#164 How To Become A Self-taught Developer While Supporting A Family The FreeCodeCamp podcast

1:27:18

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Francesco Ciulla. He's a software engineer who has worked with the European Space Agency on code that powers the Copernicus satellite program. More recently he's published courses on learning Docker and the Rust programming language. We talk about: - How Francesco worked as a volleyball coach until we was 32, before getting serious about coding - Francesco's work on coding satellites - How he's given dozens of talks about emerging tools at major tech conferences - How he creates tech tutorials even though he's a proud introvert who has to put himself out there 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 mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - Francesco's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@francescociulla - Francesco's upcoming book on Rust: https://mybook.to/YJI6DI - Francesco's personal website and all his links: https://www.francescociulla.com…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#164 How to become a self-taught developer while supporting a family 1:22:59

13 days ago1:22:59

1:22:59

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jesse Hall. He's software engineer and a developer advocate at MongoDB. He taught himself to code while raising kids and working on the Best Buy Geek Squad fixing computers. Jesse has created tons of tutorials over the years on YouTube and on freeCodeCamp. We talk about his coding journey, how the field has changed over the few years, and how hype has distorted peoples' perception of getting into code. We talk about: - Growing up in a one stop light town - Teaching himself to code for free using freeCodeCamp - How he created YouTube tutorials to inspire his kids, then got quite good at it - How Jesse's early interest in Web3 lead him to needing to "dig himself out of the grave" of being "the NFT tutorial guy" 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. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday. Links we talk about during our conversation: - Jesse's tutorials on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/codeSTACKr/ - Jesse's course on how to set up and configure the VS Code editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJEbVCrEMSE…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#163 Learn fewer skills but go deeper - the Caleb Curry interview 1:30:49

20 days ago1:30:49

1:30:49

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Caleb Curry. He's a software engineer and prolific computer science educator. He recently started mentoring dozens of developers directly and helping them with their skills and careers. We'll talk about his experience getting laid off as a dev and how we prepared for his mid-career job search. We talk about: - How Caleb got laid off and went about landing his next developer job - How most people sleep on networking and recruiters, but shouldn't - Why Caleb is so serious about teaching system design concepts - How Caleb pairs his deep focus with broad extracurricular learning through podcasts and white papers 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 11,343 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 we talk about during our conversation: - Caleb's course on Database Design: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/database-design-full-course-43233664125b/ - Caleb's system design lecture playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e7yQ43bUtg&list=PL_c9BZzLwBRLSs6x50D5WIH76VCUxJs9E - Caleb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebcurry/…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#162 How to become a developer in your 30s with Anjana Vakil 2:51:57

27 days ago2:51:57

2:51:57

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Anjana Vakil. She left academia to learn to code and got her first developer job in her 30s. Anjana was an English teacher who studied computational linguistics, and found building software to be more fun than actual research. She's worked at ton of tech companies and has freelance clients. She shares some excellent tips on learning new skills and avoiding burnout. We talk about: How Anjana taught herself to code in her 30s Being an American dev working in Europe Stress, burnout, and how she gets by How skills from your previous non-developer career can help differentiate you as a 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 11,243 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 we talk about during our conversation: "How to be the ideal newb" article: https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/ "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle" book that Anjana mentions: https://www.amazon.com/Burnout-Secret-Unlocking-Stress-Cycle/dp/198481706X Anjana's website: https://anjana.dev/…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#161 How to go full-on Renaissance Man mode in 2025 with Vaughn Gene 2:11:55

5 weeks ago2:11:55

2:11:55

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Vaughn Gene. He's a self-taught software engineer who works with lots of freelance clients. Vaughn lived in Japan for 10 years, and speaks Japanese, speaks Spanish, plays guitar, plays piano, and is skilled at MMA. He's obsessed with learning new skills. We talk about: - How Vaughn struggled with high school and joined the Navy - How he learned Japanese so he could work as a personal trainer in Japan - How he learned coding using freeCodeCamp as a way to make more time and more money - His pragmatic approach for teaching himself new skills for free 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 11,043 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 we talk about during our conversation: - Vaughn's YouTube channel and his approach to pursuing multiple skills in tandem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTnsjmsgJS8 - Vaughn on Instagram where he posts guitar: https://www.instagram.com/vaughngene/…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#160 She taught herself coding in her 30s for zero dollars 1:08:01

