freeCodeCamp Podcast

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel.

We talk about:

- How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s

- Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia

- How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 new-wave song.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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:

Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr

Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr

1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emma Bostian. She's a software engineer turned manager at Spotify and Prolific coding teacher.

We talk about:

- How at her first developer job at IBM, Emma's boss told her: "You need to get your stuff together or you won't make it in this industry." And the transformation that followed.

- Emma's thoughts on Computer Science degrees. "Going to college gives you credibility and a network. You can get opportunities that way."

- How Emma hires software engineers. (Hint: she tries to disregard degrees completely.)

- How Emma intentionally procrastinates some big tasks to give her mind time to figure out the puzzle pieces

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 punk song.

Also, I want to thank the 10,776 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:

- Emma on Twitter: https://x.com/emmabostian

- The Ladybug Podcast about women in tech that Emma helped host for several years: https://www.ladybug.dev/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Hiroko Nishimura. She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator turned technical instructor. 

Hiroko grew up in Japan and moved to the US as a kid. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk. She still lives with disabilities to this day. 

Despite this, she's gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS Newbies community. More than 500,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning course.

We talk about:

- How Hiroko moved to the US as a kid and learned English and American culture

- Hiroko's vascular tumor diagnosis, and how she recovered from brain surgery and brain damage

- Her big move to NYC and her years working as a system administrator and ultimately cloud engineer there

- How she made the jump to teaching system administration full-time as a course creator

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1990 song by a Scottish rock band.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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:

- Hiroko’s article about her brain surgery: https://hiroko.io/my-words/

- Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: https://www.manning.com/books/aws-for-non-engineers

- Hiroko's AWS course: https://introtoaws.com

- And her AWS linktree: https://aws.hiroko.io 

- My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-crazy-history-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge-and-why-you-should-try-it-for-2018-6c89a76e298d/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Rahul Pandey. He's a software engineer who left his $800K / year FAANG job to build his own startup.

We talk about:

- The post-layoff developer job landscape - Developer interviews and how to differentiate yourself - Why salary negotiation still makes sense - His belief that 10x engineers exist – and even 100x and 1000x engineers

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1969 mowtown classic.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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:

- Rahul's Android app tutorial on freeCodeCamp (4 hour watch): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-to-build-and-publish-an-android-app-from-scratch/

- Rahul's video about post-college job offers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rceUVaiXQgU

- Taro, Rahul's company: https://www.jointaro.com/

- The story of a software engineer who moves back to India to run his father's chemical business after his death: https://anandsanwal.me/2018/06/19/dad-company-sale/

- Conference talk about the correlation between interest rates and developer hiring, by Pragmatic Engineer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpPPHDxR9aM

- Rahul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Angie Jones. She's a developer and holder of 27 software patents. She's worked at companies like IBM and Twitter, doing both test engineering and developer advocacy.

We talk about:

- How a bad performance review from her boss early in her career taught her to be less timid and more vocal about her ideas.

- How she invented lots of software testing processes and holds 27 software patents.

- Her work at IBM, Twitter, and other big tech companies.

- How feature development and test development are completely different disciplines, which each require dedicated practice and their own mindsets

- Her interest in the game Second Life and the possibility of virtual worlds

- How she uses AI for debugging and test engineering

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 1992 Acid Jazz song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:

- Test Automation University learning paths: https://testautomationu.applitools.com/learningpaths.html

- Angie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/techgirl1908

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Angie Jones. She's a developer and holder of 27 software patents. She's worked at companies like IBM and Twitter, doing both test engineering and developer advocacy.

We talk about:

- How a bad performance review from her boss early in her career taught her to be less timid and more vocal about her ideas.

- How she invented lots of software testing processes and holds 27 software patents.

- Her work at IBM, Twitter, and other big tech companies.

