The freeCodeCamp Podcast

Today Quincy Larson interviews Alison Co and Cindy Cui, two university students who won the NW Hacks hackathon with their tool that helps people who are losing their vision learn to read Braille. He met them when GitHub invited them to their big San Francisco conference, GitHub Universe to present their project.

Alison Co is a software engineer who's graduating Fall 2026. She's among the prestigious Major League Hacking Top 50 hack...

Dr. David J. Malan teaches computer science at Harvard. Over the past decade, millions of people have taken his CS50 course both in person and online. He joins us to talk about:

1. Why he still recommends learning the C programming language in 2026
2. How he intentionally nerfs hist student's coding editors and LLMs to help them learn fundamentals faster
3. His vision for self-paced learning, and how it improves on traditional univ...

Abbey Perini taught herself programming at age 27 while working as an admin at an engineering recruitment agency. She has worked extensively with large legacy codebases and taught best practices to developers internationally.

We talk about:
- How to hit the ground running with a large legacy codebase
- How to get employers to remember you and actually respond to you
- How she adapted to her ADHD diagnosis and stays focused and ship...

Patrick Hartley is a self-taught developer with nearly a decade of software engineering experience. When he was 21 he had to dropped out of college to provide for his family. He taught himself programming while working at a thrift store.

After building his own apps and freelancing, he became the founding engineer at startup that got acquired, and has since worked as a dev at other tech companies. A few months ago he turned down an ...

Eric Carlson is a self-taught software engineer at Cisco. In his early 20s, he worked his way up to manager at the busiest Dominos Pizza in Canada. He eventually went to college and studied liberal arts, then worked as a teacher for two decades before teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp. 

He got his first developer job at age 45 by using his programming skills to pivot into a more technical role within a big telecom com...

Kaleb Garner is a software engineer working at a medical technology app company. He got a scholarship to play baseball at a state university, but a serious knee injury ended his career and he dropped out.

After moving back in with his parents and working at an optometry office, he decided to teach himself programming. He used freeCodeCamp and 100Devs to learn for free, and got his first front end developer job when he was only 19. ...

Evan You is the creator of the popular Vue JavaScript library for front end development and the Vite JavaScript build tool that a lot of devs use as a boilerplate for their new projects. He's a self-taught developer based in Singapore.

He shares tips for:
- Getting involved in open source
- Leading open source projects and attracting sponsors
- And how to use AI as a thinking assistant rather than just as a coding assistant

We also...

He's a self-taught software engineer who got his first developer job at age 43. He spent decades working in manufacturing while raising his kids, before using freeCodeCamp to learn programming. He was able to translate his JavaScript skills into working on enterprise Java apps, and now works at a semiconductor company.

We talk about:

• What working 12 hour manufacturing shifts is really like
• Why he preferred freeCodeCamp's free ...

Tom Mondloch quit programming after he finished community college. After a few years of odd jobs, he decided to get back into programming and discovered freeCodeCamp. 

He was just learning his own way, and didn't think freeCodeCamp's linear curriculum would be worth his time. But he stuck with it, got good, and ultimately started contributing to our open source project.

He's since joined freeCodeCamp's staff and archetected freeCod...

On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast we're talking with software engineer Ihechikara Abba, who has a chess ELO rating of 2285, putting him among top competitive chess players. We just published his freeCodeCamp course on chess end games, and an accompanying handbook.

We talk about: how learning chess can make you a better developer tips for getting into embedded systems development with Arduino how contribu...

For this week's interview, we've got a special treat. I'm talking with two legends in the self-taught developer community.

Danny Thompson worked for 10 years at a Tennessee gas station, frying chicken for people to eat, sometimes working 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 hi...

For this week's interview, I'm talking with Ania Kubów. She's a software engineer and prolific programming teacher on YouTube.

She shares tips for:
- Getting into game development and using JavaScript and browser games as an entry point
- How to keep your focus in an increasingly distracting world
- How AI tools are a jack hammer and you usually just need a regular hammer
- What she's learned from hanging out with Chinese developer...

For this week's interview, I'm talking with Ankur Tyagi. He's a software engineer who's worked at multinational companies like Volvo, Barclays, and Accenture. He grew up in Pune, India and now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Ankur is a prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp's open source learning resources. He also runs DevTools Academy, where he blogs about emerging developer tools.

He shares tips for:
- How he uses AI tools to get mor...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emmett Naughton. He worked as hospital janitor for years while teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp. He's founder of Coder Dads, a chat community where dads encourage one another.

We talk about:
- Making ends meet while raising a family
- Recovering from getting laid off twice in the same year
- Emmet's journe...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dominick Monaco. He dropped out college to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile backpacking route across the US. After working in nature conservation for 3 years, he taught himself how to program and now works as a developer.

We talk about:
- Life working as a Yogi Bear-style forest ranger in training
- Close brushes...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Edidiong Asikpo. Didi is a software engineer. She grew up in Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria and the biggest tech hub in Africa.

Didi got into medical school. But while waiting for her studies to start, she started studying computer science and got really into it. She graduated with a CS degree and has worked in tech ...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dilip Krishnamoorthi. He's a software engineer working at Sony, building user interfaces for Playstation game consoles where he's been for 10 years.

We talk about:
- How he dropped out of a traditional Indian university and used an inexpensive distance learning program to finish his engineering degree for less than US $1...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Nick Taylor. He's a software engineer from Montreal and a prolific open source contributor.

We talk about:
- Why trying to build your own tooling will ultimately limit your app development
- Tips for getting started contributing to open source
- AI and the changing nature of working in tech
- Tips for leveraging librarie...

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Namanh Kapur. He's a senior software engineer at LinkedIn. He also creates YouTube videos to help devolopers with their careers.

We talk about:
- Tips for getting hired in the post-Leetcode world
- Tips for cold-DM'ing recruiters and for guessing their email addresses
- Why AI tools are going to lead to developers doing ...