The freeCodeCamp Podcast

Today I'm interviewing a long-time friend and role model of mine, Megan Kaczanowski. We met up in Brooklyn to talk about her journey into information security. She studied economics at University of Michigan before working in finance in New York City. But her ambitions lead her into cyber security – first as a threat analyst at a credit rating agency, and later as a Security Architect at a bank and a startups. Over the years, she's volunteered at charities around New York, and she's authored dozens of security tutorials as a contributor to freeCodeCamp. We talk about her journey into tech and her advice for folks getting into security – especially women. As with every time I talk with Megan, I learned a lot. And I hope you'll a lot, too. If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me.  And tell your friends. Megan's many information security tutorials on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/megansdoingfine/ Follow Megan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/megansdoingfine Read the book she mentioned about the first ever worm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) Watch Mr. Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U94litUpZuc  

today I'm joined by Brian Douglas. He's a software engineer who's worked at tech companies like GitHub and Netlify. And now he's an entrepreur runs his own startup – OpenSauced.pizza. Brian grew up in a small town in Florida, and his family was the only black family in town. He worked hard in school and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University, where he studied business. He started off working in sales, but gradually taught himself how to code. It took a while to get into the software, but he was ultimately able to move his family out to the San Francisco Bay Area. If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends. Follow Brian Douglas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bdougieYO And check out his open source tool: https://opensauced.pizza

Today I'm joined by Sarah Shook is a software engineer who started out as a recruiter, then started learning system administration on the job at a school. She didn't finish university. She learned to code on the job, from studying freeCodeCamp, and from attending a short bootcamp that she won free admission to. And she did all of this while raising 3 kids. She is a career-long remote worker, and insists she will never work somewhere where she needs to be away from her kids. Today she runs software development agency and works with clients.  Sarah and I talk about her coding journey, how she's worked to overcome depression and severe shyness, and her love of front end libraries like Tailwind CSS. If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends. It really helps. Without further ado, my interview with Sarah Shook. Sarah Shook on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shookcodes

Welcome back to the freeCodeCamp Podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freeCodeCamp.org. And I'm bringing you insight from developers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people getting into tech. It's been 4 years since we published a podcast episode. It's good to be back. This is the first of three interviews I'm publishing this week – my interview with Danny Thompson. Danny's a bit a legend among career changers.  He had a kid early in life. For 10 years he worked at a gas station in Tennessee, frying chicken for people to eat. He sometimes worked 80 hour weeks just to provide for his family. And yet, Danny had ambition. He taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He built his network through local tech events. And eventually, he landed his first job as as software developer.  Danny's since worked at tech companies like Google and Front Door, and he's now a software engineer at AutoZone, a major US retail chain. Danny has helped so many people along the way. He's developed a free course on how to leverage LinkedIn as a developer. And he's helped start a ton of local developer meetups. I couldn't dream of a better interview to kick off this new season of the freeCodeCamp podcast. New season. That's right. I've got dozen interviews lined up, and I'm recording these all in-person, in public libraries across Dallas, San Francisco, and New York City. I'm publishing 3 episodes this week, and then a new episode every Friday. We're talking about DevOps, cybersecurity, AI – tons of topics that I know you're gonna find helpful as you continue to expand your skills. If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends. Danny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DThompsonDev

In this special crossover episode, we celebrate 10 years of The Changelog. It's the home of the biggest podcast focused on open source, and a favorite of freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson. This 4-hour episode is actually 2 interviews: 1. For the first 2.5 hours, Quincy interviews Changelog co-hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo about how they got into software development and podcasting, and the history of their legendary podcast. 2. Then we end with Adam and Jerod turning the tables and interviewing Quincy about the past and future of freeCodeCamp.org. If you haven't heard of The Changelog before, it is website that hosts a podcast about open source software. Each week they interview new developers from around the software galaxy and explore what makes those projects tick. Adam Stacoviak founded The Changelog exactly 10 years ago. And Jerod Santo joined as co-host 7 years ago. Together - across 370 episodes - they've interviewed everyone from programmer legends, to the maintainers of open source projects you may have never even heard of. Quincy has listened to hundreds of The Changelog episodes over the years, and credits The Changelog with giving him such a broad view of open source, and the philosophies of the developers who started these projects. These interviews were conducted in-person in Adam's Houston-based studio. If you haven't yet, you should subscribe to The Changelog podcast. They have a variety of shows. We recommend starting with their Master Feed, which lets you explore all of their shows: https://changelog.com/master And check out the special website they built to celebrate their 10 year anniversary: changelog.com/ten Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamstac Follow Jerod on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jerodsanto And Quincy is: https://twitter.com/ossia

