Podcast
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Hosted by freeCodeCamp.org · EN
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
29episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
#207 Why maintaining a codebase is so damn hard – with OhMyZSH creator Robby Russell
Feb 1301:23:05Tap to summarizeToday Quincy Larson interviews Robby Russell. Robby created the open-source project Oh My ZSH. Oh My Zsh is a framework for managing your Zsh configuration for your command line terminal. It's been extremely popular among developers for more than a decade. Robby is also the CEO of Planet Argon, a software consultancy he created two decades ago. He's done work for Nike and lots of other companies. Note that this discussion is aimed at more advanced devs and engineering managers. We talk about: - How a "Don't let that happen again" culture can make it take forever to get new code into production, and how to reverse this - Tips for reducing your team's dependency on that one developer who's been there for years - Robby's perspective on LLM tools and how they're speeding up his workflows Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - My previous interview of Robby with his full journey: from painting houses to running a popular open source tool (2 hour listen): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-oh-my-zsh-creator-and-ceo-robby-russell/ - Robby reading his classic "d'Oh My Zshell" article recording on an older freeCodeCamp podcast episode: https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/site/ep-34-doh-my-zsh - A recent interview Robby did with Kent Beck, the software engineer who created the Extreme Programming agile methodology, on his Maintainable Podcast: https://maintainable.fm/episodes/kent-l-beck-youre-ignoring-optionality-and-paying-for-it - Robby's Robby on Rails blog he's been maintaining for over 20 years: https://robbyonrails.com/links/ - Robby's "On Rails" podcast, the official podcast of the Ruby on Rails framework: https://onrails.buzzsprout.com/ - The Mighty Missoula (Robby's Post Rock band): https://mightymissoula.com/ - The Ghostty cross-platform terminal that Robby recommended: https://ghostty.org/ - The fzf command line fuzzy finder tool Robby recommended: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf - The new omarchy Linux distribution Robby recommended: https://omarchy.org/ Community news section: 1. Learn to code in Python from one of the greatest living Computer Science professors, Harvard's David J. Malan. This is the 2026 version of the famous CS50 course. It will teach you Python programming fundamentals like functions, conditionals, loops, libraries, file I/O, and more. If you're new to Python, or to coding in general, this is an excellent place to start. (25 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/harvard-cs50-2026-free-computer-science-university-course 2. That Harvard computer science course will get you started with programming. But where do you go from there? freeCodeCamp just published a helpful tutorial that will help you bridge from beginner projects to building real-world applications that solve real-world problems. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-go-from-hello-world-to-building-real-world-applications/ 3. freeCodeCamp also just published a comprehensive intro to OpenClaw. If you've heard of Clawd Bot or Moltbot, this is the same tool, which they renamed to avoid confusion with the Claude LLM tool. OpenClaw is an agent and messaging gateway that lets you automate digital tasks through platforms like Discord. First you'll learn how to set it up. Then you'll learn security practices like implementing Docker-based sandboxing to protect your host system while your agent executes complicated workflows on your behalf. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/openclaw-full-tutorial-for-beginners 4. You may be using Bluetooth as you read this. It's been a key networking tool since 1999, and now it's getting 3 major upgrades: Passive Scanning, Bond Loss Reasons, and propagation of Service UUIDs. If you're interested in network engineering or IoT–style devices, this tutorial is well worth your read. (90 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-aosp-16-bluetooth-scanner-works-the-ultimate-guide/ 5. Today's song of the week is 2009 banger Sometimes by Australian band Miami Horror. I love the layers Peter Hooke-style guitar riff, the anthemic snyths, and the driving bassline. This is a perfect song to start of your morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn7FXGaHTNs
Transcribe →#206 Tips from a 20-year developer veteran turned consultancy founder – Tapas Adhikary interview