6 weeks ago1:08:01

1:08:01

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Julia Undeutsch who is a self-taught software engineer and accessibility specialist. She works at a big European company making software more accessible for people with disabilities. She taught herself to code in her 30s using freeCodeCamp. 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 11,043 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 We talk about: - Julia's coding journey from poker dealer to self-taught software engineer - How she creates tutorials in Japanese - Her passion for making software easier to use for everyone - Working remotely at a big European software consultancy Links we talk about during our conversation: - Julia's website: https://www.juliaundeutsch.com/ - Movie trailer for the 1999 Clive Owen movie "Croupier" that Quincy mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDWzeq5QGiA…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#159 From freeCodeCamp to CTO with Robotics Engineer Peggy Wang 2:02:05

7 weeks ago2:02:05

2:02:05

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Peggy Wang. She used freeCodeCamp to learn coding. She then worked in Big Tech as a robotics engineer. And now she's cofounder and CTO of Ego AI, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that builds human-like agents for video games. We talk about: - How she grew up a first generation American and public school kid in Milwaukee - How her love of robotics helped her get into Stanford - How freeCodeCamp served as a key resource to build her developer chops - The near future of humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and human-like AI agents in games 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 11,224 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 we talk about during our conversation: - Peggy's GameDev company, Ego AI: https://www.egoai.com/ - Quincy's interview with hardware engineer Bruno Haid that he mentions toward the end of this episode: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-hardware-engineering-bruno-haid/…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#158 From Gas Station to Google with Self-Taught Cloud Engineer Rishab Kumar 1:25:03

8 weeks ago1:25:03

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On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Rishab Kumar, cloud engineer and developer advocate at Twillio. Rishab grew up in India and moved to Canada for school. But he couldn't afford to finish. He resorted to delivering pizzas and working at a gas station. But he worked hard to teach himself how to code and how to build cloud infrastructure, and eventually got a job Google. 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 11,043 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 We talk about: - How to teach yourself cloud engineering - Getting repeatedly rejected from FAANG jobs but persisting - Filling up the Infinity Gauntlet with cloud certifications - How DevOps and Cloud Engineering are changing Links we talk about during our conversation: - Rishab's Terraform course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-terraform-to-deploy-a-site-on-google-cloud-platform/ - Rishab's LangChain LLM deployment course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-langchain-for-llm-development/ - Learn to Cloud guide by Rishab and his friend at Microsoft, Gwyn: https://learntocloud.guide/ - Rishab's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@rishabincloud/videos…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#157 Getting a developer job in 2025 with Lane Wagner 2:26:41

9 weeks ago2:26:41

2:26:41

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Lane Wagner. He's a software engineer, prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp, and founder of the Boot.dev online learning platform. 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 11,043 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 We talk about: - Lane's thoughts on college and computer science degrees - Back end development and why it resonnates with him - Why he's so enthusiastic about the Go Programming Language - What Lane's learned about how people learn Quincy mentions the number of engineers graduating every year from Indian and Chinese universities (including computer science majors, which is usually the most popular engineering degree). It's hard to find exact numbers but... - India: more than 1 million engineering graduates / year - China: more than 1 million engineering graduates / year - US: only about 200,000 engineering graduates / year Links we talk about during our conversation: - Lane's 4-hour course on how to get a job as a developer: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-a-developer-job/ - Lane's 5-hour HTTP Networking course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/http-networking-protocol-course/ - Lane's SQL for Web Developers course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/sql-for-web-devs/ - Lane's freely available books published through freeCodeCamp Press: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/wagslane/ - Khan Academy founder's talk on mastery learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTRxRO5SRA - The Zone of Proxmial Development education concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#156 AI Reality VS Speculation with Google Machine Learning Engineer Jiquan Ngiam 1:53:13

10 weeks ago1:53:13

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On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jiquan Ngiam. He's a former Google Brain engineer who's building tools to make AI useful for everyone – not just developers. We talk about the power of AI and it's practical capabilities, and separate those from a lot of the hype surrounding the AI space. 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 wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,113 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 We talk about: - How AI agents work - Where AI is going and its limitations - How non-developers can leverage AI - And how developers can REALLY leverage AI Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Links we talk about during our conversation: - Jiquan's company, Lutra AI: https://lutra.ai/ - Jiquan's article on generative agentic interfaces for working with large spreadsheets: https://blog.lutra.ai/generative-interfaces-for-ai-agents - Jiquan's article on OODA loops for AI Agents: https://blog.lutra.ai/ooda-loops-for-ai-agents - A paper Jiquan mentions, Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agents: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.01030…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#155 CUDA and GPU Programming with Elliot Arledge 1:19:49

