. Github repo creation is flat, apple and android app store registration is flat, domain name registration is flat. So he argues these tools aren't actually helping people write code faster and it's just marketing hype. I definitely recommend you read the article after this podcast and I've included a link to it in the description. https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware-why-ai-coding Since we're likely in a AI investment bubble, this week's song of the week is a "Bubble Life" from Squarepusher's 2006 album Hello Everything. Some amazing synth patches in this, and a tasty bass solo with tons of ghost notes and a heaping serving of chromaticism. Link's in the description. Listen to it after the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUpSAzUN5Vg

For this week's interview, I'm talking with Ania Kubów. She's a software engineer and prolific programming teacher on YouTube. She shares tips for: - Getting into game development and using JavaScript and browser games as an entry point - How to keep your focus in an increasingly distracting world - How AI tools are a jack hammer and you usually just need a regular hammer - What she's learned from hanging out with Chinese developers Growing up in Dubai and how the city has changed over the decades Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 10,889 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links from our conversation: - Ania's most recent freeCodeCamp course on building your own shopping agent: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-an-ai-powered-e-commerce-chat-assistant-with-mongodb/ - Ania's Code with Ania YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/aniakubow - Ania on X/Twitter: https://x.com/ania_kubow - Ania's Dubai-based coffee shop chain on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homebrew.ae/ - JS13k games - competition to build games in just 13 kilobytes of JavaScript: https://js13kgames.com/2025/ News items: The freeCodeCamp community just published this Python Machine Learning course where you'll learn how to control a robotic arm using computer vision. You'll set up serial communication between Python and a cheap Arduino microcontroller board. Then you'll learn how to detect physical objects using the open source Python libraries MediaPipe and OpenCV. You'll also learn how to manipulate servo motors and LED displays. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/use-arduinos-for-computer-vision/ freeCodeCamp also published a course that will help you prepare for the Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. You'll learn about Infrastructure as Code, Serverless Architecture, networking, monitoring, logging, and more. (16 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-google-professional-cloud-architect-certification-exam-and-pass/ Three.js is a powerful 3D rendering tool that tons of artists use to build games and interactive experiences that can run right inside a browser. This new freeCodeCamp course will walk you through building 5 practical projects. You'll learn about foundational concepts before moving on to textures, dynamic particle effects, and interactive physics. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-3d-web-experiences-with-javascript-and-threejs/ The Bag of Words algorithm is an important method that machine learning engineers have used to turn text into numbers so they can train their models. This tutorial will teach you how Bag of Words works, using Python code examples. It also describes the limitations of Bag of Words, and how scientists have gone on to create Word2Vec, GloVe, and other algorithms for mapping the relationships between words. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-bag-of-words-works/ This week's song of the week is a deep cut from 1981's by Italian Disco singer Ago off their For You album. I love the groove here and the way the bass sits in the mix. Link's in the description. Listen to it after the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9nUjNuYvfg Interview with AWS CEO (quotes I highlighted come from here. Note that I misspoke and he is not a developer. His path to CEO was through product management): https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/aws-ceo-matt-garman-says-replacing-junior-developers-with-ai-the-dumbest-thing