Jan 2901:19:12Tap to summarizeToday Quincy Larson interviews Tapas Adhikari. He's a software engineer who runs a firm of 20 developers who build projects for companies around the world. He's also a prolific teacher, having written 300 programming tutorials - including 47 for freeCodeCamp – and runs a popular English and Bangla-language YouTube channels. We talk about: - The changing nature of software engineering - Tips for building your own fully-remote software development firm and landing clients abroad - Lessons from mentoring more than 500 developers over the years Support for this podcast comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Tapas's handbook on how to get started contributing to open source projects (required reading IMHO): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-practical-guide-to-start-opensource-contributions/ - Tapas's many tutorials and handbooks on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/atapas/ - The developer firm Tapas co-founded and nows runs with more than a dozen developers: https://www.creowis.com/ - Tapas's personal website: https://www.tapasadhikary.com/ - Tapas's English-langauge programming tutorial YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tapasadhikary Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new Python Data Structures & Algorithms course that will help you understand key Dynamic Programming patterns. These approaches come up all the time in technical interviews. You'll learn Constant Transition, the Grid Pattern, Two Sequences, Interval DP, Non-Constant Transition, Knapsack-like problems, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-dynamic-programming-through-dynamic-visuals/ 2. If you're interested in building projects on top of Large Language Models, freeCodeCamp just published a Python course on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). You'll learn how to turn documents into embeddings then store them in vector databases. The course will also walk you through building your own Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-rag-and-mcp-fundamentals/ 3. Learn How Execution Context Works in JavaScript. If you're a JS dev, this is essential reading. You'll learn about interpretation vs compilation. Then you'll see how Node.js and the V8 engine load and execute code. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-execution-context-works-in-javascript-handbook/ 4. Finally, this weekend you can build your own fully-playable horror game based on the legendary "The Backrooms" liminal space. For some reason my kids are terrified of this weirdly normal-looking office setting. You'll build your own environment using Unreal Engine 5 and the Blueprints visual scripting tool that abstracts away all the C++ code for you. Throw in a body-cam style camera perspective and some creepy monsters and you'll have the perfect way to scare friends and family alike. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-the-backrooms-game-in-unreal-engine-5/ 5. Today's song of the week is And the Cradle Will Rock off Van Halen's 1980 album Women and Children first. The song starts out with a groove on a heavily distorted Wurlitzer elctromechanical piano. I love Michael Anthony's 8th note bassline and the loose high hats under Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo. This is a great lunch break song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11mBDT5mpdw
Transcribe →#205 How to stay curious as a dev in the AI hype era with Sumit Saha
Jan 2301:04:20Tap to summarizeToday Quincy Larson interviews Sumit Saha, a software engineer and prolific teacher on YouTube. Sumit is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he runs a developer agency building projects for clients throughout Asia. We talk about: - How the hunger for learning is dying and people are increasingly drawn to shortcuts over taking the time to truly understand concepts - Sumit's information diet and his tips for expanding your skills - 5 key developer concepts explained like you're 5 Support comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Sumit's many freeCodeCamp handbooks and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sumitsaha/ - Sumit's website: https://www.sumitsaha.me/ - Sumit's Bangla-language YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@LearnwithSumit - Sumit's English YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@logicBaseLabs Community news section: 1. I spent three days at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts recording a documentary about the world's largest collegiate hackathon. More than 3,000 student developers participated in this year's UC Berkeley Cal Hacks hackathon. Over the course of 36 hours, they built a broad array of projects, then demo'd them to judges from industry. I now present to you the finished documentary. I hope you find it both enjoyable and inspiring. (80-minute documentary): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/inside-cal-hacks-2025-36-hours-at-the-worlds-largest-collegiate-hackathon/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a new course on building your own custom Kubernetes operators and controllers from scratch. You'll learn everything from the internal architecture of Informers and Caches to advanced concepts like Finalizers and Idempotency. If you're interested in DevOps, this is the course for you. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-your-own-kubernetes-operators-with-go-and-kubebuilder/ 3. Learn how to select the best GPU for economically training your models and running inference workloads. This no-nonsense guide will help you understand why certain specs matter more than others. It will also help you navigate around common pitfalls when buying or renting GPUs. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-choose-the-best-gpu-for-your-ai-workloads/ 4. Learn how to benchmark embedding models using your own custom data. This course will walk you through leveraging Vision Language Models for precise text extraction. You'll also learn how to use LLMs to generate synthetic evaluation data. Finally, you'll get exposure to the rigorous statistical tests that can help you find the best models for whatever hardware you have on hand. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-benchmark-embedding-models-on-your-own-data/ 5. Our song of the week: Supergroup The Power Station's 1985 hit "Some Like it Hot". This entire album features incredible drumming by Chic drummer Tony Thompson. And with Bass and Guitars by Duran Duran's John Taylor and Andy Taylor, the whole song has insane groove. 80s icon Robert Palmer sings and brings the texture. The guy reportedly smoked 60 cigarettes a day and paid the price a few years later, but man is his voice golden on this recording. Fun fact: Duran Duran's official site says they achieved the massive drum sound by putting mics at the top of a nearby elevator shaft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1t7OCESUw
