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⚙️ Technology is not a distraction—it's a powerful tool when used with intention. By aligning tech use with our kids' interests, we're unlocking their potential, preparing them for the future, and making learning something they actually look forward to.
In this episode, Andrew Brown, founder of Exam Pro, joins the podcast to discuss his background in educational technology and his current endeavors in teaching tech certifications and coding boot camps. Andrew shares his excitement about generative AI and how developers can stay updated with rapidly evolving innovations like Deepseek and the Open Platform for Enterprise AI (OPEA), the importance of understanding foundational concepts, and the role of open models in democratizing AI technology. The conversation also covers the relevance of deploying custom models, integrating reliable educational strategies, and ensuring developers have the knowledge to use AI applications effectively. Andrew shares insights on his courses and offers practical advice for developers keen on diving into generative AI. 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:19 Andrew Brown's Background and Current Work 01:10 Exciting Trends in Tech Education 02:20 Deep Dive into Generative AI 05:23 DeepSeek and AI Model Costs 07:44 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Development 09:22 Open Source AI and Developer Training 11:00 Practical Advice for Aspiring Developers 13:00 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Development 18:34 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Resources: FREE GenAI Boot Camp Exam Pro Resources on GitHub Andrew on GitHub Guest: Andrew Brown is the founder of Exam Pro where he creates training materials for developers. He also creates free cloud certification courses for freeCodeCamp.
At the tail end of 2019, we got together with Quincy Larson to celebrate ten years of Changelog & five years of freeCodeCamp by recording back-to-back episodes on each other's pods. Can you believe it's now five years later and we're all still here doing our thing?! Let's learn what Quincy and the amazing community at freeCodeCamp have been up to!
At the tail end of 2019, we got together with Quincy Larson to celebrate ten years of Changelog & five years of freeCodeCamp by recording back-to-back episodes on each other's pods. Can you believe it's now five years later and we're all still here doing our thing?! Let's learn what Quincy and the amazing community at freeCodeCamp have been up to!
En este episodio, FreeCodeCamp entrevista a Fernando Herrera. Conversamos sobre mi experiencia con la plataforma y su impacto en la enseñanza de la programación. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fernando-her85/support
Ever wondered how to stand out in the crowded tech job market? In this episode of the Test Automation Experience, Beau Carnes, Teacher and Software Developer from freeCodeCamp, shares his top strategies for becoming an in-demand developer.As we dive into his journey of becoming a successful software developer, Beau shares invaluable advice on overcoming common fears, the importance of persistence, and practical steps to build a standout resume. Learn how creating content, engaging with the community, and leveraging platforms like freeCodeCamp and YouTube can accelerate your career. Whether you're a beginner coder or looking to advance in the tech industry, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you achieve your goals.❓What did you think of the show? Leave your anonymous feedback:https://forms.gle/Df5sDABiNMQn4YSj7CONNECT WITH BEAU CARNES
Meet Kevin Tanzyl! Originally from New Zealand, Kevin moved to Japan to become an English teacher. But after a while, he felt like he hit a plateau. Kevin then tried coding, and after a sting in the infamous tutorial hell, he discovered Scrimba. While learning to code, he made a React app for English teachers, which is still used in Japanese schools! This game-changing portfolio project for Kevin caught the eye of employers and recruiters alike. Within a couple of months, Kevin got his first developer job, but several months later, he realized that it wasn't a good fit after all. In this episode, you'll find out all about Kevin's career change, learning path, and hurdles along the way. You'll learn how to pick your portfolio projects and why you should focus on basic programming principles while maintaining a technology-agnostic approach. Kevin also shares his approach to dealing with stubborn bugs, why "no pain, no gain" applies to coding, and how learning to code compares to learning a new language. Plus, how's the work culture in Japan different from the Western one?
Meet Alex Kallaway
Meet Amy Posten
Kedasha Kerr, a GitHub Developer Advocate, shares her non-traditional path into the world of coding, inspired by a FreeCodeCamp post on Instagram. Kadesha shares her insights on the importance of empathy in the tech sector as well as tips for beginners starting with GitHub. She emphasizes the potential of tools such as GitHub Actions in maximizing efficiency and encourages more women to get into coding. The conversation touches on the role of a developer advocate at GitHub and provides tips on optimizing one's GitHub profile as a working resume. Finally, Kadesha speaks about her excitement about engaging beginners in open source development. 00:00 Introduction and Personal Backgrounds 00:35 Journey into Coding and Developer Advocacy 02:01 The Importance of Coding and Non-Technical Backgrounds 02:53 Empathy and Impact in Tech 04:40 Advice for Aspiring Developers 07:49 Exploring GitHub Features and Tools 17:43 The Role of GitHub in Developer Identity 21:42 Excitement for Open Source and Final Thoughts Resources: There's an Action for that! Exploring the Possibilities of GitHub Actions Guest: Kedasha Kerr is a Developer Advocate at GitHub where she enjoys sharing the lessons she's learned from her time as an engineer and from her day job talking with other engineers at GitHub and in the wider developer community. Prior to her transition to the world of tech, she worked as a social worker in various government agencies. She finds joy in helping others learn about the tech industry and loves sharing her experience as a software developer. When she's not building software, you can find her in the kitchen cooking up her favorite Jamaican dishes. You can find her on Instagram & Tiktok at @itsthatladydev
In this episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith and Mallory tackle the topic of professional development in the AI era. They emphasize the importance of continuous learning and adapting skills due to AI's rapid evolution. The discussion also covers how HR should handle these changes, highlighting the need for transparency and strategic planning to integrate AI and address employee concerns. This episode offers valuable insights for anyone interested in understanding professional development's changing landscape due to AI advancements.Let us know what you think about the podcast. Drop your questions or comments in the Sidecar community: https://community.sidecarglobal.com/c/sidecar-sync/ Join the AI Bootcamp for Associations: https://sidecarglobal.com/bootcamp Download Ascend: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations: https://sidecarglobal.com/AI Join the CEO AI Mastermind Group: https://sidecarglobal.com/association-ceo-mastermind-2024/ Thanks to this episode's sponsors! AI Bootcamp for Associations: https://sidecarglobal.com/bootcamp Tools/Experiments mentioned: Free Code Camp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/Crystal Knows: https://www.crystalknows.com/Topics/Resources Mentioned: DISC Personality Test: https://discpersonalitytesting.com/free-disc-test/Social: Follow Sidecar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global Amith Nagarajan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amithnagarajan/ Mallory Mejias: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorymejias/
Quincy Larson, the teacher who founded freeCodeCamp.org, shares his inspiring journey of creating one of the most beloved learn-to-code resources. In this episode, he discusses why he launched freeCodeCamp, the importance of making coding accessible to all, and how it will forever remain free. Quincy also dives into the exciting new C# Certification program in partnership with Microsoft and freeCodeCamp, empowering learners to master this powerful language and build their tech careers.https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/foundational-c-sharp-with-microsoft/
In this episode your two favorite frontenders cover "How to Ask Good Technical Questions" from the excellent FreeCodeCamp blog. Make no mistake - asking good questions is a critical skill to develop in your engineering career. We delve into strategies and personal experiences around how to best frame technical questions to maximize your chance at a productive answer (and also not annoy everyone you ask).
In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Victor Chukwudolue and Matthew Attalah of Step Labs.Matthew, with a background in design, shares how Step Labs started unexpectedly during his final year at university when he took on a project that eventually led to the establishment of the business. Victor, more focused on tech, shares his journey into web development, starting with FreeCodeCamp and eventually specializing in Webflow and Shopify.Matthew and Victor discuss their partnership, highlighting how they complement each other's skills. Matthew discusses the strategy of building goodwill and securing referrals for web and web app contracts, while Victor shares insights into identifying ideal Webflow clients based on his early experiences and connections within his network. For the sales strategies and the challenges associated with being the face of the business, Matt emphasizes the significance of connecting with clients on a personal level during sales calls while Victor acknowledges his continuous effort to improve sales skills and stresses the importance of confidence in service delivery for making sales more natural.Get to know more about Matthew and Victor in another enriching episode of The First Customer!Guest Info:Step Labswww.steplabs.xyzVictor Chukwudolue's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/victorchuk/Matthew Attalah's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-attalah/Connect with Jay on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/The First Customer Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcastThe First Customer podcast websitehttps://www.firstcustomerpodcast.comFollow The First Customer on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/
In this week's episode, Saron chats with Beau Carnes, Director of Technology Education at freeCodeCamp. Beau shares insights into his career trajectory, which began in television and digital media production. After gaining initial experience in this industry, he transitioned to work in education as a teacher. Beau speaks on his experiences within both these professions and speaks on his decision to venture into technology, establishing himself as a proficient software developer. During this conversation, Beau shares his reasoning for getting three degrees, finding the motivation to learn to code while balancing the demands of a full-time job, and sending out cold emails for his first job in tech. Show Links Code Comments (sponsor) IRL (sponsor) FAANG Beau's GitHub Beau's Twitter FreeCodeCamp JavaScript
Join hosts Bekah and Dan as they engage in a captivating conversation with Jessica Wilkins, a prominent figure from freeCodeCamp. In this episode, Jessica shares her invaluable insights on nurturing and developing relationships within the open source community. Delve into the nuances of effective collaboration with maintainers, understand the significance of embracing non-traditional skillsets, and discover the pathways to flourish as a contributor. Jessica's experiences with freeCodeCamp provide a unique perspective on the human dynamics and interpersonal relationships that form the backbone of successful open source projects.Episode Sponsor!We're grateful to be sponorsored by LevelUP Financial Planning, who understands the importance of finding balance between having an awesome life today, and being confident and excited about your future possibilities. If you want to take your financial confidence to the next level, check out levelupfinancialplanning.com.About JessicaJessica Wilkins is a self taught developer and technical writer from Los Angeles, California.In her previous career, she was a professional oboist, educator and owner of JDW Sheet Music.Jessica's interest in programming came during the pandemic when she wanted to build the Black Excellence Music Project which celebrates black artists from the jazz and classical fields.She now works for freeCodeCamp on the curriculum team.@jdwilkin4 on GitHub@codergirl1991 on Twitter@jessica-wilkins-developer on LinkedInSponsor Virtual Coffee! Your support is incredibly valuable to us. Direct financial support will help us to continue serving the Virtual Coffee community. Please visit our sponsorship page on GitHub for more information - you can even sponsor an episode of the podcast! Virtual Coffee: Virtual Coffee: virtualcoffee.io Podcast Contact: podcast@virtualcoffee.io Bekah: dev.to/bekahhw, Twitter: https://twitter.com/bekahhw, Instagram: bekahhw Dan: dtott.com, Twitter: @danieltott
We are thrilled to announce the third session of our new Incubator Program. If you have a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply to our eight-week program. We'll help you validate your market opportunity, experiment with messaging and product ideas, and move forward with confidence toward an MVP. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator. We look forward to seeing your application in our inbox! Quincy Larson is the founder of freeCodeCamp.org, which helps people learn to code for free by creating thousands of videos, articles, and interactive coding lessons–all freely available to the public. Quincy shares his journey from transitioning from teaching into software development, how freeCodeCamp was born out of his desire to make educational systems more efficient through coding, and discusses the early challenges of bootstrapping the platform, and how it has now grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Quincy and hosts Victoria and Will, discuss the platform's technical architecture, especially their global server distribution and decision to rely on volunteer-led translation efforts rather than machines to ensure both the quality and human touch of their educational content. He also talks about the state of free and low-cost degree programs, the student loan crisis, and the ongoing debate between traditional computer science degrees and coding bootcamps. Free Code Campi (https://www.freecodecamp.org/) Follow Free Code Camp on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/school/free-code-camp/) or X (https://twitter.com/freeCodeCamp). Follow Quincy Larson on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/quincylarson/) or X (https://twitter.com/ossia). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robot Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Quincy Larson, Host of the freeCodeCamp Podcast, Teacher, and Founder of freecodecamp.org, a community of people around the world who are learning to code together. Quincy, thank you for joining us. QUINCY: Yeah, thanks for having me, Will and Victoria. VICTORIA: Yeah, thank you for being here. So, I understand that you made a big shift personally for yourself from California to Texas. How has that been for your family and for, you know, as a founder who is running a nonprofit? QUINCY: Yeah, things are going great. It was a big move. We had some kids, and it was difficult to find, like, a good place to live in California that didn't cost, like, millions of dollars [laughter]. And so, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were living in East Bay. I grew up here in Texas and Oklahoma. And I was like, well, maybe we could go back to the southwest, and so we did that. And we were able to come back and comfortably purchase a home here in Plano, Texas. We were able to find one that was, like, really close to a really good public school system. And so, every morning, I'm able to walk my kids to school. And I'd say that Texas has been a great change from California, where I lived for seven or eight years over there. And I love California. Texas has a lot of great things about it, too. It is a little bit hotter than California. It doesn't quite have California's Mediterranean climate, but it's been great here. I like it. And I would say if people are thinking about moving to Texas from California, there are definitely some really good spots of Texas that I think they'll feel really comfortable in. WILL: That's awesome, yeah. I'm originally from Louisiana. So, you're bringing back, like, memories of me growing up, always going to Texas and stuff. And I know exactly where Plano is, so that's amazing. How has it been with your kids? Because we were talking, and you said your kid recently started school. How's that been? QUINCY: Yeah, so my daughter started school a couple of years ago, and she just turned eight. And my son he's turning six this weekend. He just started kindergarten. We were having him take classes at the YMCA some pre-school. And he went from doing that for the first few hours of the day, and then we'd pick him up and bring him home and eat lunch with him and everything. And now he's got to go to school from, like, 7:00 a.m. to, like, 3:00 p.m. And he's been freaking out, like, "Why is school so long? Oh my goodness, I'm so tired all the time," [laughs]. So, he didn't realize that school would be as involved a process. He was all excited. But now he's complaining about, like, just the sheer length of school. But meanwhile, my wife and I we're just, like, celebrating because we actually have some time around the house where we can get work done without having kids running around causing chaos [laughs]. So yeah, I think he's adapting. He's making friends. We're doing playdates and stuff, and he's having fun. It's just a transition, you know. But it is nice because before, I would walk my daughter to school, and that was a very quick, 10-minute round trip, and then I'd walk my son to school. And that was, like, an hour round trip because we walked all the way to the YMCA. And I would do that to kind of toughen him up and get him walking a lot. It was a huge chunk of time. And now I can just grab both, one [inaudible 4:04] hand in each hand, and walk them to school, and drop them off, and be done with it and get back to work. So, it's definitely nice having both