For this week's interview, I'm talking with Ankur Tyagi. He's a software engineer who's worked at multinational companies like Volvo, Barclays, and Accenture. He grew up in Pune, India and now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Ankur is a prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp's open source learning resources. He also runs DevTools Academy, where he blogs about emerging developer tools. He shares tips for: - How he uses AI tools to get more done as a dev but... - He thinks leveraging AI is a skill any dev can learn, and we shouldn't worry about fewer dev jobs. - How to run you own developer consultancy - How writing programming tutorials can help you become a better engineer Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 10,889 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate News items: → freeCodeCamp just published our first-ever chess course, taught by a software engineer on our team who has an international ELO rating of 2285, putting him among top competitive players. Ihechikara Abba will teach you how to think strategically and checkmate your opponents. This beginner-level course starts off with algebraic chess notation and identifying the squares. Then you'll learn several endgame patterns. We published both a handbook and an accompanying YouTube course for you to reference and share with your friends. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/checkmate-patterns-in-chess-for-beginners → freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive course on how to build your own AI shopping agent. Software Engineer Ania Kubów will teach you how to use Node, TypeScript, LangChain's LangGraph, Gemini, MongoDB, and other popular tools to build your agent. By the end of this course, your agent will be able to autonomously perceive, plan, act, and respond to your users. It will also be able to decide when it has enough information to respond, and when it needs to first reach out for external information by searching product databases. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-an-ai-powered-e-commerce-chat-assistant-with-mongodb/ → Last month Alibaba dropped the latest version of their Qwen LLM and already the freeCodeCamp community has a comprehensive course on how to train it from scratch. You'll learn about its architecture, Training Hyperparameters, Muon Optimization, RoPE Positional Embeddings, inference, text generation, and more. (1 hour YouTube course):  https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-and-train-qwen3-from-scratch/ → freeCodeCamp also published this guide to the field of System Design, written by a who applies the principles both to software development and to his day-to-day life. You'll learn about scalability issues, the CAP Theorem, Caching & CDNs, Rate Limiting, and other key concepts. (50 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-key-system-design-principles-behind-high-traffic-platforms-like-gaming-and-job-discovery/ → This week YouTube channel Gamer's Nexus posted a 3 hour documentary about China and the Graphics chips they've been using to train their AI models. The video has been copyright claimed multiple times by Bloomberg and taken down, but people keep re-uploading it. It's pretty awesome. The channel host travels to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shenzhen, and Singapore to interview people along the process who are obtaining this hardware both legally and illegally. Note that this link I'm sharing may already been taken down by the time you click it, but you can search "gamers nexus GPU" and you should be able to find it. 3.5 hour watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkNBZeS1OHk → The open source maintainer of the extremely popular Curl command line tool posted this excellent talk about AI slop security issues he keeps getting. He explains how people seem to be going into LLMs and asking "Find me a vulnerability in the Curl project. Then write a bug bounty submission for me and make it sound as alarming as possible." LLMs keep hallucinating new bugs, which lazy people then submit. Reviewing such bugs is now taking up more and more of his day. Since security is pretty important, he kind of just has to take these submissions seriously. A lot of non-native English speakers use LLMs to make their writing sound more native. But of course, most developers can tell when something's been written by an LLM. At the end of the talk, someone in the audience asks him point blank: has he ever received an issue that reads like LLM output that turned out to be a real security issue? And he says point blank: no. The lesson: don't use LLMs to re-write your issues or pull requests for you, or developers may assume the whole thing is just AI slop. 50 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2eDcRjSsk This week's song of the week is 1991's Breather by UK band Chapterhouse. Absolute banger drums on this one. Link's in the description. Listen to it after the podcast. By the way if you're wondering, that's a sleeping cat on the cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGWaBJc1UrY

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emmett Naughton. He worked as hospital janitor for years while teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp. He's founder of Coder Dads, a chat community where dads encourage one another. We talk about: - Making ends meet while raising a family - Recovering from getting laid off twice in the same year - Emmet's journey into the PHP Laravel ecosystem as a full stack JavaScript developer - How to use social media effectively when you don't like using social media - Emmett's sleep apnea and how fixing his sleep dramatically improved his thinking and coding Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Emmett's website with dozens of blog posts: https://emmettnaughton.com/ - The Coder Dads community: https://coderdads.carrd.co/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dominick Monaco. He dropped out college to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile backpacking route across the US. After working in nature conservation for 3 years, he taught himself how to program and now works as a developer. We talk about: - Life working as a Yogi Bear-style forest ranger in training - Close brushes with death in the wilderness and how it affects you - Learning programming for a grand total of $15 - How surrounding yourself with other ambitious learners can help you learn programming faster Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,189 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Dominick's blog article on how he got here: https://dominickjmona.co/blog/how-i-got-here - Dominick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominick-j-monaco/ - Americorps conservation core: https://www.americorps.gov/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Edidiong Asikpo. Didi is a software engineer. She grew up in Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria and the biggest tech hub in Africa. Didi got into medical school. But while waiting for her studies to start, she started studying computer science and got really into it. She graduated with a CS degree and has worked in tech for nearly a decade. She now works at MongoDB, a cloud database company, remotely from her home in London. We talk about: - Nigeria's tech scene - How to break into tech when you live outside the Sillicon Valley ecosystem - How to transition from one programming language to another (Didi moved from mobile apps -> DevOps) - How writing programming tutorials can help you become a better developer Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Didi's website: https://edidiongasikpo.com/ - Didi's freeCodeCamp tutorial with career advice: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-kickstart-a-career-in-tech/ - Open Data Kit - the first open source project Didi contributed to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODK_(software)