This week, for the last podcast episode of 2019, Abbey chatted with freelancer and content creator Jessica Chan - known as CoderCoder on social media - about how she got into tech and started her educational website and YouTube channel.

On today's episode of the podcast, Abbey chats with software engineer Jackson Bates who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Jackson used to be a high school English teacher, but gradually taught himself to code and landed a pretty sweet gig as a React dev, partly by chance. Today he works part time as a developer, part time as a stay at home dad, and volunteers his time with various open source projects. Finding his way into tech Jackson grew up in England, and studied English in school. Although going into education seemed a logical choice, he dabbled in other fields - like working at a prison cafeteria - for a while before landing a teaching job. That first job had some unpleasant aspects, and he began to doubt if teaching was for him. After moving to Australia to be with his wife, he started dabbling in basic HTML and CSS. Even though he continued teaching high school English, Jackson couldn't tear himself away from coding completely. We’ve all got computers, but being able to write code and make your computer do something – once you learn to do that it becomes quite an addictive thing. I just loved the problem solving aspect and how creative you could be. Learning to code After about six years of teaching without all the proper Australian certifications, he decided to go back to school and get his masters. He budgeted a bit too much time for his studies, however, and ended up with six months before he was scheduled to go back to work. So he dove back into learning more about coding. And those teaching skills? They came in quite handy when he was teaching himself to code. As a teacher, you kind of understand what it really takes to learn something. When you’ve helped 11-18 year olds overcome really frustrating experiences in their own learning, you learn to give yourself a break when you hit roadblocks. You learn to put in the work that’s necessary, but you get a more realistic expectation of the timeframes involved to learn something. And he was hooked. He got through one more year of teaching before deciding to try to get a job as a software engineer. Getting that first tech job But the job hunt sucked. While this was no surprise, it was particularly demoralizing when he was rejected for the most basic role for which he felt quite overqualified. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was never really ready enough – and I know everyone always says oh I’ll just finish this certification and brush up my CV and do this course…we always give ourselves a million reasons not to do it, and really those reasons will always be there. At that point, a friend encouraged him to try out a new meetup group, just for the heck of it. So he went. And ended up meeting his future boss. You might get knocked back from things you’re overqualified for – but it only takes the right person to see you and decide you’d be a good fit for their team, and then all the rejections don’t matter anymore. You just have to keep putting yourself out there. A tentative follow-up email, a quick round of interviews, and an onsite later, he had the job. It was an excellent cultural fit, and he's never looked back. He gets to work on fun internal projects, support the data scientists on his team, and pick up new skills constantly. And he's even developed a refreshing perspective on debugging and facing challenges in his code: I really like working with broken code. Because you know staring down a bug until you’ve fixed it really gives you a better understanding of the whole thing that you’re trying to do. Even though it’s a bit slow, it helps it sink in a bit more. Now, 14 months later, he's learned a lot about different tech, Machine Learning, how to learn new skills, and what it takes to switch careers. It really is a long game that you’re playing. It’s easy to be discouraged, but people have made the change you’re trying to make. It feels impossible but people do actually do it. In this episode, Jackson offers valuable advice about job hunting, finding your learning style, dealing with imposter syndrome, and how to take chances - among many other things. Find Jackson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacksonbates

Quincy interviews Jeff Meyerson, the creator and host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast. Jeff grew up in Texas, played competitive poker, and ultimately worked as a software engineer at Amazon. We talk about how he got into tech, how left Amazon to become an entrepreneur, and the many lessons he learned along the way. Follow Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_prion And subscribe to software engineering daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy Larson interviews Ruben Harris, who runs Career Karma, a social network for people interested in attending coding bootcamp. He also hosts the Breaking into Startups Podcast. Ruben just finished Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, where he and his team raised their first round of venture capital funding. Ruben grew up in Atlanta and worked in finance. He met his future co-founders - Ukrainian-born brothers Artur and Timur Meyster - years ago. The three of them agreed to spread out, get jobs in different industries, then later regroup to build a startup together. Ruben shares his insights on coding bootcamps. He also shares what he learned going through Y Combinator. And he talks about his close bond with his co-founders. Follow Ruben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubenharris Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia Subscribe to the Breaking Into Startups podcast: https://breakingintostartups.com/ Ruben interviews Quincy way back in 2017 (50 minute listen): https://breakingintostartups.com/quincy-free-code-camp/ Ruben interviews Gary V (an episode he mentions during this interview): https://breakingintostartups.com/76-gary-vaynerchuk-ceo-vaynermedia/

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey interviews senior software engineer and prolific content creator Ohans Emmanuel. They discuss how he got into tech, how he ended up in Berlin, what goes into writing a book, and how he stays focused through it all. When Ohans was young, he learned a very important lesson from his parents: you must take responsibility for yourself and your actions. He was lucky enough to grow up with a computer in the house, and gradually learned computer basics. In school, he studied engineering, but didn't learn much programming. So he had to teach himself. And it was hard. He lacked a community, had to struggle through things on his own, and felt like it was much harder than it needed to be. "I don't understand what it was - I was a smart student, but when I started to teach myself to learn how to code, that was the most difficult thing I had to teach myself to do. I was really on my own, I didn't join any groups. It was really just me trying to figure out the road map for myself. And that was really difficult." But having a supportive mentor helped. And eventually he started freelancing and teaching young adults how to code. He also began to fall in love with design and writing. As his passion for design grew, he began to appreciate its usefulness as well: "There is something about a front-end engineer who understands design. You see things differently. You can have meaningful conversations with the designers, and you have different opinions. You're not just building stuff - you understand how it affects the users." As Ohans learned more skills and came across more and more tough topics, he decided to research and then write about them. Again and again. He has written a number of free, full-length books about React, Redux, CSS, and many other topics. And his approach to the process is unsurprisingly organized and measured. "The first step is deciding what to write about. So I find a subject that is challenging or that I think maybe the community hasn't really explored. Or if I think that a lot of beginners are finding this subject difficult, it just makes me want to write about it more." "I'm really passionate about teaching things in plain, simple language. So you take a difficult subject and you break it down. It's so much fun. And when you do this over and over, it helps a lot of people. And it puts smiles on my face." Now isn't that enthusiasm contagious? In addition to writing books and articles and helping kids learn to code, Ohans has a full-time software engineering job in Berlin. Deciding to make the move away from friends and family wasn't easy, but with their support he went for it. During the interview process, he learned a lot about job interviews in general and what it took to go through them successfully. He believes being good at your job as an engineer and being good at interviews are two very different things. Despite this, Ohans believes that anyone can conquer the interview process. And his go-to advice? "Just smile. It keeps you calm and makes the interviewer calm as well. They want to give you time and let you think. You're smart, you can do it - you just have to stay calm and figure it out." Part of Ohans' success is derived from his commitment to deep work and deep focus. He firmly believes that anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it and have a plan. "I believe that the act of focus itself is a skill - just as much as you can learn to play the piano, you can learn to focus as well. And I think people really need to take their attention as seriously as possible. If you covet your attention, and take it like it's important, I think you'll be careful how you spend your time." In this interview, we discuss how he overcame the obstacles he faced when learning to code alone, how he got a job in another country, how he creates so much valuable, free content, and how he advises new developers to approach interviews, mentors, and many other tough subjects. "If you try something for a day and it doesn't work, go on and try it for a week. If it still doesn't work, try for two weeks. If it still doesn't work, re-evaluate what you're doing. If you still think you're heading in the right direction, try for another month. Or two months. And if you're still sure you're going in the right direction, don't give up - you're gonna get it.