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freeCodeCamp.org

The official podcast of the freeCodeCamp.org open source community. Each week, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews developers, founders, and ambitious people in tech.

Learn to math, programming, and computer science for free, and turbo-charge your developer career with our free open source curriculum: https://www.freecodecamp.org

freeCodeCamp Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

#155 CUDA and GPU Programming with Elliot Arledge

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

#156 AI Reality VS Speculation with Google Machine Learning Engineer Jiquan Ngiam

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

#157 Getting a developer job in 2025 with Lane Wagner

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

#158 From Gas Station to Google with Self-Taught Cloud Engineer Rishab Kumar

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/

#159 From freeCodeCamp to CTO with Robotics Engineer Peggy Wang

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

#160 She taught herself coding in her 30s for zero dollars

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/

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

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/

#162 How to become a developer in your 30s with Anjana Vakil

Today I'm talking with Sean Smith, one of freeCodeCamp's earliest graduates. Sean's also a prolific open source contributor, having helped develop freeCodeCamp's original React curriculum.
 
Sean grew up in Tenessee and was an avid outdoorsman and rock climber. He went to college hoping to become a doctor. He even interned at the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Virology.
 
But one day he decided to leave the field – with no clear plans for the future – Leaving his friends and family puzzled.
 
For two years, Sean worked at climbing gyms across Tenessee as a route setter, climbing the walls and installing climbing holds. And one day he decided he needed to learn to code.
 
I caught up with Sean in downtown San Francisco, in a café that both he and I had coincidentally worked out of early in our developer careers.
 
I learned a lot about Sean's journey into tech that took him from working in San Francisco to Singapore to Taipei.
 
And spoiler alert: during the podcast we talk about Sean's job search. I'm happy to report that since I interviewed him last month, he's landed a developer job at a company focused on AI and e-commerce.
 
 If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me. And tell your friends. It really helps us inspire more people.
 
Sean Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmatthewsmith/

#92 From Rock Climbing to Software Engineering with Sean Smith

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