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dilip Krishnamoorthi. He's a software engineer working at Sony, building user interfaces for Playstation game consoles where he's been for 10 years. We talk about: - How he dropped out of a traditional Indian university and used an inexpensive distance learning program to finish his engineering degree for less than US $100 / semester - What it's like working in Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of Asia - His experience launching the Playstation 5 - Tips for continuing to learn new tools even as a senior engineer Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,423 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Wikipedia article on Flow State, a concept Dilip mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) - An IGN article about major improvements to Playstation 5's UI that Dilip worked on: https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5s-ui-the-five-biggest-gamechangers - Webcomic about the perils of context switching: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/60wx3z/this_is_why_you_shouldnt_interrupt_a_programmer/#lightbox

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Nick Taylor. He's a software engineer from Montreal and a prolific open source contributor. We talk about: - Why trying to build your own tooling will ultimately limit your app development - Tips for getting started contributing to open source - AI and the changing nature of working in tech - Tips for leveraging libraries and tools as a dev Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - https://www.nickyt.co/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Namanh Kapur. He's a senior software engineer at LinkedIn. He also creates YouTube videos to help devolopers with their careers. We talk about: - Tips for getting hired in the post-Leetcode world - Tips for cold-DM'ing recruiters and for guessing their email addresses - Why AI tools are going to lead to developers doing less repetitive work and more creative problem solving - And which foundational developer skills he thinks you should priortize learning Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Namanh's video about two legendary Google engineers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK0I4f8Rbis - Namanh Kapur on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/namanhkapur/?hl=en

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Braydon Coyer. He's a software engineer who started building mobile apps in high school – one of which even out-sold Angry Birds for a few days. He dropped out of his computer science degree program once he landed his first web developer job and never went back. We talk about: - Mobile app development VS web app development - Strategies for applying for developer roles - How useful is a CS degree really? - Sane ways to integrate AI into your developer workflows Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Braydon's awesome custom website: https://www.braydoncoyer.dev/ - Fruit Ninja game development documentary: - Raycast tool Braydon uses to automate prpcesses on his Mac: https://www.raycast.com/ - Tana note taking tool Braydon uses: https://tana.inc/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Hill. He's a software engineer who works on a data platform for NASA. Joe taught himself programming for 4 years while working as a janitor. As the single father of two Autistic boys, he first used his programming skills to build an iPad app to help them learn how to talk. We talk about: - Data Engineering and wrangling Department of Defense data into a central platform - The role of soft skills in getting things done in big organizations - The need for patience and practice in self-teaching - How to stop jumping from one tool to another and to instead go deep - Tips for parents raising kids with Autism Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - The trailer of the 1992 classic hacking heist movie Sneakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEhgUxQ322A - Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-hill-4a138123/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tai Groot. He's a back end software engineer and maintains an open source project used by companies like Google. For the first half of the interview we talk about back end programming languages. Then he shares tips for running learning back end development and running your own developer consultancy. We talk about: - The Performance VS Developer Experience trade-offs of Rust, Go, and TypeScript - How to run a free open source project profitably - How to mentor junior devs and ramp them up to work at your consultancy - Why he recommends devs learn Arch Linux Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org. Links we talk about during our conversation: - Tai's website: https://taigrr.com/ - Why Tai doesn't use Salt Stack anymore and how it inspired grlk: https://taigrr.github.io/blog/so-long-salt-project/ - The promise-breaking app: https://bridgetime.net/ - freeCodeCamp's Arch Linux handbook: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-install-arch-linux/ - The Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kelly Vaughn. She's a self-taught software engineer who ran her own developer agency. She was also the founding CTO at financial technology startup. Kelly runs the popular Ladybug Podcast focused on women in tech. We talk about: - How to freelance and ultimately create a developer agency and get clients - Tips for navigating the current developer job market - How to move from freelance to working for someone else - Tips for recognizing burnout so you can know when to take break Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kelly's website: https://kvlly.com - The Ladybug Podcast talks about tech, career, and code lead by women in tech: https://ladybug.dev - Kelly's engineering leadership newsletter: https://modernleader.is - Kelly's new burnout-focused newsletter: https://afterburnout.co