at the same school. VICTORIA: I love the work-life balance and that you were able to find and live somewhere that's affordable and has enough space for your family. And I wonder if we can draw a connection there between achieving that kind of lifestyle and learning to code, and what the mission of freeCodeCamp is for you, and what that means to people and changing careers. QUINCY: Absolutely. So, my background is in teaching. And I was a teacher and a school director at schools here in the U.S. and over in China. And that involved me being on campus, like working directly with my admin staff, with my instructional staff, and working directly with students. So, working remotely was kind of, like, a foreign concept way back in, like, 2010 or so 2011 when I started my transition into working as a software developer. But being able to work remotely has been a real game changer for me. And also, you can imagine, like, being a developer, you can command much larger compensation, and you have a lot more career options than being a teacher or a school director. So, it's given me a lot of agency in what I wanted to do. Even before, you know, starting freeCodeCamp, when I was working as a software developer and doing freelance work and stuff, I was able to do everything remotely. And that just gave me a ton of flexibility. So, the way that I learned to code personally was I wanted to help our school be more efficient. A lot of our teachers, a lot of our admin they were spending all day kind of chained to their desk entering information into computers for compliance reasons, to be able to produce great reports, to be able to produce attendance reports, immigration documents, all those things. And I just thought, like, is there a way that maybe I could automate some of this? And I didn't know anything about programming. I was about 31 years old. I was just sitting at my desk, and I just started kind of, like, Googling around and learning some very basic programming. And with that, over the course of a few months, I was really able to transform how the school ran. And we, like, won an award. And, like, a whole bunch of the students were, like, having a great time because they were spending so much more time with their teachers. And they were like, "Hey..." like, telling all their friends and family to transfer into the school. So, it was a massive success. And I thought, wow, if one person who doesn't even really know that much about programming can effect such a change with just a little bit of programming skills, imagine what I could do if I actually learned to code properly, so [chuckles] I did that. I spent about nine months going to hackathons every weekend, and reading a lot of books, and using a lot of open courses online, like from MIT, from Stanford, and I kind of taught myself to code for free. And then, I was able to get a job as a developer at a mid-size tech startup in California. And from there, I just learned more and more, and it was amazing. And it was an amazing transformation for me personally. And I thought, well, I want to help other people be able to do this because I know so many people out there would like to be working in a field where they have more conversation, a higher degree of control. They get to do creative work instead of, you know, tedious work. As a developer, you're constantly doing new stuff because code is infinitely reproducible. So, you could always just go back to code you've previously written if you needed to solve the same problem again. So, you're always in this kind of learning mindset. You're always in this problem-solving mindset. And it's really thrilling. It's just great, impactful work. So, I wanted to help more people be able to do that, hence starting a bunch of different projects that people didn't care about and then eventually starting a project that people did care about, which is freeCodeCamp. And since then, just kind of leading this project in trying to help as many people as possible learn to code. WILL: So, I was looking at your website. And I didn't even realize this until I was doing more research for the podcast, but you have over 10,000 tutorials, and they're in different categories. I saw you just recently released one on finance, which I actually bookmarked it because I'm going to go through it and look at it. You help more than a million people every day. So, how was it when you first started out? Like, how was, I guess, you could say, the grind? How was it in those early days? QUINCY: I'm a big advocate of, you know, for work-life balance, but, like, I kind of, like, exclude founders from that. I really do think that if you're trying to get something started, you're going to have to work really hard and probably way beyond what would be reasonable for a person who's getting a salary or working at an existing company if you're trying to get things started. So, I mean, it was, like, 100-hour weeks, maybe 120 some weeks [laughs]. I would sleep and just wake up and get to my desk and try to, like, put out fires, fix the server, improve the codebase, respond to learners in the community who had feedback, deal with support issues. Like, I was basically doing everything myself. And gradually, we were able to, like, build out the team over a long period of time. But really, the first few years was me self-financing everything with just my teacher savings. I spent, like, $150,000 of my own money just trying to keep freeCodeCamp going. For the first couple of years, we got tax-exempt status from the IRS. When that finally happened, I was like, great, like, let's go out and see if we can get some people to donate. So, we started asking people who were using freeCodeCamp if they'd be willing to donate $3 a month and eventually $5 a month, and we were able to support the organization through that. Really, it's just like a grassroots donor-supported effort. And then, we've been able to get some grants from Linux Foundation, and From Google, from Microsoft, from a whole lot of other big tech companies, and from some other nonprofits in the space. But mostly, it's just been, like, individual donors donating $5. And if you get enough people doing that, you get, like, a budget where you can actually pay for, you know, we have more than 100 servers around the world serving freeCodeCamp in, like, six different languages. We have, you know, all these other, like, initiatives. Like, we've got Code Radio, where you can go listen to Lo-fi while you're coding. And there are servers all over the world. And you can change the bit rate to suit whatever data you have and everything. Like, we wanted to just offer a whole lot of different services. We have mobile apps now. We've got an iOS and an Android app for freeCodeCamp. And then, of course, we've got the podcasts. We've got four podcasts: one in English, which I host, and then we've got one in Spanish, one in Portuguese, and one in Chinese. VICTORIA: Yeah, I absolutely want to ask you more about your podcasts. But first, I wanted to hear–can you tell me a little more about the decision to be 501(c)(3) or a nonprofit status? And were you always firm in that decision? Do people question it? And what was the real reasoning and commitment to that formation? QUINCY: I guess I would consider myself an idealist. Like, I genuinely believe that most educational endeavors should be, you know, nonprofit. They should be driven by either governments or by charities. I'm always kind of skeptical when there's, like, some late-night TV commercial, like, "Viewer, we'll help you get our degree," and it's from, like, a private for-profit university, something like that. So, I was like, in education...and I don't think everything in society needs to be that way, but I do think, like, education and, to an extent, healthcare these should be led by charities. Like, you know, the Red Cross, or, like, Doctors Without Borders, or churches, you know, own many of the universities, many of the hospital systems in the United States. I think that's a good thing. I think it's a very good thing that it's not just, you know, private profit-maximizing, market incentive-bound organizations that are doing all the stuff in education and in healthcare. I wanted to try to create something that, like, a lot of other people would see and say, "Oh wow, this charity can actually survive. It can sustain itself without raising a bunch of VC, without going public," or any of those things that a for-profit entity would do. And, again, I just want to emphasize, like, I don't think that iPhones should be made [chuckles] by nonprofits or anything like that. I'm just saying, like, for the purpose of actually educating people, the incentives are not necessarily aligned when you're trying to get money from...especially when you're talking about people that 60% of people on earth live off less than $10 a day. Those people should be spending their money on food. They should be spending their money on shelter. They should be spending their money on family. They should not be spending money on online courses, in my humble opinion. Like, online courses should be freely available to those people. So, to some extent, freeCodeCamp, we want to make sure that everybody everywhere in the world has access to first-rate learning resources on math, programming, computer science, regardless of their ability to pay. So, that's kind of, like, the ideal logical [inaudible 12:19], I guess, of freeCodeCamp. We kind of live that. Like, we're really serious. We will never pay, well, anything on freeCodeCamp. We won't account email gate anything. We are, I guess, absolutist in the sense that we want all of freeCodeCamp's learning resources to be free for everyone. Because of that, it made sense to like, incorporate as a 501 (c)(3) public charity. And so, we're tax-exempt. And people who donate to freeCodeCamp they can, you know, deduct it from their U.S. taxes. If a large company or even a small startup...we've had lots of startups like New Relic, like Retool, we've had Postman, Hostinger, a whole lot of different startups and mid-sized tech companies, Pulumi, Appsmith, they've all given us these grants that we can use to develop courses. So, we can often develop courses incorporating those resources. But that's tax-exempt, right? They can deduct that from their U.S. taxes. So, it's a big incentive for other people to partner with us and for people to donate funds to us. And it allows us to have the interests aligned in the sense that only people who have, you know, free cash flow or who have disposable income those are the people that are supporting freeCodeCamp. For the people that are, you know, single parents or that are taking care of their aging relatives, or are already working two jobs, or are completely unemployed and don't have any funds to speak of that are using the public library computer to access freeCodeCamp, right? Or using freeCodeCamp on a $50 prepaid phone from Walmart or something like that, right? Like those people can still use freeCodeCamp, and we can have the people who do have resources subsidize everyone else. WILL: Wow. I absolutely love that because...and I wish freeCodeCamp was around whenever I was in, like, high school and, you know, the early 2000s because we just didn't have the resources because I grew up in a small town in Louisiana. And this could have been so beneficial to that community because, like you said, we didn't have the resources–someone to teach coding there. There was no developers around that town that I was in. So, I really appreciate that you're doing this for everyone. And I know for me even...so, when I reached out to you, I did it because I was excited because I've used freeCodeCamp so many times, so many times to learn just in my journey to become a senior developer. Like, freeCodeCamp was one of the resources that I used because, one, it was free. But it wasn't...I think sometimes you can get free resources, and it's not great quality almost. Like, it's almost like you're more confused than before. But with freeCodeCamp, it was very, very amazing quality. And it was very clear on what I was learning. Honestly, thank you for helping me grow as a developer, just, honestly, thank you for that. QUINCY: Absolutely, Will. I feel honored to have helped you. And, yes, we want to help all the kids who are growing up in rural Louisiana or...I'm from, you know, Oklahoma City, not, like, the biggest, most prosperous city in the United States. Like, I want to help all of my friends who growing up who were eating meals provided by the state school system or my older friends who are on disability. Like, I want to make sure that they have resources, too. And in the process of doing that, it's a privilege to also serve all the working software engineers like you out there who just need, like, a reference resource or, like, oh, I've heard about Bun JS or Tailwind CSS. Or something like, I'm going to watch this three-hour course where I'm going to learn how to do Flutter. Like, freeCodeCamp has a 37-hour Flutter course. So, we've got, like, all these courses on using OpenAI APIs and things like that, too, right? So, it's not just for beginners, but we definitely want to, like, first and foremost, we want to serve people who we're kind of, like, the resource of last resort for, if you want to think of it that way. Like, only freeCodeCamp can help these people. Sure, they can probably use some other free courses on YouTube. And there are lots of other blogs that publish good tutorials and stuff. But freeCodeCamp is like an organized effort, specifically to help those people in need. And just kind of a side benefit of it is that you know, more established, experienced devs like you also get kind of, like, some benefit out of it as well. WILL: Whenever you were a developer, and you decided to start freeCodeCamp, how many years of experience did you have? And how did you overcome impostor syndrome, not only as a developer but as a founder? Because I feel like just overcoming it as a developer is hard, but you were also, you know, like you said, you know, handling everything for freeCodeCamp. So, how did you do that? And kind of tell us about that experience. QUINCY: Yeah. So, I didn't really know what I was doing. I think most founders probably don't know what they're doing. And I think that's totally fine because you can learn while you're doing. And we live in the United States, which is a country that kind of rewards experimentation and does not punish failure as much as a lot of other cultures does. Even if you try really hard, you're going to learn a tremendous amount, and you're going to try your next project. And that's what I did. I tried...I launched several educational, like, open learning resource-type projects, and none of them made any dent at all [laughs] in the proverbial universe. Like, nobody cared. Like, I would go and, like, I'd be talking to people. And I'd be explaining, like, "Oh, this solves this problem that you have." And you could kind of tell, like, people would sign in one time just to be polite, but then they'd never sign in again. So, it was very tricky to get traction. And I read a bunch of books. And I went to a lot of founder-focused meetups in San Francisco Bay Area. I had, like, moved out to San Francisco, specifically to try to, like, kind of make up for my deficit, the fact that I didn't know anybody because I was from Oklahoma City. I didn't know anybody in tech. And I didn't have, like, a fancy, you know, pedigree from, like, Harvard, or Wharton, or something like that, right? Like, I went to, like, a state university, and I studied English, right? And [chuckles] so, I didn't even have, like, a CS degree or anything like that. So, I definitely felt like an impostor. I just had to kind of, like, power through that and be okay with that. And it's something a little bit easier for me to do because, you know, I'm a White guy with glasses and a beard. And, like, nobody's walking up saying, "Are you sure you're a developer?" Or like, "Are you in marketing?" You know, like, the typical kind of, like, slight that they may say to somebody who doesn't necessarily look like me. And so I didn't have to deal with any of that nonsense, but there was still a lot of just self-doubt that I had to power through. And I think that was a big advantage for me. It was just, like, I was kind of, like, at war with myself and my own confidence. In fact, I found the software development community, and especially the open-source community, to be incredibly uplifting and empowering. And, like, they want to see you win. They want you to sit down and build a really cool project over the weekend and in the hackathon and present it. And, you know, they want you to learn. They know that you know, everybody is going to learn at a different rate and that a lot of people are going to get discouraged and leave tech and just go back to working in whatever field they were working in before. And that's totally cool. But I do feel that they're there to support you and to encourage you. And there are lots of different events. There are lots of different communities. I recently listened to the founder of Women Who Code, who was on this very podcast [laughs], Giant Robots Smashing Into Giant Robots, the greatest podcast name of all time. And, you know, there are people out there that are working very hard to make it easier for folks to get into tech. I think that that has been a huge part. Even before freeCodeCamp, you know, there were Harvard professors–Stanford professors putting their entire coursework for free online. You could go to, like, different tech events around California, for example, where I was when I was learning to code. And there'd just be tons of people that were eager to, like, learn more about you and to welcome you. And there would be, you know, recruiters that would talk to you and say, "Well, you may not be ready yet, but, like, let's talk in six months," right? And so, there was kind of, like, that spirit of you're going to get there. It's just going to take a lot of time. Nobody was telling me, "Oh, learning to code is easy," [chuckles] because it's not easy. There were lots of people that were, like, "Learning to code is hard. But you've got this. Just stick with it. If I could be of help, let me know," people who would pair program with me to help me, like, improve my chops, people who would volunteer to, like, look at my projects and give design feedback, all those kinds of things. And I think you're going to find all those things on the web. You're going to find those things in the open-source community. freeCodeCamp has a forum where people volunteer their time and energy to help build one another up and help one another get unstuck on whatever projects they're working on, give feedback on projects. And so, I think, to a large extent, the very giving nature, I almost want to say, like, selfless nature, of the global software developer community that is what saved me. And that's what enabled me to transition into this field, even as a teacher in his 30s. VICTORIA: It's interesting you say that. Because I feel as someone who hires engineers and developers, I love people who have teaching backgrounds because it means they're five-star communicators [laughs]. And I think that you know, in your job, when you're pairing with other developers, or you're talking to clients, in our case, that communicating what you're working on and how you're thinking about something is, like, 50% of the job [laughs]. For freeCodeCamp, I saw you have 40,000 people have found jobs after completing courses on there. I hope you feel like you've really, like, established some success here already. But what's on the horizon? What are you looking forward to in the next six months or six years with freeCodeCamp? QUINCY: Yeah, I'll be happy to answer that. But I want to emphasize what you just said: communication is, like, half the job. That's something that thoughtbot has gotten really early on. And I'll tell you that thoughtbot Playbook was incredibly helpful for me as a software developer and also early on for freeCodeCamp's team. And I think a lot of teams make use of that open resource. So, thank you for continuing to maintain that and kind of drive home that communication really is...like, meetings are essential [chuckles]. And it's not always just, like, leave me alone and let me go back to my cubicle and code. You know, I like to quote the old joke that, you know, weeks of coding can save you hours of meetings because I really do believe that communication is core. So, to answer your question about where freeCodeCamp is headed in terms of what kind of impact we'd like to have, I feel like we're just getting started. I feel like pretty much every Fortune 500 company wants to become a tech company in some way or another. Everybody is pushing things to the software layer because software is infinitely reproducible. It's so much easier to maintain software or fix things in production. Like, you realize, oh, there's a big problem. Like, we don't have to recall all the cars back to the dealerships to go and open up the hood and fix this, you know, mechanical defect. If we're controlling all these things at the software layer, right? We can potentially just deploy a fix and tell people like, "Hey, version update [chuckles], you know, download this security patch," or whatever, right? So, there are so many different things that you can do with software. I feel like the potential growth of the field of software and the number of software developers that the world will ultimately need...currently, we've got maybe 30 or 40 million developers on earth that are professional paid-to-code people. But I think that number is going to increase dramatically over the next 50 years or so. And I'll go ahead and address the elephant in the room [laughs] because pretty much everybody asks me this question like, "Don't you think that, like, tools like large language models like GPT-4 and things are going to obviate the need for so many developers?" And I think they're going to make individual developers more productive. But if you think about what code is, it's really extremely explicit directions for how to do something, whether you're using, you know, machine code, or you're using a scripting language like Python, or you're using English, and you're talking directly to the computer like you would on Star Trek. Essentially, you have to have a really deep understanding of the problem. And you need to know exactly what needs to be done in exactly what sequence. You may not need to manipulate bytecode like you would back in the '70s. But you are going to need to understand the fundamental problems, and you're going to need to be able to address it. So, I'm optimistic that the number of developers is going to continue to grow. The developers are going to continue to command more and more, I guess, respect in society. And they're going to continue to have more and more agency in what they want to do with their careers and have more and more options and, ultimately, be able to command higher compensation, be able to work remotely if they'd like. Developers will continue to be able to ascend through corporate hierarchies and become, you know, vice presidents or even executives like the CEO, right? If you look at a lot of the big tech companies, the CEO is a developer. And I think that that will continue. And the computer science degrees will continue to be extremely valuable. So, what is freeCodeCamp working on now that we think will further help people? Well, we're working on a free four-year computer science degree, a Bachelor in computer science, and there's also an associate in mathematics that we're developing. And those are going to be a progression of 40 university-level courses that have labs and have a substantial block of lectures that you'll watch. And then, we'll also have final examinations and everything. And we're developing that curriculum. We've got one of the courses live, and we're developing the second one, and eventually, we'll have all 40. It'll take till the 2030s. But we're going to have those. And then, once we have some longitudinal data about graduates and their success rates and everything, we are going to apply for the accreditation process, and we're going to get accredited as a university, right? Like, you can go through that process. Not a lot of organizations do that; not a lot of new universities are coming about in the 2020s. But it is something that can be done. And we've done a great deal of research, talked to a bunch of accreditors, talked to a bunch of university admins who go through the accreditation process. We think we can do it. So, again, very long-term goal. But when you're a 501(c)(3) public charity, you don't have to worry about freeCodeCamp getting acquired or all the things that would traditionally happen with, like, a for-profit company. You have a lot more leeway to plan really far. And you've got, like, this really broad mandate in terms of what you want to accomplish. And even if, you know, creating a university degree program in the 2030s would not be a profitable endeavor that, like, a rational shareholder value-maximizing corporation would embark upon, it is the sort of project that, you know, a charity like freeCodeCamp could do. So, we're going to do it. MID-ROLL AD: When starting a new project, we understand that you want to make the right choices in technology, features, and investment but that you don't have all year to do extended research. In just a few weeks, thoughtbot's Discovery Sprints deliver a user-centered product journey, a clickable prototype or Proof of Concept, and key market insights from focused user research. We'll help you to identify the primary user flow, decide which framework should be used to bring it to life, and set a firm estimate on future development efforts. Maximize impact and minimize risk with a validated roadmap for your new product. Get started at: tbot.io/sprint. VICTORIA: I think that's great. And, actually, you know, I got my master's in information technology and project management online way back when. So, I really like the availability of modern computer science bachelor's and master's being available at that low price point. And you're able to pursue that with the business structure you put in place. I'm curious to kind of go back to something you said earlier on how widely available it is and how you spread out across all these multiple countries. Were there any technical architecture decisions that you had to make along the way? And how did those decisions end up turning out? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, one of the things we did was we located servers all around the world. We're multi-cloud, and we've got servers in different data centers in, like, Singapore, Europe, Latin America, and we're trying to reduce latency for everybody. Another thing that we've done is, you know, we don't use, like, Google Translate to just translate all our different pages into however many languages are currently available on Google Translate; I think it's, like, more than 100. We actually have a big localization effort that's led primarily by volunteers. We have some staff that oversee some of the translation. And essentially, we have a whole bunch of people working at translate.freecodecamp.org and translating the curriculum, translating the tutorials into major world languages. Most prominently would be Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Ukrainian. Like, all these different world languages, there's, like, a freeCodeCamp version for those, and you can go into the menu, and you can choose it. And it's actually, like, hand-translated by native speakers of that language who are developers. So, that's been another extremely, you know, time-intensive effort by the community. But we believe that, you know, the quality of the translations is really important. And we want that kind of human touch. We don't want kind of weird artifacts and typos that would be associated with machine translation. And we want to make sure that each of the challenges...because they're extremely tersely worded, again, communication is so important. If you go through the freeCodeCamp curriculum, we try to use as few words as absolutely necessary to effectively communicate what the task the learner needs to accomplish is, and we try to, just in time, teach them concepts. We don't want to present them with a big wall of text. Read this 20-page PDF to understand how, you know, CSS, you know, borders work or something like that. No, we're teaching, like, kind of, like, just in time, like, okay, let's write this line of code. Okay, great, the test passed. Let's go to this next one. This test isn't passing. Here is some contextual-specific hints as to why your code is not passing, why you're not able to advance, right? And we do projects [inaudible 30:30] to learn where we break everything down into steps. So, that's a lot of instructions that need to be very carefully translated into these different world languages to truly make freeCodeCamp accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they happen to be fortunate enough to grow up speaking English at a native level, right? I would say that's our main consideration is, like, the localization effort but also just having servers everywhere and doing everything we can to comply with, like, all the different data rules and privacy rules and everything of all these different countries. It's a lot of work, but in my humble opinion, it's worth it. WILL: I had, like, a two-part question because I wanted to loop back around. When you're talking about the free bachelor's program, one, does anything like that exist where you can get a bachelor-level program, and it's free? And then the second part is, how many countries are you in? QUINCY: Yeah, so currently, lots of governments in Europe, for example, will offer free degrees that are kind of subsidized by the state. There may be some other kind of degree equivalent programs that are offered that are subsidized by corporations. For example, if you work at Starbucks, I think you can get a degree from Arizona State University. And that's a great benefit that Starbucks offers to people. Arizona State University, of course, being one of the biggest public universities in the United States in terms of enrollment. As far as free degrees, though, in the United States, there's nothing like that where, like, literally anyone can just go and get a degree for free without needing to enroll, without needing to pay any sort of fees. There are tuition-free programs, but they still charge you fees for, like, taking exams and things like that. What I like to call ultra-low-cost degree providers–there's Western Governors University, and there's University of the People. And both of these are accredited institutions that you can go, and you can get a degree for, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000. And it's a full-blown four-year degree. Now, that is amazing. I applaud those efforts. I've enjoyed talking to the folks at those different schools. I think the next step is to go truly free. There's nothing blocking you at all. You don't have to be banked. You don't have to have a credit card. You don't have to have any money. You can still get this degree. That's what we're chasing. And I think we'll get there, but it's just a lot of work. WILL: So, it's blowing my mind. It's just blowing me away because, like, you know, we talk about the student loan crisis, I would say. The impact if...when—I'm not going to say if—when you do this, the impact that can have on there, have you thought about that? And kind of, if you have, what has been your thoughts around that? QUINCY: Yeah, so there are $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loans in the United States. That's money that individual people, most of whom don't make a ton of money, right? Like, many of those people didn't actually finish the degree that they incurred the debt to pursue. Many of them had to drop out for a variety of different reasons or defer. Maybe they'll eventually finish those degrees. But as you can see from, like, the macroeconomic, educational, like, labor market data, like, having a partial degree doesn't make a big difference in terms of your earning power. You really need to finish the degree to be able to realize the benefits of having spent all that time studying, and a lot of people haven't. So, yes, there are, like, a lot of people out there that went to medical school, for example, and they're working as physicians. And they are going to eventually be able to pay that off because they're doctors, and they're commanding a great compensation, right? And they've got tons of career options. But if you studied English like I did and you incurred a whole lot of student debt, it could take a very long time for you to make enough money as a teacher, or as, like, a grant writer, or working at a newspaper, or something like that. Like, it can take you years to pay it off. And, in the meantime, it's just continuing to accumulate interest in your, you know, you might be a very diligent person who pays their student loan bill every single month, and yet, you could see that amount, the total amount that you owe continuing to grow despite this. That's just the nature of the time value of money and the nature of debt. And I thank my lucky stars that I went to school back in, like, 2000. Like, my tuition was $1,000 a semester, right? I mean, it's incredible. But that was, like, at a state school, like, a public university in the middle of Oklahoma. And it's not, like, a university you've heard of. It's basically, like, the cheapest possible option. I think community colleges can make a huge dent. I always implore people to think more about community colleges. I've talked with so many people on the freeCodeCamp podcast who were able to leverage community colleges and then transition into a, you know, research university, like a state school, and finish up their degree there. But they saved, like, basically half their money because they were paying almost nothing to attend the community college. And in California especially, the community colleges are just ridiculously worth it. Like, you're paying a few hundred dollars a course. I mean, it's just incredible value. So, I think the community college system is going to play a big role. But my hope is that, you know, freeCodeCamp can thrive. And it'll take us years for people to realize because if you go on, like, Google Ads and you try to run a Google Ad for, like, any sort of educational-related topic, anything related to higher education, it's, like, hundreds of dollars per click because there are all these for-profit universities that make a tremendous amount of money from getting people who just came back from serving in the military and getting, like, huge chunks of their GI Bill, or getting, like, all these federal subsidies, any number of things. Or basically just tricking families into paying huge amounts of money when they could have attended a much more sensible public university, you know, a private nonprofit university that doesn't charge an arm and a leg. So, I think that we are going to have an impact. I just want to say that I don't think that this is a panacea. It's going to take many years for freeCodeCamp to be adopted by a whole lot of people. It will take a long time for employers to look at the freeCodeCamp degree and say, "Oh, this is comparable to a computer science degree from..." say, Ohio State, or UT Austin, or something like that, right? Like, it's going to be a long time before we can get that level of buy-in. I don't want anybody listening to say, "Oh, I'd love to get a computer science degree. I'm just going to hold out and get the degree from freeCodeCamp." Like, my humble advice would be: go to a community college, then go to a state school. Get that four-year computer science degree. It is worth its weight in gold. But you don't want to accumulate a lot of debt. Just try to like, minimize your debt in the meantime. And, hopefully, over time, you know, the free model will prove out, and it'll just be a whole bunch of alumni supporting freeCodeCamp. And that's the dream is that, like, you know, Michael Bloomberg gave a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins University, a billion dollars. Like, Johns Hopkins never needs to charge tuition again with a billion dollars. They can just basically operate their institution off the interest from that, right? And lots of institutions...like, Harvard has, I don't know, like, 60-plus billion dollars in their endowment, right? So, the idea would be freeCodeCamp continues to get this, you know, huge alumni network of people who are doing great and who went to freeCodeCamp and who basically donate back in. And then, we can essentially have the deep pockets subsidizing everybody else who's just at the beginning of their careers who don't have a lot of earning power. You know, when I was a teenager, when I was in my 20s, I worked at convenience stores. I worked at Taco Bell. I did all kinds of, like, literally showing up at 6:00 a.m. to mop the grocery store-type jobs, right? And that is not a path to being able to afford an education in 2023. University tuition is out of control. It's, like, ridiculously high. It's grown way faster than inflation for decades. So, what can we do to alleviate that pressure? In my humble opinion, we just need to come up with free options and support ultra-low-cost options that are already out there. VICTORIA: I was going to ask, but you might have already answered this question somewhat. But I get this question a lot for people who are interested in getting into tech, whether they should get a computer science degree or go to a bootcamp. And I think you've mentioned all the positive things about getting a degree. I'm curious if, in your degree program, you would also tailor it more to what people might expect in a modern tech market and industry in their first job. QUINCY: Yeah. So, the way that we're developing our degree program is we essentially did, like, an analysis of the top 20 computer science programs in the United States: Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, all those schools that you would think of as being, like, really good computer science programs. And we basically drew a best-fit line through all their course offerings and looked at all their textbooks and everything that they cover. And, essentially, we're teaching a composite of those top 20 programs. Now, there are some things that, surprisingly, those programs don't offer, such as a course on ethics. It's something like 13% of those degree programs require an ethics course. And I think every developer should take a developer ethics course, or at least some sort of philosophy course to, like, understand what does it mean to be a good person? [laughs] Like, what is, you know, an anti-pattern? What is Blackhat user experiences? [laughs] I'm like, when should I, like, raise my hand during a meeting to say like, "Hey, should we really be doing this?" You know. So, ethics–security courses–I was surprised that not very many of those degree programs offer a course in information security, which I believe should be required. So, I'm kind of editorializing a little bit on top of what the composite says. But I feel very strongly that, you know, our degree program needs to have those courses. But in general, it's just everything that everybody else is teaching. And yes, like, a coding bootcamp...I've written a lot about coding bootcamps. I wrote, like, a Coding Bootcamp Handbook, which you can just Google, like, "Coding bootcamp book" or something like that, probably then you can find it. But, essentially like, those programs are usually private. Even if it's at a big, public university, it's often run by a big, private for-profit bootcamp chain. I don't want to say, like, all bootcamps are a bad deal, but buyer beware [laughs]. Frankly, I don't think that you can learn everything you need to know to be a software engineer within the compressed timelines that a lot of those bootcamps are operating under. There's a reason it takes four years to get a computer science degree because: there's a tremendous amount of math, programming, computer science, engineering knowledge that you need to cultivate. And you can absolutely get a developer job without a computer science degree. I don't have a computer science degree [chuckles], and I worked as a software engineer, right? And I know plenty of people who are doing that that didn't even go to college, right? People who were truckers or people who were doing construction work who just sat down and hit the books really hard and came out the other side being able to work as a software developer. But it is going to be vastly easier for you if you do have a computer science degree. Now, if you're in your 30s, if you've got kids, if you've got a whole lot of other obligations, should you go back to school? Maybe not. And so, it's not cut and dry, like, oh, just drop whatever you're doing and go back to...The situation is going to be nuanced. If you've already got a job working as a developer, should you go back and get a CS degree? Probably not. Maybe you can get your employer to pay for you to go to, like, a CS master's program, for example. There are a lot of really good online master's degree programs. Like, Georgia Tech has a master's in computer science that is very affordable, and it's very good. Georgia Tech is one of the best computer science programs in the United States. So, definitely, like, everybody's situation is going to be different. And there's no blanket advice. I would just be very wary of, like, anybody who's talking to you who wants your money [laughs]. freeCodeCamp will never want your money for anything. Like, we would love to have your donation long after you're a successful developer. You turn around and, like, send the elevator back down by donating to freeCodeCamp. But just be skeptical and, like, do your research and don't buy into, like, the marketing speak about, like, being able to get a job immediately. "Oh, it's easy. Anybody can learn to code." Like, I do believe any sufficiently motivated person can learn to code. But I also believe that it's a process that can take years, especially if you're doing the safe thing and continuing to work your day job while you learn these skills over a much longer period of time. I don't believe learning in a compressed kind of bootcamp...like, if you think about, you know, bootcamp in the military, like, this is, like, you're getting shipped away, and you're doing nothing but, like, learning these skills and everything like that. And I don't think that that's right for programming, personally [laughs]. I think there's a reason why many of these programs have gone from 9 weeks to 12 weeks to 6 months. Some of them might be, like, an entire year now. It's because it's them kind of admitting that, like, oh, there's quite a bit to learn here, and it's going to take some time. And there's diminishing returns to learning a whole bunch of hours in a day. I think you'll make much better gains studying programming 1 hour a day for 365 days than you'll make studying, you know, 8 hours a day for, like, two months or something like that if that makes sense. I'm not sure if the math works out there. But my point is, it's totally fine, and it's actually quite optimal to just work your day job, take care of your kids, spend time with your parents, you know, do all those things, hang out with friends and have a social life, all those things in addition to just having programming be one of those things you're working on in the background with your mornings or your evenings. WILL: Tell us a little bit about your podcast. Yeah, tell us kind of what's the purpose of it and just the history of it. QUINCY: Yeah. Well, I learned from the best. So, I'm a longtime listener of this podcast, of course. My friend, Saron Yitbarek, hosts CodeNewbie, which is an excellent podcast, the Changelog, which is an open-source podcast. I've had a great time interviewing the Changelog hosts and being on their show several times. So, I basically just learned as much as I could, and then I just went out and started interviewing people. And so, I've interviewed a lot of devs. I've interviewed people that are, like, learning to code driving Uber. I've interviewed the founder of Stack Overflow [chuckles], Jeff Atwood. I'm going to interview the founder of Trello in a few weeks when I'm back out in New York City. And I do my interviews in person. I just have my mobile studio. When I'm in San Francisco–when I'm in New York, I just go around and do a bunch of interviews and kind of bank them, and then I edit them myself and publish them. And the goal is just to give people exposure to developers. What are developers thinking? What are developers talking about? What do developers care about? And I try to hit, like, a very broad range of developers, try to talk to as many women as possible and, you know, striving for, like, 50% representation or better on the podcast. And I talk to a lot of people from different countries, although that's a little harder to do when you're recording in person. I may break down and do some over Zencastr, which is a tool we used in the past. I just like the spontaneity and the fun of meeting with people in person. But yeah, it's just like, if you are looking for, like, long-form, some of these are, like, two-and-a-half-hour long discussions, where we really delve into people's backstory and, like, what inspired them to become a developer, what they're learning along the way, how they feel about different aspects of software development. Like, for example, earlier, Will, you mentioned impostor syndrome, which is something I think virtually everybody struggles with in some capacity, you know, the freeCodeCamp podcast, tune in [chuckles] and subscribe. And if you have any feedback for me, I'd love to hear it. I'm still learning. I'm doing my best as a podcast host. And I'm constantly learning about tech as it evolves, as new tools come out, as new practices are pioneered. There's entire new technologies, like large language models, that actually work. And, I mean, we've had those since, like, the '60s, like, language models and stuff, but, like, only recently have they become incredibly impressive, exploring these tools and exploring a lot of the people behind them. VICTORIA: Okay, great. Do you have any questions for me or Will? QUINCY: Yeah. What inspired you all to get involved in tech, in...I don't know if somebody...did somebody at thoughtbot actually approach you and say, "Hey, we want you to run this"? Or was it something where like, "I'd love to run this"? Like, because podcasting is not easy. You're putting yourself out there. You're saying things that are recorded forever [laughs]. And so, if you say something really naive or silly or something like that, that's kind of always there, right? It takes a certain amount of bravery to do this. What got you into hosting this podcast? VICTORIA: For me, I mean, if I go way back before getting into tech, my mom she got her undergraduate degree in horticulture to become a florist, and then realized she couldn't make any money off that and went back to school for computer science. And so, she taught me how to use a computer really early on. And when I was in school, I had started in architecture, and then I wanted to change into business intelligence. But I didn't want to apply to the business school, so I got a degree in economics and a job at the IT help desk. And then from there, I was able to kind of transition into tech as a teacher, which was oddly enough...my first job in tech was training a 400-person program how to do, like, version management, and peer reviews [laughs], and timekeeping. And the reason I got the job is a friend from rock climbing introduced me, and he's like, they're like, "Oh, well, you train people how to rock climb. You can train people how to, like, do this stuff." [laughs] I'm like, oh, okay, that sounds great. But anyways, I worked my way up into project management and ended up getting my masters in IT. And when I came to thoughtbot, I had just moved to California, and I wanted to rebuild my network. I had a big network in D.C., organizing meetups and DevOps D.C., Women Who Code, teaching people, and communicating. And I ran a very small podcast there with a friend. So, when I joined thoughtbot, a podcast was a great way to just meet different people, expand my network, give people something to talk to me about when I go to events [laughs] that's not just, like, let me sell you some DevOps work. For me, it's been really fun to just reach out to people that we admire in the community and hear their story, and a little bit about them, and what advice they have for themselves or for other people. And, usually, that ends up benefiting me as well. So, it's been very fun for me. QUINCY: So, your less conventional path into tech combined with your own experience doing podcasting, it sounds like you were a natural choice for hosting a podcast. VICTORIA: Right. And I think I said before we started the show I didn't realize that it was such a well-loved and long-running podcast [laughs] [inaudible 49:01]. But I think we've really come into our own a little bit with hosting, and it's been super fun to work with Will and Chad on it as well. QUINCY: Awesome. And, Will, what's your story, man? How did you get onto the coveted Giant Robots Smashing into Giant Robots podcast? WILL: I actually went to college for sports medicine, and I was on track to go to med school, but my senior year...which I wish I would have had this conversation with myself a lot earlier, didn't have to do the hard work that I did at undergraduate. But my senior year, I was like, why am I really going to med school? And, honestly, it was more for the money, for the...yeah, more for the money. I just wanted to get paid a lot of money. I was like, yeah, that's not going to sustain me. I need to just pivot. So, I pivoted–started working at some nonprofits. And I ended up losing my job and got another job at Buckle, the clothing store, which was not a great fit for me. It helped me provide, but that's just not who I am. I'm not a fashion icon [laughs]. And then I changed to a travel agency insurance company, which it paid the bills. I wasn't passionate about it at all, and it paid the bills. And I was still struggling from losing my job. It was the first time that I lost my job. And my spouse came to me one day and is like, "All right, we're going to have the serious talk." And we almost flipped roles because that's usually who I am. I'm like, "All right, let's have a real talk. Let's get down to it." But I was just in a bad place. And she was like, "All right, we have to change because we can't keep going down this path." So, she was like, "If you had a choice to do anything, what would you want to do?" And I was like, "Well, probably something with computers and coding because I never had that opportunity when I was growing up because of the small town." And she looked at me, and she's like, "Go sign up right now." And I was like, okay, I'm going to sign up. When you mentioned that you made a transition in your 30s, I was around my 30s when I made the transition into coding. And so, it was a big transition. It was a big pivot for me because I'm having to learn, almost like I'm in college again, which was eight years ago. And so, it was just tough, and it wasn't new. So, that's how I got into coding. How I got on the podcast: I think I was talking to Chad and my direct report. I was just talking to them about challenging myself, and so it was multiple things. But, like, writing blog posts that was actually very challenging to me. I still don't like to write. It's not my favorite thing. Give me math or something like that or science; that's where I feel at home. But whenever, you know, you talk about writing and stuff, I can do it, and I'm decent at it. But it's not something that I feel comfortable in. The same thing with the podcast. The reason why I got on here is because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and I wanted to grow. And I also wanted to get a chance to talk to people who's making a difference–who's impacting the world. So, like, this conversation today is like, yes, this is why I wanted to be a part of this podcast. So yeah, that's how I got started in tech and on the podcast. QUINCY: Awesome, Will. I'm thrilled that you went ahead and persevered and got into tech. It doesn't sound like it was a straight line, and it rarely is for people. But I'm always excited to meet somebody who learned to code in their 30s who stuck with it and is prospering as a result. So, congratulations to you. WILL: Thank you. VICTORIA: I'm still learning. I haven't quite got [inaudible 52:42] "Hello, worlds," multiple times [laughs]. But I don't really code every day for my job. I just kind of need to know what stuff is to be able to talk to people and in that way as a managing director. So, I appreciate Will bringing that backstory to this episode in particular. What else? Any other final takeaway that you'd like to leave our listeners with? QUINCY: I just want to thank you all for continuing to host this podcast, thoughtbot for operating the excellent Playbook, which, for anybody listening who is unfamiliar with, you should check it out. Again, it's just chock full of institutional wisdom accumulated over the years. And I hope everybody out there who's thinking about taking the plunge and learning coding or software development, or even, like, a semi-technical area of being in the software development process of learning visual design, learning how to do user experience research, any number of the different roles in tech, I hope you'll go for it. And I hope you will be as undaunted as you can. And just know that freeCodeCamp and the freeCodeCamp community we are in your corner. If you need to learn something, there's a very good chance that we have some tutorials written by thoughtful teachers who want people like you to come forward and like, read these resources and use it. There's a saying: like, the thing that programmers want the most is to have their code running in production somewhere. And, as a teacher, the thing you want the most is for you to have students, for you to have learning resources out there that are making a positive difference. So, again, I just count my blessings every day that I'm able to be involved in this community. I hope anyone listening who wants to transition into tech or to become even more technical gets involved in the freeCodeCamp community as well. We welcome you. WILL: Are there any opportunities? I know we talked about donations. So, for one, where can they go if they want to donate? And then also, like, you know, if developers want to get to be a part of the open-source network you have, is that possible? And how can they do that? QUINCY: Absolutely. So, if you want to donate to freeCodeCamp, just go to donate.freecodecamp.org. And you can become, like, a $5 a month donor, if you'd like. If you want to give a larger amount, I've got this article; just Google "How to Donate to freeCodeCamp." And I've written this detailed guide to, like, all the different ways like mailing checks. We had a gentleman who passed away and left a whole lot of money for freeCodeCamp in his will. So, those kinds of legacy gifts are definitely something. We've had people donate stock, like, any number of different things. I will bend over backwards to make sure that we can receive your donation, and we can give you a tax receipt so you can deduct it from your taxes as well if you'd like. And then, for contributing to freeCodeCamp, of course, we're an open-source project, and we welcome your code contributions. We have spent a great deal of time trying to make freeCodeCamp as hospitable as possible for both new developers who want to get involved and more senior developers who just want to do some, like, 20%-time type contributing to open-source projects: contribute.freecodecamp.org. So, again, donate.freecodecamp.org and contribute.freecodecamp.org. Those will take you where you need to go. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Thank you so much again, Quincy, for joining us. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. WILL: And you could find me on Twitter @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Quincy Larson.
Join hosts Bekah and Dan in this episode with Nadia Eghbal's "Working in Public" enthusiasts Jessica Wilkins and Brian Meeker. We discuss the nuances of open source collaboration highlighted in the book, the challenges and rewards of being both a contributor and a maintainer, and the profound impact of individual contributions in the open source community. Dive into the transformative journey of participating in open source and redefining its true meaning with OpenSauced.LinksWorking in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia EghbalVirtual Coffee Book Club DiscussionThe left-pad storyEpisode Sponsor!We're grateful to be sponorsored by LevelUP Financial Planning, who understands the importance of finding balance between having an awesome life today, and being confident and excited about your future possibilities. If you want to take your financial confidence to the next level, check out levelupfinancialplanning.com.About JessicaJessica Wilkins is a self taught developer and technical writer from Los Angeles, California.In her previous career, she was a professional oboist, educator and owner of JDW Sheet Music.Jessica's interest in programming came during the pandemic when she wanted to build the Black Excellence Music Project which celebrates black artists from the jazz and classical fields.She now works for freeCodeCamp on the curriculum team.@jdwilkin4 on GitHub@codergirl1991 on Twitter@jessica-wilkins-developer on LinkedInAbout BrianBrian Meeker is a full stack engineer who occasionally leaves his basement in Indiana. Currently, he works as a Senior Engineer at Online Rewards. He works mostly in Elixir these days, but has a past littered with a wide variety of technologies and platforms. Outside of work, Brian is a devoted father, avid nerd, and lover of metal.brianmeeker.me@CuriousCurmudgeon on GitHub@CuriousCurmudge on Twitter@brianmeeker on LinkedInSponsor Virtual Coffee! Your support is incredibly valuable to us. Direct financial support will help us to continue serving the Virtual Coffee community. Please visit our sponsorship page on GitHub for more information - you can even sponsor an episode of the podcast! Virtual Coffee: Virtual Coffee: virtualcoffee.io Podcast Contact: podcast@virtualcoffee.io Bekah: dev.to/bekahhw, Twitter: https://twitter.com/bekahhw, Instagram: bekahhw Dan: dtott.com, Twitter: @danieltott
Nnenna Ndukwe is a seasoned software developer who profoundly understands the essence of community and its value in shaping one's career journey. In a world often dictated by individual prowess, Nnenna's story is a testament to the power of shared wisdom and the transformative capacity of communal learning in the tech industry. With a passion for continuous growth and a heart to impact others, her story reverberates the truth that one's journey can indeed inspire the journeys of many others.Nnenna placed the start of her journey in a tanning salon, where she spent her breaks and quiet time on Codecademy and FreeCodeCamp. From there, she spoke about her one-way ticket to Boston, how she immersed herself in communities and followed her insatiable curiosity. She talked about her boot camp and how she found a job. She discussed working in the open and how it led to her dev advocacy role.In this episode, Nnenna discusses her journey from curiosity to proficiency in the world of coding and how being part of tech communities played a crucial role in her growth. Her emphasis on skipping lessons that others have already learned, and the value of listening to the stories of others, offers profound insights into learning and career growth. She also touches upon the joy she derives from mentoring and the sense of fulfillment she gets from seeing newcomers progress in their tech careers.If you want to learn more about the influential role of communities in career development and get inspiration from Nnenna's incredible journey, tune in to this episode!Three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:Nnenna's journey into tech is inspiring, and it serves as a reminder that patience, persistence, and curiosity are vital elements to succeeding in coding and programming.Nnenna shares practical insights on the power of community engagement, mentorship, and self-advocacy in tech, which can guide newcomers in navigating their tech careers.The conversation offers concrete advice for overcoming common hurdles such as self-doubt, which could resonate with many individuals at different stages of their tech journey.Support the show
I met up to podcast with quincy in round 2, which has all my personal updates since round 1.https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/90-shawn-swyx-wang-from-dev-to-ai-founder
In this episode of the iOS dev podcast, we spoke with Amr Hossam about being an iOS developer in Egypt, creating content as an iOS developer, and getting his course on freeCodeCamp. Audio Version: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason-dubon YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/3k8egDpi7Ys Amr's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Amrhossam96/ Amr's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amourr96 Amr's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrhossam96/ Amr's Netflix Clone on freeCodeCamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgYDCKqato Follow Jason On IG: https://www.instagram.com/thedubon/ Follow Jason On Twitter: https://twitter.com/JasonDubonYT Follow Jason on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedubon 0:00 Intro 0:50 Vision Pro & WWDC 2023 12:22 Getting Started Creating iOS Dev Content 26:10 Being an iOS Developer in Egypt 31:50 Advice for Aspiring Devs in Egypt 37:10 How Amr got his first iOS Dev Job 41:35 Mechanical Engineering Backstory 43:45 Typical Work Day of an iOS Dev in Egypt 46:20 Freelancing on Upwork 52:18 Current Egyptians Thoughts On Ancient Egypt? 55:15 Best Places to Go In Egypt 56:40 Outro Outro Song: https://soundcloud.com/flvmoveli/imagination?si=c16fa3ede3644a8399f2a3760960bd67&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing #iosdev #swift #egypt
Today, Saron talks with Phoebe Voong-Fadel, a self-taught Frontend Developer at the National Foundation for Educational Research. After having transitioned from a successful 14-year career in Higher Education in 2017, Phoebe made the courageous decision to pursue coding full-time while balancing the responsibilities of being a mother to her two children. Along with learning about her experience balancing learning to code and being a mom we talk to Phoebe about her passions that extend beyond her professional role. She actively contributes to the coding community by writing articles for freeCodeCamp and mentors early-career developers. Show Links AWS Insiders (sponsor) Udemy React The Collab Lab Paired programming OpenLayers Front-end Development Python CS50 JavaScript #100DaysOfCode freeCodeCamp HTML
SimonG hits the big time with an Ionic video course on Free Code Camp! We also break down the latest in the React Native world, ask the big questiosn about AI and finally discuss the latest stack suggestion from Kent C Dodds.Also, please leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/allthecode
HTML All The Things - Web Development, Web Design, Small Business
In this interview episode, Matt and Mike sat down with Bob Ziroll the head of education for Scrimba to discuss all things React, escaping your comfort zone, teaching courses, and much more! Bob Ziroll is known for his React courses on both Scrimba and freeCodeCamp, he also anticipates starting a YouTube channel sometime soon. Show Notes: www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/teaching-you-how-to-react-w-bob-ziroll
Bekah started with a poignant story of how the birth of her 4th child was a traumatic event that threw her into depression, PTSD, and questioning her place in the world. We then talked about her discovery of the FreeCodeCamp, and how she ended up saying, "I'm done" with her first career. We then discussed the role of communities in finding her first job and how COVID led to the creation of Virtual Coffee. We spoke extensively about Virtual Coffee and what makes it the inclusive place many developers cherish.Here are the links from the showhttps://www.twitter.com/BekahHWhttps://virtualcoffee.io/https://bekahhw.github.io/ML with Python Learning Group https://github.com/orgs/deepgram/discussions/74Find the video for this -> Bekah's Keynote at That-Conference https://that.us/activities/BojrAo0dd8x62Arj8s6U"Dan" that Bekah mentioned a few times https://twitter.com/danieltottCertified Fresh Events https://cfe.dev/CreditsCover Legends by HoliznaCC0 is licensed CC0 1.0 Universal License.Your host is Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon; more about him at timbourguignon.fr.Gift the podcast a rating on one of the significant platforms https://devjourney.info/subscribeSupport the show
Reginald L Williams Jr. graduated with full time Web Development Cohort 59. I've always been interested in creating things with computers. I started with code in my teens editing HTML on my friends' Myspace accounts, building games in Flash Player. Fast forward to 2019, and I write my first line of code in September 2019 and actually really begin to like it. After doing some research, I taught myself some HTML/CSS & JavaScript basics using The Odin Project and FreeCodeCamp.Org. I felt I needed to work with people though, so I attended a 3 week Web Development Jump Start course at Nashville Software School. That clicked with me. The same excitement I had while making websites as a kid was reignited with building applications. With that in mind, I pursued it, & it's brought me here today. I hope to speak with you soon!
Hi there! Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll subscribe to follow along! Links at the bottom, but if you do nothing else, would you consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I share spreadsheet and coding tutorials?
Chris Harshman is a ‘Whiskey Enthusiast' and the Director of Technology Services at A-B Tech Community College in Asheville, NC. Chris holds a Full Stack Web Development Certification and Computer Software Engineering Certification from Free Code Camp, a Bachelor's degree from Elon University, and a Law degree from Temple University. Additionally, he holds a Green Belt in Lean Six Sigma and a PMP Certification from the Project Management Institute. Chris joins me today to share how he became a whiskey and bourbon enthusiast and why he believes there's ‘no wrong way' to drink bourbon. He describes the various ways he enjoys drinking good bourbon and shares how staying hydrated throughout the day impacts your experience. He also discusses the sensory experiences and challenges that many bourbon judges and tasters experience when judging various types of bourbons as well as the differences between store picked and non-store picked bourbons. This week on Consuming the Craft: ● What inspired Chris's enthusiasm with whiskey.● Why your taste for whiskey may change as you get older.● How he enjoys drinking bourbon.● How proper hydration impacts your experience of drinking alcoholic beverages.● The challenges associated with whiskey and bourbon tasting and judging.● Why it's important for bourbon judges to swallow the bourbon, instead of spitting it out, when judging different bourbons.● What aromatic compounds are and how they impact your whiskey tasting experience.● How the processing process impacts the ‘mouth feel' while drinking whiskey and bourbon.● The benefits of “barrel picking” and the importance of distillers establishing relationships with vendors.● The Booze Clues Old Weller store pick vs non-store pick bourbon challenge.● My 10-part whiskey tasting method.● How your sensory memory and recognition impacts your preferred whiskey choices.● Does non-chill filtering truly change the taste of whiskey? Connect with Chris Harshman: ● LinkedIn This episode is brought to you by… McConnell Farms - Taste the Way You Remember. Enjoy homemade ciders and ice cream made from only the best produce on the market. Visit the McConnell Farms website to learn more our seasonal inventory and delicious creations you can make with our homegrown produce.
Welcome to Who Sharded? Which is a weekly news update show all about the NEAR and Aurora ecosystems. And we get our news from NEARWEEK's daily newsletter. It's def worth readying! Ready Layer One podcast https://readylayeronepodcast.com/ NEARWEEK https://nearweek.com/ This weeks stories: 20 million wallets Nightshade phase one https://twitter.com/NEARWEEK/status/1572303921233940481?s $NEAR: Positioned to Become the Leading Orderbook Chain https://medium.com/@ProximityFi/near-positioned-to-become-the-leading-orderbook-chain-b428c851bd6e The 'nearweek.pool.near' is deployed. Its purpose is to fund NEARWEEK's compliant DAO payments which powers the weekly newsletter and in time all content production. Come stake with us if you like what we do! freeCodeCamp.org receives a grant from NEAR Foundation The grant will be used to develop interactive Web3 courses around NEAR protocol and our ecosystem. The curriculum will also contain 10+ interactive practice projects to help you learn: how to build and deploy smart contracts with JavaScript, client side dApps and a range of real-world applications. The first of these are now in open beta. Go give it a try! Phase 1 of sharding is now released to mainnet. Upgrade is expected to be done by Sep 28 once enough validators adopt the new version. LFG!! Joe https://twitter.com/joespano_ Jared https://twitter.com/jarednotjerry1 NEAR near.org/ Aurora https://aurora.dev/ NO FINANCIAL ADVICE– The Podcast, is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast and podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this website without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisory. You understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this podcast at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice.