11 weeks ago1:19:49

1:19:49

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Elliot Arledge. He's a 20-year old computer science student who's created several popular freeCodeCamp courses on LLMs, the Mojo programming language, and GPU programming with CUDA. He joins us from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We talk about: - Building AI systems from scratch - How Elliot has learned so much so quickly and his methods - How he approaches reading academic papers - His CS degree coursework VS his self-directed learning In the intro I play the 1988 Double Dragon II game soundtrack song "Into the Turf" 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 11,043 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 we talk about during our conversation: - Elliot's Mojo course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/new-mojo-programming-language-for-ai-developers/ - Elliot's Cuda GPU programming course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cuda-programming/ - Elliot's Python course on building an LLM from scratch: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-large-language-model-from-scratch-using-python/ - Elliot's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@elliotarledge - Elliot's many projects on GitHub: https://github.com/Infatoshi…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#154 Why developers needn't fear CSS – with the King of CSS himself Kevin Powell 2:04:42

14 weeks ago2:04:42

2:04:42

Take our year-end freeCodeCamp podcast listener survey real quick: https://forms.gle/2M9NW776723uSdDT7 On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kevin Powell. He's a designer, a software engineer, and an expert in CSS. He's runs a CSS-focused YouTube channel with nearly a million subscribers. There's nothing sensational there – he literally just teaches people CSS. 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 11,043 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 CORRECTION: I (Quincy) say during the interview that the Uber found a way to access microphones on iOS without users' knowledge. There have been documented cases of malware doing this (like Pegasus) but Uber didn't do this. They did do a lot of other shady things, like continue collecting data even after you deleted their app – but mic spying was not one of them. Yes, early Uber was an ethical tire fire. But it's important to get facts right here. We talk about: - Why you should still learn CSS in 2025 - How teaching concepts improves your own understanding of them - How learning to skateboard helped Kevin escape Tutorial Hell - Massive improvements coming to CSS Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kevin's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/kevinpowell - Original Space Jam website Kevin mentions: https://www.spacejam.com/1996/ - The article that coined the term Responsive Design: https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/ - Kevin's freeCodeCamp article on how learning skateboarding helped him out of tutorial hell: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-learning-to-skateboard-helped-me-find-a-way-out-of-tutorial-hell/ - Kevin's freeCodeCamp course on building and deploying a portfolio page: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-portfolio-website-and-deploy-to-digital-ocean/ - Playable Minesweeper in CSS that Quincy mentions: https://codepen.io/bali_balo/pen/BLJONZ - Acknowledged mistakes that are permanently coded into CSS: https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes - Talk on why is CSS so weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUtMbJw8iA…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#153 How to get a Developer Job – even in this economy – with James Q Quick 1:36:47

15 weeks ago1:36:47

1:36:47

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews James Q Quick. He's a developer, speaker, and teacher. James grew up in Memphis. He was an athlete who played violin, and knew nothing about computer science but chose it as his college major. Since then, he's not only worked as a dev at Microsoft, FedEx and many tech startups. And he's given more than 100 talks at conferences about technical topics. 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 11,043 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 We talk about: - How coding a Harry Potter Trivia app launched James' developer career - Getting laid off then getting back onto the bike - How to go about getting a first developer job - How to make a name for yourself through conference talks and creating tutorials Links we talk about during our conversation: James's website: https://www.jamesqquick.com/ Jevon's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#152 How a breakdancing injury launched a coding empire with Scott Tolinski 1:41:23

16 weeks ago1:41:23

1:41:23

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Scott Tolinski. He's a developer who 14 years ago - after injuring himself breakdancing – decided to create a programming tutorial YouTube channel called LevelUpTuts. He is also co-host of Syntax, the most popular web dev podcast on the planet. 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 wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org We talk about: - Scott's perspective on the state of web dev - His journey from video editing into full blown software development for agencies - What he's learned from recording 2,000 tutorials and 800 web dev podcasts - Productivity tips and how he's kept up this pace for 12 years without burning out Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Also, I want to thank the 11,036 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - The Syntax podcast: https://syntax.fm/ - Scott's archive of more than 1,000 programming tutorials he taught on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@syntaxfm/videos - The Honeypot documentary about Scott (8 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9eh2iJsjxE…

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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#151 Automating a coffee shop chain using self-taught coding skills with Eamonn Cottrell 1:49:39

18 weeks ago1:49:39