freeCodeCamp Podcast

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

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tim Ruscica, the software engineer and prolific programming teacher behind the Tech with Tim YouTube channel. He's also developed courses on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel. We talk about: - How Tim managed to get a $70k salary by hacking his way into a Microsoft internship when he was just 19 - How he learned computer architecture as a kid by playing Minecraft - Lessons he learned from a failed tech startup - Why he recommends Python as a first programming language. "It's the least overwhelming thing to get your hands dirty." Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Also, I want to thank the 11,133 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 classroom montage from Real Genius that Quincy mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o - One of Tim's mock coding interview videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_oYDQ2whs - Tim's course: https://techwithtim.net/dev

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Yifan Mai, a Senior Software Engineer on Google's TensorFlow team who left the private sector to go do AI research at Stanford. He's the lead maintainer of the open source HELM project, where he benchmarks the performance of Large Language Models. We talk about: - Open Source VS Open Weights in LLMs - The Ragged Frontier of LLM use cases - AI impact on jobs and our predictions - What to learn so you can stay above the waterline Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? I put the entire cover song at the end of the podcast if you want to listen to it, and you can watch me play all the instruments on the YouTube version of this episode. 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 Links we talk about during our conversation: - Yifan's personal webpage: yifanmai.com  - HELM Leaderboards: https://crfm.stanford.edu/helm/  - HELM GitHub Repository: https://github.com/stanford-crfm/helm  - Stanford HAI Blog: https://crfm.stanford.edu/helm/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Adam Stachoviac and Jerod Santo co-hosts of The Changelog – the longest-running software podcast in world. They interview devs about Open Source projects, and they also have a weekly news episode that I always listen to. 5 years ago, Quincy interviewed them for their 10th anniversary episode, and now he's back catching up on what they've been doing for the past 5 years. We talk about: - How open source is changing - Open data and open LLM models - Self-reliance and self-hosted infrastructure - The business of running a developer community 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 Links we talk about during our conversation: - Honeypot episode Adam mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/557 - Steve Yegge episodes Quincy mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/549 - Open Source Civilization episode Jerod mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/428