The freeCodeCamp Podcast 40853

In this special crossover episode, we celebrate 10 years of The Changelog. It's 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 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 Stakoviak founded The Changelog exactly 10 years ago. And Jerod Santo ed 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 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 Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamstac Follow Jerod on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jerodsanto And Quincy is: https://twitter.com/ossia

Ep. 84: From photography student to successful freelancer and content creator with CoderCoder

Ep. 83: From high school english teacher to software engineer at a machine learning company

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

Ep. 81: How Ruben Harris Used the Power of Stories to Break Into Startups

Ep. 80: How to get a job, stay focused, and create quality content - advice from a senior software engineer

Ep. 79: How to design tech event experiences so everybody wins

In this week's podcast episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Harry Wolff, an engineering manager at MongoDB in New York City. Harry has been in the world of tech for over a decade, holding jobs in various startups before ending up at Mongo. They discuss his journey to his current managerial role, what it's like to work at Mongo, how to start a meetup, and dos and don't for migrating from legacy codebases. Harry started his tech career working for startups. He liked the excitement, he liked learning new things, and he liked showing off his skills. After working for a few startups, he stumbled upon a position at MongoDB. One short week after beginning the interview process, he was in. The decision to leave his previous job was easier than he expected, and he reflected on the reasons he made the change: "For me, it was a matter of taking what I could from my job at the time, but knowing when it was time to move on. One of the ways you know it's time to leave is when the company's getting more out of you than you're getting out of the company." Once Harry was settled in at Mongo, he got right to work. After a couple years as an engineer working on various projects, he achieved one of his major goals and became a manager. Harry and I discussed his relatively new position in detail, and while he's still figuring things out, he has some valuable insights into his transition. "One of the most difficult things about being a manager is that there's no easy way to evaluate the success of your day. There are no milestones to say you've accomplished a lot. You might have a eureka! moment where you figure something out, but you're definitely living in the grey a lot more. Because it's people - they change by the day and hour and minute." But one of the best things for Harry is how much he gets to learn - constantly, from many different people, and about many different things. In addition to reading about new programming languages, discussing what's new in the JavaScript ecosystem in his podcast, and making every effort to stay on top of new tech, Harry has learned more nuanced skills as well. "One hard skill I needed to learn was being assertive and truthful when I needed to be. Most humans prefer that uncomfortable situations just resolve themselves...but if you wait six months [to deal with something], it becomes a dealbreaker." In addition to managing his team, working on his podcast, YouTube channel, and blog, and reading programming handbooks for fun, Harry has been working to update MongoDB's tech stack and move away from their legacy codebase. In the process, he's developed some insights into such migrations. "You have to have a good reason for doing it. And part of this is scolding my former self who would say 'yeah, just do it!' But having learned more, you need to have a good reason. For us, it's more maintainable, less error-prone, and better for recruiting." "But don't rewrite everything - that's seldom the right answer. Occasionally there are exceptions, but they're exceptions." When Harry isn't working or creating content, he hangs out with his wife and new son in New York. He encourages people getting into tech to keep at it and not get discouraged.        "Never give up. Just keep hustling. Take with a grain of salt the            you get from companies and have confidence in what            you do and don't know. And stay humble. It's hard but you have          to just want it and keep hustling and stay curious." Find Harry on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hswolff Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn

Ep. 77: How a former music teacher taught herself to code and landed a job at GitHub

Ep. 76: How to become a successful freelancer

Ep. 75: How an army vet went from English major to full-stack developer

On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with London-based software engineer Linh about how she left the field of biochemical engineering, taught herself to code, struggled to get her first dev job, and now gets to work at LEGO. Linh moved to England when she was 11 years old. She spoke no English, but quickly learned and settled into her life there. She became fascinated with cosmetics and wanted to learn how to create them, so she decided to study biomedical and biochemical engineering in college - she even got her Master's degree in the subject. But something didn't feel right - she didn't have the ion for it she thought she had. So she looked elsewhere. After briefly considering banking, and teaching for a bit, she stumbled into the world of tech through one of London's many fintech meetups. As she started to learn more and meet more people, she realized she'd found her new ion: coding. So she decided to teach herself to code...and the rest is history. Just kidding - but you'll have to listen to find out what comes next :) In this episode of the podcast, you'll learn all about how Linh taught herself to code, how she persevered through a long job search and got her first (and second and third) dev job, what exciting projects she's working on at LEGO, and how she'd advise anyone wanting to break into tech to go about it. Find Linh on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/pinglinh

Ep. 73: How taking risks catapulted one developer's career forward

Ep. 71: from linguistics grad student to front-end developer

CS50 is the most popular course at Harvard, and hundreds of thousands of people have taken the free online version of the course as well. We recently posted the lectures for the course on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel - including the CS50 game development course - all free and commercial-free. During this interview, David Malan and Colton Ogden talk about how they got into technology. They share tips for how to effectively learn computer science, and some advice for teach and community leaders as well. Colton shares one of his favorite game development hacks, and David tell us the story behind the CS50 catchphrase: "this is CS50" Follow CS50 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cs50 Subscribe to the CS50 podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cs50-podcast/id1459708246 Test out CS50's Integrated Development Environment: https://ide.cs50.io/ And CS50's Sandbox: https://sandbox.cs50.io/ The article Colton mentions about Resident Evil 2 on N64 (PDF): https://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_September_2000.pdf The Steve Ballmer CS50 guest lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lhlKF6MECs And Steve Ballmer's sales pitch of CS50 itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El2mr5aS8y0 Fun fact: Brian Kernighan, whom David mentions as the CS50 teacher who preceded him, is also the co-creator of the C programming language. He's even has his own card in freeCodeCamp Programmer Playing Cards: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-programmer-playing-cards-d3eeeffe9a11/

Ep. 70: How one young developer, masters student, and YouTuber does it all

Ep. 69: from successful plumber to full-time developer

Ep. 68 - From homeschooler to self-taught full stack developer

Ep. 67 - Digital artist, game developer, and entrepreneurial college student

In this episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with developer advocate Alejandra Olvera-Novak about how she broke free from her restrictive cult upbringing, moved to the United States, and taught herself how to code. Alejandra was raised without technology, without formal schooling, and in an extremely conservative environment. When she was in her late teens, she left her village and moved to Florida.  After a couple years of googling everything under the sun to catch up on the world's events, and trying to attend college, she ran out of money. Since she was alone - having cut all ties with her family - she took a leap of faith, moved to Seattle, WA, and started looking for work. She worked odd jobs for a while, but quickly realized she'd need something more to survive and thrive. So she started to learn about HTML and CSS, something she never thought she could do. Fast-forward a couple years later, and she was working her way up to a job at Amazon Web Services. Today, Alejandra works with robots, helps developers be as happy and productive as possible at AWS, and runs the non-profit she founded that teaches women, minorities, and disabled how to code for free. She manages her anxiety and PTSD with the help of a service dog and some really great mentors and friends, and she still can hardly believe she's living her dream. Find Alejandra on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/QuetzalliAle Visit her website here: https://alejandraquetzalli.com/ Check out SheCodesNow, Alejandra's non-profit here: https://twitter.com/shecodesnow Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn