Navigating Software Complexity and AI Integration

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