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews former CTO and prolific programming teacher Hitesh Choudhary. We talk about: - The limits of AI in building a robust codebase - Time management - Higher Education in India - Lessons from training developers - Lessons you've learned from your travel Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Hitesh's TypeScript course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/programming-in-typescript/ - Hitesh's project-oriented Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/comprehensive-full-stack-react-with-appwrite-tutorial/ - Hitesh's Git course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-git-in-detail-to-manage-your-code/ - Hitesh's TED talk on time management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KrFy_3LYQ

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Attardi. He's a software engineer and prolific author of programming books.   We talk about: How software development has changed over the past 21 years Tips for suriving AI's sweeping changes to the field The evolving role of Computer Science degrees Why people should still read O'Reilly style programming books on dead trees Links we talk about during our conversation: Joe's freeCodeCamp books and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/joeattardi/ Joe's website: https://joeattardi.com/ Joe's Web API Cookbook: https://www.webapis.info/ Joe's open source projects on GitHub: https://github.com/joeattardi What Joe's desk looks like: https://x.com/JoeAttardi/status/1849819837360480658 Some games Joe's recently played: https://backloggd.com/u/jattardi/games?page=1

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews MacKevin Fey. He just got laid off last week from his senior engineering role at Microsoft. We talk about: How Mack's approaching the job search after being laid off Tips for building your own financial safety net while working as an engineer How to use your dev skills to help people around you in the meantime And how Mack trains mentally and physically for the rigors of modern work Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,423 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: Mack's Oscilliscope course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBfhD_4FPIYsQ9LiWYoHVrLbuvwnb_bvC

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews software engineer and live coding streamer Code;Life. For those of you watching the video version of this interview, she lives in Iraq and she uses a 3D avatar to protect her identity. We talk about: Training language models to work well with low-resource languages from Africa and the Middle East Growing up in Iraq and her early experiences with computers and the internet How streaming yourself coding can be a good way to practice your skills, update your knowledge, and motivate fellow devs How to participate in coding competitions and hackathons even if you feel intimidated Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Correction: Quincy mentioned half of all articles on Wikipedia are English. While this is no longer true, as of 2025 half of all Wikipedia pageviews are still for English articles. Links we talk about: Quincy's interview with Eammon Cottrell who automated his coffee shop chain: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/self-taught-coding-automating-coffee-shop-chain-eamonn-cottrell-interview-151/ MNIST character dataset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNIST_database Zepeto tool for creating your own V-tuber avatar: https://page.zepeto.me/en/u4EEl3wK89atkdyUiivGEck Hugging Face AI Agent course (freeCodeCamp also has several courses on this on YouTube but this is the one CL mentioned): https://huggingface.co/learn/agents-course/en/unit0/introduction A video of Code;Life doing a Kaggle data science competition: https://youtube.com/live/WGLqd_sGiVA?feature=share

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Sam Crombie. He's a software engineer and prolific open source contributor to freeCodeCamp. He abandon his job at Microsoft, got into Y Combinator, and is currently in startup pivot hell trying to decide how to use the half million he raised. We talk about: How useful are AI coding tools, really? Tips for getting new users to care about your projects What's its really like running a Y-Combinator-funded tech startup Tips for getting into an Ivy League computer science degree program Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Links we talk about during our conversation: Sam's course on how to audit university courses: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-audit-a-class-university-course/ College Compendium, a univeristy course auditing tool Sam built with fellow freeCodeCamp podcast alum Seth Goldin: https://collegecompendium.org/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Shashi Lo. He's a software engineer at Microsoft. He grew up the child of refugees. He wanted to start earning money and build his family so he abandoned his art school degree and taught himself how to program. He immediately hustled to land freelance development clients – something he still does today on top of his full time job and raising his 4 kids. We talk about: - Making ends meet doing freelance work - How to bootstrap your reputation toward getting a job in big tech - Mistakes he sees careers changers make - The pros and cons of working in big tech VS working at developer agencies Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Shashi's conference talks and other podcast interviews: https://bento.me/shashilo