- How feature development and test development are completely different disciplines, which each require dedicated practice and their own mindsets

- Her interest in the game Second Life and the possibility of virtual worlds

- How she uses AI for debugging and test engineering

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 1992 Acid Jazz song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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

You can watch the interview on YouTube: 

Links we talk about during our conversation:

- Test Automation University learning paths: https://testautomationu.applitools.com/learningpaths.html

- Angie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/techgirl1908

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ken Jee. Ken's a Data Scientist. He's also a Sports Analytics practitioner who works with US Team Golf and USA Basketball. 

Ken hosts the excellent Ken's Nearest Neighbors podcast and the Exponential Athelete podcast.

We talk about:

- How an injury pushed Ken out of pro sports and into data science

- How Ken explains his statistical insights to coaches and players to help them improve their performance

- Why Ken doesn't think building projects is all that useful anymore. "Data Scientists should instead build products."

- How Ken starts and ends each day with meditation, and writes down all the ideas that pop into his head after each session.

- Ken's observation that: "Who is the best suited to excel in a world where AI tools are prominent? Probably the people who are building them. People in the data science domain, people who are coding – they're the most prepared to use these tools for other things."

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2006 dance song, and it was originally played on a synth.

Also, I want to thank the 10,109 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:

Ken's Nearest Neighbors Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEJMMRoTIHJ8vG8q_EwqCg

The Exponential Athelete Podcast, also hosted by Ken: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAkSd12rP282takuFJKsAsYlHdpdEDhuE

The Founders podcast, which both Ken and Quincy listen to. James Dyson episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/88384801/senra-james-dyson-against-the-odds-an-autobiography

Anna Wintour episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/58741411/senra-326-anna-wintour

San Antonio caves that Quincy visited: https://naturalbridgecaverns.com/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews John Washam, a software engineer at Amazon. John's also creator of one of the most popular open source projects of all time, Coding Interview University.

This is John's first-ever podcast interview, and the first time he's told his story. Interviewing him was an absolute honor.

We talk about:

- How John delivered pizzas to save enough money to buy his first computer in the 90s. "I was tired of being a broke kid."

- John's first career in the US military, where he worked as a translator in South Korea

- How John crammed Computer Science for 8 months and taught himself enough theory and coding skills to get a job in big tech, then published Coding Interview University on GitHub

- What it's like to work as a senior developer at a big tech company, and what you can expect the journey to be like

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1986 rock song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:

- Coding Interview University: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university

- The Starup Next Door, John's blog: https://startupnextdoor.com/ 

- Follow John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnawasham/

- The Talent Code, the book John recommends: https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Daniel Bourke. He's a Machine Learning Engineer and creator of many popular tutorials on YouTube. He's also a frequent freeCodeCamp contributor.

We talk about:

- How as a kid he hacked into his school's network and gave himself good grades, just like the kid from Wargames. (Don't try this at home.)

- What he learned from helping fix 5,000 people's computers

- How Machine Learning actually works. What the AI models are actually doing for you in the background.

- His advice for anyone getting into Machine Learning in 2024, in terms of what to prioritize learning

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2020 song by an Australian musician.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:

Daniel's 26-hour PyTorch course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-pytorch-for-deep-learning-in-day/

Nutrify, Daniel's "pokedex for food". Uses computer vision to map photos of food to nutrition data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jpLqtAWKfo

Daniel's Charles Bukowski-inspired novel "Charlie Walks": https://www.charliewalks.com/

The research website Daniel mentions: https://arxiv.org/

Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrdbourke

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder. She's a software engineer has worked in the field for more than a decade. Interestingly, she studied photography in school and never took a programming class.

We talk about:

- How she and her sister ran a dial-in Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in the pre-web days

- How her first year as a dev she "was just living in abject fear of losing my job."

- How she stayed at her first developer agency job for 7 years, and went from imposter syndrome afflicted newbie to getting promoted

- Her philosophy on creating programming tutorials: "You don't have to be on the cutting edge. I don't operate on the cutting edge."

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1993 rock song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:

Jessica's 7-hour "How to Build a Website" freeCodeCamp course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-simple-website-with-html-css-javascript/

Jessica's coding journey animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA14r2ujQ7s

Kevin Powell, the "King of CSS", who has also shared courses on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/kevin-powell/

Jessica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecodercoder