freeCodeCamp Podcast freeCodeCamp.org

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews John Washam, a software engineer at Amazon. John's also creator of one of the most popular open source projects of all time, Coding Interview University.
This is John's first-ever podcast interview, and the first time he's told his story. Interviewing him was an absolute honor.
We talk about:
- How John delivered pizzas to save enough money to buy his first computer in the 90s. "I was tired of being a broke kid."
- John's first career in the US military, where he worked as a translator in South Korea
- How John crammed Computer Science for 8 months and taught himself enough theory and coding skills to get a job in big tech, then published Coding Interview University on GitHub
- What it's like to work as a senior developer at a big tech company, and what you can expect the journey to be like
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1986 rock song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:
- Coding Interview University: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university
- The Starup Next Door, John's blog: https://startupnextdoor.com/ 
- Follow John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnawasham/
- The Talent Code, the book John recommends: https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Daniel Bourke. He's a Machine Learning Engineer and creator of many popular tutorials on YouTube. He's also a frequent freeCodeCamp contributor.
We talk about:
- How as a kid he hacked into his school's network and gave himself good grades, just like the kid from Wargames. (Don't try this at home.)
- What he learned from helping fix 5,000 people's computers
- How Machine Learning actually works. What the AI models are actually doing for you in the background.
- His advice for anyone getting into Machine Learning in 2024, in terms of what to prioritize learning
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2020 song by an Australian musician.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:
Daniel's 26-hour PyTorch course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-pytorch-for-deep-learning-in-day/
Nutrify, Daniel's "pokedex for food". Uses computer vision to map photos of food to nutrition data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jpLqtAWKfo
Daniel's Charles Bukowski-inspired novel "Charlie Walks": https://www.charliewalks.com/
The research website Daniel mentions: https://arxiv.org/
Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrdbourke

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder. She's a software engineer has worked in the field for more than a decade. Interestingly, she studied photography in school and never took a programming class.
We talk about:
- How she and her sister ran a dial-in Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in the pre-web days
- How her first year as a dev she "was just living in abject fear of losing my job."
- How she stayed at her first developer agency job for 7 years, and went from imposter syndrome afflicted newbie to getting promoted
- Her philosophy on creating programming tutorials: "You don't have to be on the cutting edge. I don't operate on the cutting edge."
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1993 rock song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:
Jessica's 7-hour "How to Build a Website" freeCodeCamp course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-simple-website-with-html-css-javascript/
Jessica's coding journey animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA14r2ujQ7s
Kevin Powell, the "King of CSS", who has also shared courses on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/kevin-powell/
Jessica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecodercoder

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Scott Hanselman. Scott's a developer at Microsoft, a prolific teacher, and has hosted the Hanselminutes podcast for nearly two decades.
We talk about:
- How he leads a fully-remote team from his home of Portland, Oregon
- His 11-year journey to getting his degree
- What he learned from teaching programming at community college
- What he's learned about software development from recording 980 podcast interviews across 20 years
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1994 punk song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:
- Scott's Hanselminutes Podcast: https://www.hanselman.com/podcasts
- A personal tour of Lotus Notes founder Ray Ozzie's computer artifacts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4awQH6WhP4
- Scott on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shanselman

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Alison Yoon. She's a Software Engineer who started off in fashion design and taught herself to code using freeCodeCamp.
We talk about:
- What it's like to work in fashion. "You're surrounded by exhausted, unhappy people."
- How she used freeCodeCamp and the 100DaysOfCode challenge to learn to code and start her software development career
- How she learned English and how to work on engineering teams in the UK.
- How she's leading the Korean translation effort for the freeCodeCamp community, with 10,000s of people now reading Korean articles each month
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1985 song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 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:
- freeCodeCamp's Korean edition, including Quincy's "Learn to code and get a developer job" book translated into Korean: https://www.freecodecamp.org/korean/news/learn-to-code-book/
- Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aliyooncreative
- Devil Wears Prada trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOZwUQKu3E

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Adrian Twarog. He's a Software Engineer who started his career by working as the office IT guy at a school and other offices for 10 years. He's since published YouTube courses that millions of people have watched.
We talk about:
- How Adrian built his development skills by volunteering to taking on web design projects at work
- How he started making design tutorials on YouTube and published 300 in a single year
- How he was early to the AI engineering craze and published GPT tutorials with millions of views
– Adrian's many freeCodeCamp courses, and his gorgeous book on design fundamentals
- Being a dev in Perth, Australia – on the other side of the Earth from Silicon Valley – yet still staying at the forefront of the state of the art
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1995 industrial rock anthem.
Also, I want to thank the 9,771 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:
- Adrian's popular video "Real life RPG to track your life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMn9sxCWN0M
- Adrian's UX course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ui-ux-design-tutorial-from-zero-to-hero-with-wireframe-prototype-figma/
- Merge, Adrian's Discord community for devs: https://www.mergewebdev.com/
- Adrian's design book, Enhance UI: https://enhanceui.com/