Transcribe →#204 The Most Important Skills Going Forward with CTO + Homebrew Maintainer Mike McQuaid
Jan 1601:27:42Tap to summarizeToday Quincy Larson interviews Mike McQuaid. He's a software engineer who previously worked at GitHub, and now serves as lead maintainer of Homebrew, a Mac package manager used by tens of millions of developers. He's based in Edinburgh, Scottland. He's worked remotely as a dev for nearly two decades. We talk about: - What does a career in open source really look like - What skills are going to be the most important going forward - How big open source infrastructure really gets written and maintained Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Mike's podcast, Minimum Viable Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdx6vnBOYrMZw3ZHjJJyItqQuZQhTIzhc - Homebrew 5.0 announcement with changelog: https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/ - POSSE approach to social media: https://indieweb.org/POSSE Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a book that will teach you the math that powers most AI systems. Even if you haven't studied math since high school, you may find this book helpful in expanding your understanding of the layers of abstraction underpinning these emerging tools. You'll learn key concepts in statistics, linear algebra, calculus, and optimization theory. You'll also get a healthy dose of mathematical history. (free full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-math-behind-artificial-intelligence-book/ 2. And if you're finding the sudden surge in AI tools to be overwhelming, freeCodeCamp just published this practical guide to using them effectively. This tutorial will separate the utility from the hype. You'll learn how to minimize hallucinations with Context Management. You'll also learn about agentic tools and in-editor assistants. It even has tips for how to prevent your own developer skills from atrophying, so you can adopt these tools without becoming overly dependent on them. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-not-be-overwhelmed-by-ai/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a course on React Optimization. You'll learn key React design patterns to achieve a screaming-fast front end. This course covers memoization, derived states, throttling, debouncing, concurrency, virtualization, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-react/ 4. Learn modern music production using the popular FruityLoops Studio Digital Audio Workstation tool. This FL Studio course will teach you sound design fundamentals, mixing, filters, drum sequencing, basslines, synth melodies, and even advanced concepts like kick drum ducking. You can play along at home and by the end of the course you'll have your own bass house track you can share with your friends. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-music-production-with-fl-studio/ 5. This week's song of the week is the 2022 song "Ditto" by Korean pop group New Jeans. I like the song feels slow and relaxed even though the tempo is really fast. It has really minimalist production - mainly just 808 drums and vocals. Perfect late night listening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6TEcoNUmc8
Transcribe →#203 First developer job at age 38 with lawyer turned software engineer Zubin Pratap
Jan 901:13:11Tap to summarizeToday Quincy Larson interviews Zubin Pratap, a software engineer and manager from Melbourne, Australia. After nearly two decades working as a corporate lawyer, he taught himself programming using freeCodeCamp.org. Within two years, he landed a job as a software engineer at Google. We talk about: - How tools are making programming easier, but other parts of being a developer harder - How 2009 - 2022 was NOT a normal job market and how devs are adapting - "The purpose of communication is to be understood" and other lessons Zubin's learned over the years Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Zubin's LinkedIn and other social media: https://meetzubin.carrd.co/ - Zubin's "Easier said than done" podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky4Hhd-k1js&list=PLAPuklwJx5V3fpXiSD9CMh3RhPQTCSemj Community news section: 1. Let's kick off 2026 with a ton of announcements. We just launched Version 10 of freeCodeCamp's JavaScript certification, along with updated Python, SQL, and Responsive Web Design certifications that you can earn. We even launched our beta Spanish and Mandarin Chinese curricula. (10 minute announcement article with tons of data): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/christmas-gifts-freecodecamp-community-2025 2. Now you can learn Spanish on freeCodeCamp. We just launched our FREE A1 Level Spanish curriculum. You'll learn: pronunciation, introductions, numbers, and more. More than 200 steps are live now. ¡Aprendamos! https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a1-professional-spanish-curriculum-beta-is-now-live/ 3. Over the holiday break I took my kids to Johnson Space Center in Houston. If you're in Houston you should absolutely go here. We visited the Mission Control center that NASA used during the Apollo missions to the moon. They also had an awesome multimedia experience created by Tom Hanks about this year's Artemis mission to the moon. This is an incredible museum. We spent 7 hours there. It wasn't particularly expensive. Just make sure you book tickets to mission control a few months in advance of your trip. 4. During the road trip, I re-listened to Guns 'n' Roses's entire catalogue. Which brings me to today's song of the week: the 1991 epic Estranged. The is maybe the most mature-sounding song they've ever done, with introspective lyrics and a series of tastful, emotional guitar solos. Great drum fills, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmAY059TTY
Transcribe →#168 How to use AI as an accelerator, not a crutch, with freelance engineer Ankur Tyagi
Aug 2900:54:25Tap to summarizeFor this week's interview, I'm talking with Ankur Tyagi. He's a software engineer who's worked at multinational companies like Volvo, Barclays, and Accenture. He grew up in Pune, India and now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Ankur is a prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp's open source learning resources. He also runs DevTools Academy, where he blogs about emerging developer tools. He shares tips for: - How he uses AI tools to get more done as a dev but... - He thinks leveraging AI is a skill any dev can learn, and we shouldn't worry about fewer dev jobs. - How to run you own developer consultancy - How writing programming tutorials can help you become a better engineer 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 10,889 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 News items: → freeCodeCamp just published our first-ever chess course, taught by a software engineer on our team who has an international ELO rating of 2285, putting him among top competitive players. Ihechikara Abba will teach you how to think strategically and checkmate your opponents. This beginner-level course starts off with algebraic chess notation and identifying the squares. Then you'll learn several endgame patterns. We published both a handbook and an accompanying YouTube course for you to reference and share with your friends. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/checkmate-patterns-in-chess-for-beginners → freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive course on how to build your own AI shopping agent. Software Engineer Ania Kubów will teach you how to use Node, TypeScript, LangChain's LangGraph, Gemini, MongoDB, and other popular tools to build your agent. By the end of this course, your agent will be able to autonomously perceive, plan, act, and respond to your users. It will also be able to decide when it has enough information to respond, and when it needs to first reach out for external information by searching product databases. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-an-ai-powered-e-commerce-chat-assistant-with-mongodb/ → Last month Alibaba dropped the latest version of their Qwen LLM and already the freeCodeCamp community has a comprehensive course on how to train it from scratch. You'll learn about its architecture, Training Hyperparameters, Muon Optimization, RoPE Positional Embeddings, inference, text generation, and more. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-and-train-qwen3-from-scratch/ → freeCodeCamp also published this guide to the field of System Design, written by a who applies the principles both to software development and to his day-to-day life. You'll learn about scalability issues, the CAP Theorem, Caching & CDNs, Rate Limiting, and other key concepts. (50 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-key-system-design-principles-behind-high-traffic-platforms-like-gaming-and-job-discovery/ → This week YouTube channel Gamer's Nexus posted a 3 hour documentary about China and the Graphics chips they've been using to train their AI models. The video has been copyright claimed multiple times by Bloomberg and taken down, but people keep re-uploading it. It's pretty awesome. The channel host travels to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shenzhen, and Singapore to interview people along the process who are obtaining this hardware both legally and illegally. Note that this link I'm sharing may already been taken down by the time you click it, but you can search "gamers nexus GPU" and you should be able to find it. 3.5 hour watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkNBZeS1OHk → The open source maintainer of the extremely popular Curl command line tool posted this excellent talk about AI slop security issues he keeps getting. He explains how people seem to be going into LLMs and asking "Find me a vulnerability in the Curl project. Then write a bug bounty submission for me and make it sound as alarming as possible." LLMs keep hallucinating new bugs, which lazy people then submit. Reviewing such bugs is now taking up more and more of his day. Since security is pretty important, he kind of just has to take these submissions seriously. A lot of non-native English speakers use LLMs to make their writing sound more native. But of course, most developers can tell when something's been written by an LLM. At the end of the talk, someone in the audience asks him point blank: has he ever received an issue that reads like LLM output that turned out to be a real security issue? And he says point blank: no. The lesson: don't use LLMs to re-write your issues or pull requests for you, or developers may assume the whole thing is just AI slop. 50 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2eDcRjSsk This week's song of the week is 1991's Breather by UK band Chapterhouse. Absolute banger drums on this one. Link's in the description. Listen to it after the podcast. By the way if you're wondering, that's a sleeping cat on the cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGWaBJc1UrY
Transcribe →#185 From Hospital Janitor to Developer with Emmett Naughton
Aug 2201:28:57Tap to summarizeOn this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emmett Naughton. He worked as hospital janitor for years while teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp. He's founder of Coder Dads, a chat community where dads encourage one another. We talk about: - Making ends meet while raising a family - Recovering from getting laid off twice in the same year - Emmet's journey into the PHP Laravel ecosystem as a full stack JavaScript developer - How to use social media effectively when you don't like using social media - Emmett's sleep apnea and how fixing his sleep dramatically improved his thinking and coding 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 charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Emmett's website with dozens of blog posts: https://emmettnaughton.com/ - The Coder Dads community: https://coderdads.carrd.co/
Transcribe →#183 From drop-out to backpacker to self-taught developer with Dominick Monaco
Aug 1501:19:46Tap to summarizeOn this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dominick Monaco. He dropped out college to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile backpacking route across the US. After working in nature conservation for 3 years, he taught himself how to program and now works as a developer. We talk about: - Life working as a Yogi Bear-style forest ranger in training - Close brushes with death in the wilderness and how it affects you - Learning programming for a grand total of $15 - How surrounding yourself with other ambitious learners can help you learn programming faster 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 11,189 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Dominick's blog article on how he got here: https://dominickjmona.co/blog/how-i-got-here - Dominick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominick-j-monaco/ - Americorps conservation core: https://www.americorps.gov/
Transcribe →#182 Abandoning med school to become a software engineer with Edidiong Asikpo
Aug 8, 202501:13:48Tap to summarizeOn this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Edidiong Asikpo. Didi is a software engineer. She grew up in Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria and the biggest tech hub in Africa. Didi got into medical school. But while waiting for her studies to start, she started studying computer science and got really into it. She graduated with a CS degree and has worked in tech for nearly a decade. She now works at MongoDB, a cloud database company, remotely from her home in London. We talk about: - Nigeria's tech scene - How to break into tech when you live outside the Sillicon Valley ecosystem - How to transition from one programming language to another (Didi moved from mobile apps -> DevOps) - How writing programming tutorials can help you become a better 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 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Didi's website: https://edidiongasikpo.com/ - Didi's freeCodeCamp tutorial with career advice: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-kickstart-a-career-in-tech/ - Open Data Kit - the first open source project Didi contributed to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODK_(software)
Transcribe →#184 Senior Playstation Engineer's tips for learning new tools and getting things done
Aug 1, 202501:24:13Tap to summarizeOn this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dilip Krishnamoorthi. He's a software engineer working at Sony, building user interfaces for Playstation game consoles where he's been for 10 years. We talk about: - How he dropped out of a traditional Indian university and used an inexpensive distance learning program to finish his engineering degree for less than US $100 / semester - What it's like working in Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of Asia - His experience launching the Playstation 5 - Tips for continuing to learn new tools even as a senior engineer 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 11,423 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Wikipedia article on Flow State, a concept Dilip mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) - An IGN article about major improvements to Playstation 5's UI that Dilip worked on: https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5s-ui-the-five-biggest-gamechangers - Webcomic about the perils of context switching: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/60wx3z/this_is_why_you_shouldnt_interrupt_a_programmer/#lightbox
Transcribe →