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

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/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Eamonn Cottrell. He's a software engineer who also runs a local chain of coffee shops in Knoxville. Eamonn taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. And he's since published 37 freeCodeCamp tutorials on productivity and automation using spreadsheets.

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 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and get involved in our mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org

We talk about: - Eamonn's love of coffee and how he bought VHS tapes to learn latte art - How he finds time to expand his skills in between running coffee shops and ultra-marathoning - How he used spreadsheets to automate the logistics of running coffee shops - How he balances being a musician and writer with the practical realities of providing for a family of 6

Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?

Also, I want to thank the 10,993 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

CORRECTION: Vincent van Gogh was supported by his younger brother – not his brother in-law. van Gogh never married so he never had a brother in law. I'm not sure why I thought that. Also, he seems to have sold more than one painting in his life (as many of us were taught in school), but nowhere near enough paintings to support himself as an artist.

Links we talk about during our conversation:

Eamonn's freeCodeCamp articles: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sieis/

Eamonn's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@eamonncottrell

Excel-based esports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2QC6VQXo8U

Ultra Marathons: https://www.youtube.com/@runtired

Got Sheet: https://www.gotsheet.xyz/

Progress and Perfection: https://www.progressandperfection.com/

Eamonn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonncottrell/

Eamonn on Twitter: https://x.com/EamonnCottrell