The official podcast of the freeCodeCamp.org open source community. Each week, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews developers, founders, and ambitious...
#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 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/
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#160 She taught herself coding in her 30s for zero dollars
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
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#159 From freeCodeCamp to CTO with Robotics Engineer Peggy Wang
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/
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#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 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
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#157 Getting a developer job in 2025 with Lane Wagner
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 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
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