Hablamos con Estefania Cassingena sobre la formación técnica gratuita de freeCodeCamp y de los retos de crear formación de calidad para que la gente la aproveche al máximo.ReferenciasfreeCodeCamp en inglésfreeCodeCamp en españolCanal de YouTube de freeCodeCamp en españolTwitter
This episode is dedicated to all the times I asked professionals what their favorite resources are. Here is my attempt to give back some of what I have learned over the last two plus years of producing the podcast. SFPE https://www.sfpe.org/home Local and National Chapter, Local chapter resources FPE Extra https://www.sfpe.org/publications/fpemagazine/fpeextra Quarterly Magazine https://www.sfpe.org/publications/fpemagazine Online LinkedIn esc community NFPA https://www.nfpa.org/ Free access to codes and standards https://bit.ly/2ZjauBe Online Courses https://www.nfpa.org/OnlineLearning Webinars https://www.nfpa.org/Training-and-Events/By-type/Webinars Free Resources https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research The NFPA Podcast: https://bit.ly/3RMxqAV Codes and Standards Development Quarterly Magazine https://www.nfpa.org/journal International Code Council https://www.iccsafe.org/ Free Access to Codes https://codes.iccsafe.org/ Webinars Podcast https://bit.ly/3S8Jxbc Codes Development Magazine https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/ Joe Meyer https://www.meyerfire.com/ Free Resources https://www.meyerfire.com/blog/flow-test-reports-and-the-n185-supply-graph Forum for question https://www.meyerfire.com/daily Blog https://www.meyerfire.com/blog/a-new-blog-format PE Prep course https://www.meyerfire.com/pe-exam.html Paid for classes https://www.meyerfire.com/university-welcome.html Free Tools https://bit.ly/3QV5qJY Chris Campbell https://www.buildingcode.blog/ Free Resources PE Prep Course Podcasts I like The Fire Science Show https://www.firescienceshow.com/ Drew Slocum https://fire-protection-podcast.simplecast.com/ Fire Sprinkler Podcast https://www.firesprinklerpodcast.com/podcast STI the burn https://bit.ly/3Lpv2gX ICC Pulse https://bit.ly/3S8Jxbc NFPA Link https://bit.ly/3eZLCrQ Kilo Lima Code https://kilolimacode.com/ Paul Inferrera https://cfcc.edu/job-training/construction-careers/fire-alarm-systems-training/ Performance Based Fire Protection Engineering https://www.pbfpe.com/ Online Tools Calculator AC Fire Pump https://bit.ly/3LDle3n Superior Tank https://superiortank.com/tools/lfb/ Revit Tools Viking https://digital.vikingcorp.com/tools-revit PyRevit https://github.com/eirannejad/pyRevit/releases DiRoots https://diroots.com/ Blogs / Online Magazines Consulting and Specifying Engineer https://www.csemag.com/ Fire Alarms Online http://www.firealarmsonline.com/p/occupancy-fa-requirements.html Reddit Sub Communities https://www.reddit.com/r/firePE/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FireAlarm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Firefighting/ Udemy https://www.udemy.com/ Libby App https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby FreeCodeCamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn Tick Tick https://ticktick.com/#q/all/today/5ff73b1893561d699eeb3c73 ASPE https://www.aspe.org/ Magazine with fire and life safety topics Membership meetings Resources for life safety professionals ASHRAE https://www.ashrae.org/ Weather Data for freeze protection Design guides for smoke control NICET https://www.nicet.org/ Certification AFAA https://www.afaa.org/ Paid for classes Membership with benefits Webinars AFSA https://afsa.org/ Free Magazine https://www.sprinklerage.com/ Paid for classes Membership with benefits NFSA https://nfsa.org/ Paid for classes Tech Tuesdays Membership with benefits
François Nadeau talks with Jason Barnard about From SERP to M&A: The 8 figure ROI blog post. François Nadeau has more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing and SaaS. He has written for a number of websites including Indie Hackers, The Startup, freeCodeCamp, Baremetrics, Wishpond and Growth.org. He has given keynote speeches at more than 13 startup and web development conferences in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has long been a strong proponent of bootstrapping and Jamstack. How much effort does it take to stumble upon an amazing business opportunity? Marketers and business owners, if that is a question you ever asked yourself, then this is for you. This week's awesome guest, François Nadeau, shares his incredible journey from blog post to 8 figure M&A. He also shares how he values creating content that best serves the audience in order to trigger business opportunities. Don't be put off by the rather geeky start to the episode (it spans with headless e-commerce and Knowledge Panels)… the rest is very business and marketer friendly - content marketing, community promotion, content creation, and an eight-figure ROI blog post that leads François Nadeau to Duda and the Snipcart acquisition. It's sure to inspire marketers and help them understand how to write TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content. And to make this conversation even more interesting, Jason Barnard shares his brilliant tips in Snipcart's Knowledge panel. As always, the show ends with passing the baton… François incredibly turns over the virtual baton to next week's wonderful guest, Colin Shaw. What you'll learn from François Nadeau 00:00 François Nadeau and Jason Barnard00:35 Duda's Brand SERP01:25 Snipcart's About Page03:31 Knowledge Panel Tips from Jason Barnard05:56 François Nadeau's 8 Figure ROI Blog Post07:10 What is Headless E-commerce?08:03 What are the Benefits of Headless E-commerce?09:21 Two Main Advantages of Headless E-commerce14:00 Blog Posts: Opening Doors to Business Opportunities16:33 François Nadeau's Tips and Tricks to Writing Top of Funnel Content18:42 Golden Rule: UX Over SEO21:10 The Importance of Creating Content that Serves Your Audience25:07 More Top of Funnel Content and Blog Posts from François Nadeau30:40 Passing the Baton: François Nadeau to Colin Shaw This episode was recorded live on video August 30th 2022 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>
François Nadeau talks with Jason Barnard about From SERP to M&A: The 8 figure ROI blog post. François Nadeau has more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing and SaaS. He has written for a number of websites including Indie Hackers, The Startup, freeCodeCamp, Baremetrics, Wishpond and Growth.org. He has given keynote speeches at more than 13 startup and web development conferences in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has long been a strong proponent of bootstrapping and Jamstack. How much effort does it take to stumble upon an amazing business opportunity? Marketers and business owners, if that is a question you ever asked yourself, then this is for you. This week's awesome guest, François Nadeau, shares his incredible journey from blog post to 8 figure M&A. He also shares how he values creating content that best serves the audience in order to trigger business opportunities. Don't be put off by the rather geeky start to the episode (it spans with headless e-commerce and Knowledge Panels)… the rest is very business and marketer friendly - content marketing, community promotion, content creation, and an eight-figure ROI blog post that leads François Nadeau to Duda and the Snipcart acquisition. It's sure to inspire marketers and help them understand how to write TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content. And to make this conversation even more interesting, Jason Barnard shares his brilliant tips in Snipcart's Knowledge panel. As always, the show ends with passing the baton… François incredibly turns over the virtual baton to next week's wonderful guest, Colin Shaw. What you'll learn from François Nadeau 00:00 François Nadeau and Jason Barnard00:35 Duda's Brand SERP01:25 Snipcart's About Page03:31 Knowledge Panel Tips from Jason Barnard05:56 François Nadeau's 8 Figure ROI Blog Post07:10 What is Headless E-commerce?08:03 What are the Benefits of Headless E-commerce?09:21 Two Main Advantages of Headless E-commerce14:00 Blog Posts: Opening Doors to Business Opportunities16:33 François Nadeau's Tips and Tricks to Writing Top of Funnel Content18:42 Golden Rule: UX Over SEO21:10 The Importance of Creating Content that Serves Your Audience25:07 More Top of Funnel Content and Blog Posts from François Nadeau30:40 Passing the Baton: François Nadeau to Colin Shaw This episode was recorded live on video August 30th 2022 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>
François Nadeau talks with Jason Barnard about From SERP to M&A: The 8 figure ROI blog post. François Nadeau has more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing and SaaS. He has written for a number of websites including Indie Hackers, The Startup, freeCodeCamp, Baremetrics, Wishpond and Growth.org. He has given keynote speeches at more than 13 startup and web development conferences in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has long been a strong proponent of bootstrapping and Jamstack. How much effort does it take to stumble upon an amazing business opportunity? Marketers and business owners, if that is a question you ever asked yourself, then this is for you. This week's awesome guest, François Nadeau, shares his incredible journey from blog post to 8 figure M&A. He also shares how he values creating content that best serves the audience in order to trigger business opportunities. Don't be put off by the rather geeky start to the episode (it spans with headless e-commerce and Knowledge Panels)… the rest is very business and marketer friendly - content marketing, community promotion, content creation, and an eight-figure ROI blog post that leads François Nadeau to Duda and the Snipcart acquisition. It's sure to inspire marketers and help them understand how to write TOFU (top-of-the-funnel) content. And to make this conversation even more interesting, Jason Barnard shares his brilliant tips in Snipcart's Knowledge panel. As always, the show ends with passing the baton… François incredibly turns over the virtual baton to next week's wonderful guest, Colin Shaw. What you'll learn from François Nadeau 00:00 François Nadeau and Jason Barnard00:35 Duda's Brand SERP01:25 Snipcart's About Page03:31 Knowledge Panel Tips from Jason Barnard05:56 François Nadeau's 8 Figure ROI Blog Post07:10 What is Headless E-commerce?08:03 What are the Benefits of Headless E-commerce?09:21 Two Main Advantages of Headless E-commerce14:00 Blog Posts: Opening Doors to Business Opportunities16:33 François Nadeau's Tips and Tricks to Writing Top of Funnel Content18:42 Golden Rule: UX Over SEO21:10 The Importance of Creating Content that Serves Your Audience25:07 More Top of Funnel Content and Blog Posts from François Nadeau30:40 Passing the Baton: François Nadeau to Colin Shaw This episode was recorded live on video August 30th 2022 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>
In this video, I go over my trials and tribulation to become a iOS Developer and hope to show that you can do it as well. It'll just require a good mindset and commitment to daily practice. Let me know in the comment section what videos you would like to see in the future. Feel free to reach out to me if you need any help or advice. Happy Coding :) Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondubon/ Udemy iOS Bootcamp by Angela Yu: https://www.udemy.com/course/ios-13-app-development-bootcamp/ Free Code Camp: https://www.youtube.com/c/Freecodecamp Deep Thoughts Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/154ptkEQ3PyS5t8v2mu1hP?si=4fde28ce9d674562 Shoutout to NonStop: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuEcSIgaoxm6R5O_k8FMu5g (0:00) Intro (0:31) Previous Attempts to Become Software Engineer (3:49) Challenges of 2021 (5:54) Learning Journey (11:19) Move to ATL (13:51) Job Search (15:31) Audible Interviews (21:21) Search Continues (24:00) Conclusion #swift #ios #iosdeveloper #xcode #iosdev #swiftdeveloper #swiftui
Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast
Are you just learning to code or a self-taught developer? Need help with structured direction in your learning journey? Then you have to check out The Coder Coder!! If neither apply check this resource out anyway, there is something for everyone. In today's episode we examine the world of learning how to code from the perspective of the teacher and dive into what it's like to sit in the driver's seat creating content and running a successful Youtube coding community. We also discuss how to learn, tips on asking for help, best places to start your code journey, and much much more. Our guest today is a beacon of hope for career changers everywhere. She is a self taught coder who began her coding career doing data entry and now creates extremely approachable, fun, entertaining and very educating tutorials for beginner web developers via her blog, online courses and videos. She is a Youtube sensation with a community of over 361K subscribers that she has built from the ground up. She has been in the industry for 8 years, recently quitting her full-time job to focus 100% on her Youtube community and has worked on every part of the development stack. Connect with Jessica: Twitter Instagram Youtube Website/Blog Show notes and helpful resources: Frontendmentor.io - build real world projects Freecodecamp resource and Discord community Odin Project - Learn how to code! Jessica's responsive design course coming soon! MDN - Mozilla Developer Network - great web documentation Jessica's Freecodecamp articles Jessica's video: Learn web development as an absolute beginner Jessica's video: How to stay motivated when learning to code Jessica's video: Are you sabotaging your coding career? (with Mortal Kombat style fight scenes) Jessica's video: Stop wasting time when learning to code video Jessica's gear: RE20 mic, A7S Camera, OBS Screen Casts, Adobe Suite, Vissles keyboard, Fully standing desk Jessica's favorite/highest production coder coder video: The Office Tour Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.
In this episode, we talk about what your bootcamp isn't teaching you with Caitlyn Greffly, software engineer at The Motley Fool, and author of The Bootcamper's Companion. Caitlyn talks about not seeing herself as someone who would fit into the tech industry, falling in love with data and analytics, and then transitioning careers and eventually writing The Bootcamper's Companion to cover some important tech topics that aren't typically taught at coding bootcamps. Show Links Compiler (sponsor) Stellar (sponsor) imgix (sponsor) The Bootcamper's Companion Scrum Master Thinkful JavaScript React Node Angular C# .NET AWS Vue Agile software development freeCodeCamp
Today's episode is sponsored by Mergify, the faster and safer way to merge your code.[00:01 - 06:24] Opening Segment Start saving time by automatizing your pull requests and securing the code merge using Mergify!Sign up for a demo at https://mergify.com/Get to know Jess Roseher reasons for her helping strangers on the Internet[06:25 - 11:59] Bottom-Up Communication Vs. Top-Down ManagementThe challenges of upward communicationHow to balance personal values at workIt's unique for individual circumstanceManaging the conflict of interest as a manager to upper management[21:00 - 33:33] Level Up Your LearningWhy Jess' started an online learning programIn search of the best tool for virtual and distance learningThe impact of tools on the quality of learningMentorship and organizational rankEstablishing healthy boundariesResilience in an educational setting[33:34 - 44:46] Let's Start Speaking The Same LanguageAcing the basics: Why learning the fundamentals is everythingLet's talk about programming languageHow to improve team communication and having a shared language[44:46 - 49:55] Closing SegmentDr. McKayla talks about her book in progress and her advice to those who would like to write a bookFinal wordsTweetable Quotes“Sometimes changing jobs is easier than making peace with uneasy ethical decisions.” - Jess Rose“Nobody tells you, but you're not going to start managing people and get it right right away.” - Jess Rose“We learn better when we're chill.” - Jess Rose“I think it's really valuable to talk about the culture of the language we use around programming and really the culture of the structures we build because it's not transparent to people.” - Jess RoseConnect with Jess Rose on LinkedIn, Twitter, and her website. Go to Github.com/JessicaRose to check out her 1-1s.Resources MentionedMergify - Sign up for a demo now!freeCodeCampClass CentralWeaving the Web by Tim Berners-LeeThe Intuitive Programmer: Learning How to Learn for Programmers (Barbara Oakley & Zach Caceres)Software Engineering Unlocked Episode with Dr. Cat HicksFelienne HermansDan AbramovLet's Connect! You can connect with me, Dr. McKayla on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube to look into engineering software, and learn from experienced developers and thought leaders from around the world about how they develop software!LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to know more about the engineering software world. Your ratings and reviews help get the podcast in front of new listeners. _______Transcription[00:00:00] Dr. McKayla Hello, and welcome to the Software Engineering Unlocked podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mckayla and today I have the pleasure to talk to Jess Rose. Jess is a technology professional and keynote speaker specializing in community building outreach and developing better processes for talented technology. She is passionate about fostering more equal access to technical education, and digital spaces. But before I start, let me tell you about an amazing startup that is sponsoring today's episode Mergify. You know, I'm all about code reviews and pull requests. Having your teammates review your code can be super beneficial, but it also can create a bottleneck and slow down your software development. With Mergify, your team can be way more productive with GitHub. Mergify automates all about merging pull requests, you can specify the merge conditions, and Mergify will take care of the rest. Do you want a specific order for merging the pull requests? Should one PR be prioritized? Or do you need a copy of the PR and another branch for bug fixing? No problem. Mergify can take care of all those situations. By saving time, you and your team can focus on projects that matter. Mergify integrates completely with GitHub and your CI pipeline. They have a startup program that could give your company a 12-month credit up to $21,000 of value. Start saving time, visit Mergify.com to sign up for a demo and get started or just click the link in the show notes. I'm super, super thrilled to have Jess here with me. Jess, welcome to the show.[00:01:38] Jess Rose Oh, gosh. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here when you said hey, do you want to come and talk about teaching and learning? Oh, I'm just going to be insufferable. Thank you so much. [00:01:48] Dr. McKayla I'm really excited because I'm following you on Twitter. And I see that you're creating spaces for people to learn to get better to grow. Right. So there are a couple of things that I want to touch base on today with you. One is the 1-1s that you're offering. So maybe, maybe let's get started with that. Because I see you from time to time you say, you know, I have some time available, why not hop over on a call, and I can help you with some career advice? How's it going? What do you do with people? What kind of people are picking up on that?[00:02:27] Jess Rose So I've been doing this for about, I looked the other day because I do, I do keep records and privacy-preserving records just like, oh, what kinds of things am I talking to people about? And I've been doing this for about eight years now. So just broke 1700 folks I've talked to over the years.[00:02:40] Dr. McKayla Wow. [00:02:40] Jess Rose And you would think oh, it's going to be mostly juniors or mostly people trying to break into tech. But just the absolute vastness of experience is so dazzling and exciting and strange to me. I don't see myself as especially well suited to give great advice. But on these calls, people are almost never asking for actual advice. So a lot, most of it's just, I'd like to be heard and I'd like someone to confirm that my experience is unusual or isn't unusual. Or getting sort of a level check for a different area saying, Hey, I'm based in this region, and I'm looking for work in your region. What's that like? What's the experience like? What's the process like? I actually documented the whole process out because I want, I definitely want other people to be doing this if you feel like it. No pressure. And it's on my GitHub. So GitHub.com/JessicaRose. And it should be right on there as 1-1s.[00:03:37] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I saw that. I saw that on your Twitter feed. So it tells us how to do those 1-1s and how to, what questions to ask, and so on?[00:03:46] Jess Rose Yeah. And mostly just about the tooling. So how to get it scheduled, how to get that sorted? And then because I'm a weirdo, how to get the records of who chatted to you deleted if you want to, like, yeah, I wouldn't keep notes on somebody who doesn't want me to keep notes. [00:04:00] Dr. McKayla Yeah. And I think it's good for privacy as well, right?. If people I don't know which topics, they are coming to you, but I mean, some of them might be private, and you know, especially if you're having maybe, like, I think if you need advice, you're very often not such a good place, right? Probably more than being in a great place where you think, well, everything figured out, you know, things are going smooth than you're seldomly reaching out to other people. It would be like I'm bragging now to you. You're more probably reaching out if you have some problems with your team maybe or getting a job or something like this. Is that what people talk to you about in the sessions?[00:04:41] Jess Rose So anything from, Hey, am I getting paid right? To, Oh, I'm getting screamed at a lot at work. Is this normal? So a lot of them are sort of, oh, gosh, but a lot of times folks just want to explore what's going on next. I've managed people a lot in my career. And one of the things that I always, I always have a difficult time with, and I hope other managers do, too, is how do you deal with the conflict? And there's always going to be conflict between what's best to the individual person you're managing, and what's best for the company because those are those, And one of the big things I push when I do manage people is, hey, do you have someone external to the company to give you good advice when I can't? Or I shouldn't give you the advice that's best for you?[00:05:31] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah, it's a conflict, right? Because obviously, you don't want to lose that person. But you see that they're outgrowing, you know, maybe the position?[00:05:42] Jess Rose Oh, I really just want to chase this up a minute. I'm always like, you don't want to lose somebody, like, you don't want somebody to move on for your team because they were unhappy or mistreated. This is definitely from me being a teacher for too long. I'm always pretty excited when somebody graduates up out of a team I run. Like, of course, you want to make sure that people have space to grow, of course, you want to be actively making sure there's career progression and more things to learn. But and especially in a job market, like right now, sometimes people like oh, cool, I could make a bigger salary jump bracket, they could make your title jump by leaving. And I'm always pretty chill with that.[00:06:24] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah. Me too. And my husband is also managing a bunch of people. And but I see tension there, right? So I think he's always really behind the people. But then upper management would be, yeah, but you know.[00:06:38] Jess Rose The business case for retention.[00:06:40] Dr. McKayla Exactly. Right. And the same for, for example, giving your raise, right. And I think, especially maybe the managers, you know, that are really like first line, they are more for the people because they have like some personal relationship, and then one level up, it's already like, yeah, but you know, we don't have the budget or we don't want or we believe we can still keep that person, you know, for this for this cheaper?[00:06:38] Jess Rose Oh, well, you know, let's give it another quarter or two and wait and see.[00:07:08] Dr. McKayla Yeah, exactly, right?[00:07:10] Jess Rose Baffling.[00:07:11] Dr. McKayla how do you do that as a manager? How do you speak up for your, for your people, or for your team? And h ow do you deal with that conflict as well?[00:07:22] Jess Rose So I think that's a really challenging one because I think that the conflict there is still the same. What do you do as an individual manager when the y eah, when your contractual, your fiduciary duties to your company, run counter to your individual ethical responsibilities to the people you manage? And or what happens when there's a conflict between the needs of an individual and the needs of a team? And it's not a good answer. And it's not a reassuring answer. But it depends. If somebody is facing treatment that feels unfair, or targeted, or they're in a position that I, generally, if somebody is in a position, I'm not okay, with being much more lovingly strident around, hey, this is a topic I would really bring to your external mentor A well, and then setting really clear limits internally about what, even as a manager, you are and aren't willing to do. So somebody saying, Oh, you get the idea that, Oh, maybe we want to manage so and so out, go ahead and write them up for stuff that the rest of the team routinely does. You still have consent as a manager. So you could say, like, yeah, no, I won't work in a space that involves maybe this kind of behavior.[00:08:45] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah, I think this is really important that we are standing up for our own ethics and for our own beliefs and value and, you know, also behind our, you know, our people that we, you know, I think we have a responsibility as well for and yeah, so I yeah, I can totally see that. [00:09:05] Jess Rose It's easy to say in this kind of job market in the West as well. I think, a re you based perhaps in Europe as well? [00:09:12] Dr. McKaylaYes. Yeah. [00:09:13] Jess Rose Because, like, these days for many European job markets in tech, finding a new job feels to many people who are established for juniors or people getting your first job, It is hard. But for folks who've been in for a little while, and folks in different in high demand areas, getting a new job as a junior as a middleweight, or a senior, is not as difficult as it could be these days. Whereas if you're having to engage in management behavior that you're just not comfortable with, yeah, sometimes changing jobs is easier than making peace with uneasy ethical decisions. Yeah, sometimes that's not true for everybody. And it's a very, very privileged take for those of us who have a little bit of wiggle room.[00:09:58] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I think so. And it really depends on where are you located? And what is your personal situation, right? Do you have dependents? Do you have like family or people that you have to take care of? And so on, which I think makes it much harder to say, you know, I'm going to not do that. But I think there, you know, there are boundaries, it's, it's one thing is playing along, and just, you know, or letting the other person also, you know, know, in the space that you have, right? You're also like, as a manager, you also, you can't just go and, you know, give advice directly conflicting with the interests of your upper management because that, you know, is a problem, but you can, you know, talk a little bit about, as you said, maybe asking you an external person, or also I think very well, you can say I'm disagreeing with this decision, right? And I advocated for you, unfortunately, you know, these were my boundaries here, for example, and let them know, I think that's, that's perfectly fine. Yeah. And I think that the problem is that if more of those things come together, people start thinking about leaving, right?[00:11:06] Jess Rose And that's not always a bad thing. As a manager, if you're not able to offer someone, a place that is safe, and productive, and non-traumatic to work, yeah, it's okay, that your people move on, and actually kind of preferable?[00:11:22] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah, I think so, too. So another topic that I wanted to talk with you about, and it's a little bit related to management, but it's more related to teaching. So I don't think you have to be a manager to teach, right? You can be, you can be, you know, Junior Dev, Mid Dev, senior Dev, right, so we can all learn from each other. But I really see you as a teaching, you know, expert here. Yeah. Because you're, you're bringing topics around programming, but also, you know, advice for hiring or you know, how to get hired. And to so many people, right, you're, you're also making these really mass, mass online learning events, right, occur online boot camps. So how is that going? Why did you start that and is that only for really junior people?[00:12:12] Jess Rose So the first thing I want to do is like, I would absolutely love if there was an excuse for me, Oh, yes, I'll just take all the credit. But the free online boot camps that I've started are absolutely not just me. So they started as 12-week boot camps, and they've been collapsed into a reasonably intense but still part-time, six-week boot camp. And this is built off of the freeCodeCamp curriculum. So they're a registered nonprofit. They're amazing. We could not do this without them and without their permission. But also the good people, I'm pointing behind me like they're back there. The good people Class Central built a whole platform that lets us teach on so like, just really, and Ramon is my, my co-teacher. And he's he's just, it's almost disgusting how lovely he is. Like, the learners love him and deservedly so.[00:13:03] Dr. McKayla Cool. Yeah. So what do you teach there? Is it like really the 101 of programming? Or is it more advanced concepts? Who is your target audience here?[00:13:14] Jess Rose So this last cohort, which just ended about two weeks ago, I should get back to work on those. We had 15,000 unique learners across two tracks learning either web development, which is HTML, CSS, accessibility, really, really intro level of like first steps of programming, or across JavaScript. And again, that sort of first steps with JavaScript, getting started. So really sort of introductory level. But we added some additional forums for peer support. We've got a very noisy Discord. And then some live stream lessons and question-answer to get people unstuck. We've had such a, so I would have expected oh, these will be beginners. We have back-end devs who wanted to try out web development. We've got folks who don't want to go into tech, but they do want to build a website for their business. And the thing I was, I used to be a teacher and I used to be a linguist. And very selfishly, the thing I was, one of the things I was most excited about was the absolute range of the learners. We've got folks across every regularly inhabited continent. And folks joining us in this massive exciting range of first languages. I was just so, so people who are learning from their phones, people who are learning from the library computers, and I just really really loved this loud, chaotic, and so lovely and so supportive group of learners all helping each other out.[00:14:49] Dr. McKayla Yeah, that's, that's really exciting. So I actually was thinking a little bit about learning on devices that are not high-end, right. And when I, when I started university, I couldn't afford a really high-end computer not even a normal computer, right? So I was on this, I got, I got one of those really cheap computers from somebody that you know, gave it to me for free. And it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare to work on that. And nowadays, it's obviously not the case anymore. And I'm really happy about that. But I was wondering what about, you know, people that don't want to work on the phone or work to, you know, on a tablet, and I'm pregnant right now. [00:15:32] Jess Rose Oh, congratulations. How exciting, how scary. [00:15:36] Dr. McKayla Yeah. But it's also a really cool experience because I'm thinking, like, this is my third child. So I know a little bit.[00:15:45] Jess Rose Oh, you're just fine. You're like, duh, this happens.[00:15:46] Dr. McKayla I know what's going to happen, that I can sit here and you know, work on my comfortable devices. And so I tried a little bit to work on my phone and work on the tablet and so on, I still think it's really difficult. What tools do your learners have?[00:16:03] Jess Rose Did somebody, somebody did one of my friends talk to you about this? I'm deeply suspicious. So I'm going to try really carefully not to say too much. I'm working on a little side project around this problem. Because this is a problem I've been thinking about a lot. So right now, and if our dear listeners aren't your viewers are, oh, gosh, what's the noun? Our beloved audience, your beloved audience has a tool or has something in the space that I haven't seen yet, please come and yell at me. But right now, I'm not seeing really good tooling. I'm not seeing a good way to write to the web from mobile devices. [00:16:46] Dr. McKayla Yeah, it's not there. [00:16:47] Jess Rose And this is an ethical problem for me. Because right now we hear people talking about the next billion users, I love this. But in a lot of cases, we're seeing people who are accessing the web for the first time, and I love it, and I live for it. But they're accessing the web on a lot of constraints. So they're usually on phones, they're usually mobile-only is what we'll call those kinds of learners. They may be accessing it in their third or fourth language, because you're going to see global web primarily in English and French and Spanish. And they're often constrained to really, really challenging limits on their, like their actual access to broadband or to mobile signal. And that's something I've been thinking about a lot on the device level for this problem. If I went, I'm going to date myself terribly. But I got access to the internet, when I was maybe 13, or 14. And the device I use to access the web to read the web, I could also write to the web. And we're effectively giving people this right only access to the web through smartphones. And that just, that doesn't seem like enough to me. So there's nothing great yet. And I don't think I've necessarily cracked it myself. But in the next couple of months, I would like to, I've got a little thing I'd like to launch to see whether or not that might be a good tool.[00:18:10] Dr. McKayla Yeah. Cool. I would be super interested in that. And I also think like, nowadays, I'm actually, I should actually be the whole day on bed rest. But two weeks ago…[00:18:20] Jess Rose What are you doing? You should be doing this lounging.[00:18:23] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I should. Right, yeah. But so now I'm allowed to be up a couple of hours per day, which is, which is great, but because I'm on this bed rest, right, and I only can lie down, I'm not allowed to sit actually, I experienced all these accessibility problems that, you know, couple of, you know, disabled folks also are experiencing and I'm like, right now, I really understand how difficult it is if you can't, you know, type, write, if you have like these mobile devices. And I think there is really there isn't a lot of you know, there's so much space in there. And we should really be much more welcoming to people that can't, you know, sit on this nice computer have their three monitors, right, the keyboard and the mouse. And it's really I mean, it's really frustrating for me to write a blog post to make an update on Git, right, to make a PR.[00:19:12] Jess RoseI'm not ignoring you. I'm just grabbing a book to see, so rude, isn't it? Turning away? Oh, heck, I must have hidden it somewhere. But there's a really fantastic book from the late 90s that Tim Berners Lee wrote about the process of inventing the web. But I've got sort of a tab in the book because he said, Oh, okay, we had to sit down we had to define the bare minimum. What is the minimum viable setup you need to access the web? He said, Oh, you need to, you need some kind of CPU, we need some kind of monitor some kind of display. And one of the things that they specified as necessary for the web was, you're going to need a keyboard. I think that's the point that sticks me again and again, where I think, but we've gotten past the need for keyboard in so many other spaces. Yeah, it seems a bit lazy to have not gotten past it in sort of the ability to do simple web development.[00:20:12] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah, it would be so great. Like, I would benefit so much from it. [00:20:17] Jess Rose Oh, just the guilt I've got right now. I'm just like, yes, yes, I'll get back to work. But we do currently have learned, well, in the last cohort, we had a number of learners who were accessing the course, all via smartphones. So they would post and we'd love to see them post, screenshots of their code to see, hey, where's this gone wrong, but it's going to be folks screenshotting their phone screen, and just the implication of how challenging it would be to write, I've tried it to write a bunch of CSS on your phone, oh, the absolute, like the strength these people have in their hearts not to throw it across the room.[00:21:01] Dr. McKayla Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So another question that came to my mind is now you have this experience of, you know, teaching really beginners, and also in a different space, it's a space of you are, you know, like this, this teacher now, and they're doing an online course. But I'm also very interested in how can we actually bring back or coming back to the managing position, right, how can we teach and mentor within a team, right? How can we do that for juniors? How can we do that for mid engineers? Who mentors and teachers, senior engineers? How is that all, you know, the dynamic in a team? And I was wondering if you have like some experience around that and some thoughts around that topic as well.[00:21:47] Jess Rose So I was really lucky. I was on a team several years ago now out at FutureLearn. With oh, gosh, Nikki, What's your surname? I'm so sorry. I swear I know it. I've just forgotten it, because I'm a bad person. And Belinda Sockington, who are both unreasonably brilliant and fantastic managers. And a lot of that work on that team was around, because I have FutureLearn was that it was a MOOC platform. How do we, how do we encourage learning? How do we incentivize it? How do we balance it? And really, what kind of landed for me is it's an ongoing conversation between the folks running these teams, the individual people, I think it may be one of those issues where there's just no one size fits all. It's a combination of saying, Hey, we have these options. Here are some off-the-shelf learning experiences, with starting a conversation and keeping up a conversation of what do you want to learn, what works for you? What's best for you? One thing that I've encountered a couple of times in my career, which I've had a really, really hard time with and my opinion on it has really radically changed, is every now and again, I'd meet somebody who's sort of mid-level or senior, so they've they've gotten themselves into a secure role. They're feeling okay with it. And they wouldn't be that excited about learning where they said, Yeah, I just want to do my job. But I want to go home. And I think the first couple of times, because nobody tells you, but you're not going to start managing people and get it right right away. I'm going to stay awake late tonight absolutely obsessing over the ways I'm still not doing it right. But back then I was thinking, Oh, how can I, how can I make this person care about their learning? And these days, I think with the, with the world having gotten much more stressful, and me having enough experience to see that I think now that I was wrong. These days, when I meet somebody who's like, well, I'd like to do my job. I'd like to do a good job at my job. And I'd like to go home, I don't really need to move up. I don't really want to stretch and learn more. I've gotten, yeah, like, that seems increasingly chill. I think it might be cultural as well, I think. I'm from the States originally. And I think there's quite a bit more fear around employment in the States. Almost everybody can be fired at any time and that makes everything very exciting. And generally your health care is associated with your employment. So I think I see when I was younger and based in the States, there was a lot more. Of course, you have to keep learning, of course, you have to keep running, you have to progress. Otherwise, something bad could happen. And yeah, I think I've just gotten increasingly excited to see people set boundaries around where they put their learning and where they put their interests. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very strange take for a teacher.[00:24:47] Dr. McKayla Yeah. So actually, I was talking to Cat Hicks, just a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And so we were talking about learning debt. And this whole topic brought us to something where I think, you know, learning is often something very externalized, right, where you say, Oh, I'm learning, let's say I'm learning React, or now I'm learning Remix, right? So maybe the newest framework or, you know, a new a new approach for DevOps or whatnot, right? So it's something that's out of what you're doing right now. And it's a new technology, very technology-oriented as well, whereby I think at the company, there are so many, a little bit more how to call it but informal, or, you know, a little bit more tactic, learning experience that you actually have every day, right, which is, how do I communicate with this new person on the team, right? How do I, how do I understand parts of this codebase? Can we change the architecture for that without breaking something? And all of these are also learning experiences, which we are often not declaring as that right, so we are not saying, oh, you know, McKayla, today learned about new ways to do this architecture for us or to refactor that code, or, you know, she did, she learned about how this API works over there that she hasn't worked about, right? This is very often not, I don't think it's so visible in the learning experience than if I would say, Oh, me, hey, let's sit down and learned React. Yeah, you know.[00:26:25] Jess Rose And I think that's really valuable. Because even when you say something, somebody say, I think, oh, you know, I'm just going to chill and do a good job. And it's so easy to generalize about brains and learning to, say, Oh, we know what we know about learning. In so much as we've learned anything about learning like self-assessment's messy, the study of, I'm not nearly clever enough to have a good handle on neuroscience and learning. But there's actually a fantastic researcher and author, Dr. Barbara Oakley, who does a lot of work on learning how to learn. And she's been doing some work with Zack Caceres who's a programmer, and I'm not going to tell, talk out of turn. But I believe they may be launching a project around how we learn programming skills relatively soon.[00:27:11] Dr. McKaylaYeah, nice. Yeah. [00:27:11]Jess Rose But we're primates in changing environments. Even if we don't think about it as learning, we are getting new situations and new stimuli, just like you said, I've got a new teammate, I'm going to learn to work with them. Oh, I've got this API. Oh, I finally understood what's going on under the hood. Regardless of whether or not we've set ourselves a mountain path to hike a declared learning journey, there's still learning happening. Yeah.[00:27:37] Dr. McKayla Yeah. And I think that those chill folks, how you call them, right? Maybe they have also more capacity to actually see things that are, you know, people that are very on their journey of, oh, I want to learn React and the latest, you know, whatever, technology comes out right now, maybe don't have the capacity to see, for example, oh, you know, now that the market changed a little bit, budget shifted, we have to work a little bit different with this team, or, you know, how can we make sure that our deadlines are, you know, approachable, and so on? So, yeah, I think learning really happens in so many forms. And, yeah.[00:28:14] Jess Rose And I, yeah, I've always been really excited about that as well. I think resilience is undervalued in teams often. Sorry, this isn't very confident or it is not very definitive, but I'm going to waffle about my biases as part of this. I really like thinking about resilience in individuals and in teams as a resource available. And I like thinking of people as resources, but like, someone being rested, somebody having the capacity, somebody being ready for a little tiny crisis, or a little weird thing. That feels like a resource right there. But I think often we really lean on productivity so hard. How can we get. what kind of developer experience tooling can we use to get 20% more? How can we make sure people are focused? How can we cycle our meeting? And we're so focused on developer productivity and the productivity of technologists, I think we often sacrifice that flexibility and that resilience of having somebody who's not under these productivity pressures to such a high degree. Like, we learn better when we're chill.[00:29:25] Dr. McKayla Yeah, yeah. And I think it brings us back also to, there was this blue code, right? People that are taking on responsibilities, right, blue work, sorry, blue work, that was what it was called, right? But people that are taking on some invisible work that are, you know, good for the team. And, and so yeah, I think this also for teaching, mentoring, learning, I think this can be one thing, and obviously, we shouldn't get outdated too much. And, but I also think that it's not changing every minute, you know, like, sometimes we believe, or we were made to believe, or this story lines around time, Oh, my God, you know, if you're not doing every day something and..[00:30:11] Jess Rose What do you mean you're not using blank? I'm like, look, I'm very old, and I'm very tired. Like, I'm good.[00:30:18] Dr. McKaylaI think it's totally fine, right. And there are a lot of technologies, that I mean, if you're working on PHP, you know, a lot of the web runs on PHP, and it's still, you know, a good technology, and it's okay. [00:30:33] Jess Rose Like, if you want to stretch a little bit, getting into some Laravel is really, really exciting. But if you write PHP, you can hang out and get better at the core stuff of what you do. And do a good job. Like, you don't have to run as hard as you can, as fast as you can forever.[00:30:51] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I think they're, they're, you know, good choices to make. And I'm definitely for growth and for learning. But sometimes people are just burning, you know, mental calories. I learned so much. I mean, I'm actually a learner, right? I love to learn. But most of the stuff that I learn, I never used. It's not very productive, right? [00:31:16] Jess Rose Yeah, but not sorry, you've invited me on here. And I'm just up here ready to blow you. But yeah, this sort of cult of productivity, not that you're espousing it makes me very, very, and when I talk to new learners, and they say, oh, okay, I need to learn this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this. And I've heard these words, and I need to learn this. I'm like, Babe, you can, you can show we can all chill. Like, we don't have to learn any frameworks yet. We don't have to learn any ops yet, we can just chill and learn the core stuff. And as these are like, one thing I really like to encourage, especially with new learners, or learners new to a specific space, is to go ahead and get some kind of digital or some kind of physical space where you can dump stuff. Some people like Notion, I hate Notion a lot. I quite like Obsidian. I don't care what you use, as long as you're happy about it. As you're seeing all these terms, just chuck them in a big doc. Okay, well, I keep seeing Angular, I know Angular is a thing, should I learn it? Don't worry about whether or not you have to learn it next, just go ahead. And when you see an article about it, throw it in the slush pile. I call it my link dump for early learning. And that means once you've got through the foundational stuff, you say, Okay, I've learned enough JavaScript where I can write. And I like setting these little tiny interim goals to say, Well, I've learned enough JavaScript where I'm able to make simple bug fixes in this open source project I was interested in. I've learned enough. And one thing I'm excited about is the The Art of Learning code, or the art of reading code, which is something Felienne... is an academic who's done a lot of work in the space.[00:32:59] Dr. McKayla She's from Leiden University.[00:33:01] Jess Rose Yes. You've talked to her already. I bet.[00:33:02] Dr. McKayla I did my PhD with her in the same room. Roommates. Yeah.[00:33:06] Jess Rose Did you? Did you?[00:33:06] Dr. McKayla Yeah, we were roommates. Yeah.[00:33:07] Jess Rose Oh, is she just as delightful to study with?[00:33:10] Dr. McKayla Yeah, she is wonderful. [00:33:13] Jess Rose But yeah, so really getting through the basics of well, I set out to do X, I'm doing X. Now it's time for me to go look through my link dump file, and see, wow, it looks like I've got like 40 different articles about Angular. Maybe that was important that that's enough for what I want to learn next. Yeah.[00:33:34] Dr. McKayla Maybe something else that comes to my mind here is also that I think fundamentals are really important, right? So I like for example, the approach of Dan Abramoff, right? He has like this course of chess JavaScript, which it means that you're not starting with React, right? You're starting with JavaScript and with the fundamentals around it, and I wouldn't say it's really a course for really real beginners. But it's like if you got a little bit of your hands dirty around JavaScript, it's really nice to go in and then check. Did I actually really understand what's you know, what's happening here? And then if you have these fundamentals, I think it's so much easier to build upon that dump. And dive into React or whatnot, right? Whatever technology you want to add here.[00:34:21] Jess Rose I think this comes back to something I've been thinking about a lot in how we learn and teach. But like, where we abstract things out. Soin the boot camp, we're using Free Code Camp to teach, which is a, it's an in-browser sandbox, you don't have, and they've just come out with a new beta curriculum for web development I'm in love with. And it previews that these are files and that you have to link to these files. It is very, very good. But it's still a sandbox, it's still an abstraction. And the places we tend to send learners next are things like, Okay, we're going to head over to CodeSandbox, we're going to head over to Glitch which are still abstracting away a lot of really, and then even when you look in to professional tooling and frameworks, they say, Okay, let's get into React. A lot of the power behind these frameworks are that they abstract away or that they compress, or they obscure or or smooth over some of the fundamentals of how we work with the core technology, maybe JavaScript or the way, Tailwind is a weird abstraction of the things you'd like to do with CSS. And I don't have a problem with, I think it's a teacher, I'd have a hard time having a problem with abstraction. But I think that thinking really carefully about how we do this, when we abstract things , and how we signpost what's been taking, or what's been added gets to be really valuable.[00:34:47] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. When I was starting to learn programming, I struggled a lot with abstractions because I just wanted to know, or not only with abstractions, but also like, there wasn't a lot of abstractions. It was actually very, very raw, right? It was like, Oh, you have an Eclipse IDE open and you're writing Java code. Bbut then you have like, oh, let's say, you know, public wide string, main, whatever, right? And it's just like, you just do it, right. And I'm like, why? What does it mean, don't worry about it. [00:36:22] Jess Rose And then we'll cover this later. And so by the time, we will have covered it, yeah… Having been a linguist, I fear that I mentally map language learning to programming language learning, even when it might not be entirely suitable. But I see this happening in human language education as well, where we say, okay, cool. Here's how, we keep we start people in the present perfect tens for a lot of languages, I see the cat, I drink the water, I walked to the store. And we don't send them into a present perfect world. And I think that's true with programming as well to say, Okay, well, we're going to give you this sandbox, or we're going to give you this framework, which abstracts away a lot of the complexities of the grammar or the the nuance of, and I think it's really valuable to talk about the culture of the language we use around programming and really the culture of, of the structures we build, because it's not transparent to people. I met with a learner in person, what a delight, in person last week. And without thinking about it, I said, yada yada yada bikeshedding. And thank goodness, this learner was confident enough to be like, cool, what the heck are you talking about? I was like, oh, gosh, that's just something we say. We say it as though everyone's going to understand it. And it means to get sidelined to get distracted with little unnecessary details. Just like okay, cool. You should just say that, it's less complicated. [00:37:55] Dr. McKayla Yeah. I think it's not always that easy to be always aware of how you do it. But I recall the time that I started at Microsoft, and, you know, when you start there, it's full of acronyms. And they mean, they mean something completely else inside Microsoft and what it would mean outside, and it really takes quite some time. And then a lot of people get very blind to it, and you know, just start using it as well. And you know, you start talking this gibberish. Nobody else can understand. Yeah.[00:38:32] Jess Rose But like, from a linguistic perspective, that's because that's identifies you as a member of the in-group, doesn't it? How fascinating. Yeah, incredibly interesting. Oh, no, no, I absolutely refuse to spend the next three days hyperfocused learning about weird Microsoft acronyms. It's so tempting.[00:38:49] Dr. McKayla Yeah, there are a lot. But I think it's the same with code reviews, right? And with sometimes how people say, oh, you know, we have this style of giving feedback to each other. And in my code review workshops, I always talk You know, I always try to have people come to an agreement that we need to use language and also, you know, phrase that in a respectful way, that's not only for the internal, you know, internal team to understand. Because there are newcomers, you know, in the team, maybe somebody will look at that, what you wrote two years from now, right, and still should be able to understand it. And so I think it's really good if we be clear about those bridges that we built that, you know, are this internal behavior and language that we are using that it's only, you know, it's an insider joke, and so on.[00:39:47] Jess Rose Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're often really chill about that in tech. Yeah, oh, here's a glossary of technical terms you need to know to do the thing. We're, we're cool about that. There seems to be a bit more resistance around when shared language or shared norms, or shared language structures around things like code reviews are proposed because we don't need that we know how to talk to each other. I hope I'm not putting you on the spot. Are you one of those lucky people who speak like nine languages?[00:40:15] Dr. McKayla No, not nine.[00:40:15] Jess Rose Oh, only five?[00:40:17] Dr. McKayla Maybe, yeah. German is my mother tongue, right? English, Dutch, Italian, and a little bit of Spanish.[00:40:28] Jess Rose A little bit of Spanish. Look at that. The fantastic thing about chatting to many folks from Europe is, is y'all always have this very, very beautiful, very casual, like humble brag at the end, you like, you know, just a little tiny bit of Croatian. I'm terribly jealous. Yeah, like recognizing that folks aren't going to be coming to, coming to these code reviews. And I really liked that you highlight that they're going to be coming to the uncoupled in time. I love this idea that when you leave a code review, when you leave feedback, when you leave a pull request, when you leave code, you're leaving a little artifact of understanding behind. So to say, Cool, we've standardized how we talk about these, we've created a shared language for them. Because when we go into the far scary future, we want these to still make sense.[00:41:23] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I think this is really important.[00:41:26] Jess Rose But also making them like giving a shared language around, hey, maybe English, or if we're doing the, if we're doing the code review, in Dutch, I'm in a bit of trouble. But maybe the language this code review is in is your second or third or fifth? Let's go ahead and have some shared language have some shared structures around feedback to lower the cognitive load? Yeah, well, can we talk about cognitive load? I imagine you've done it tons of times on the podcast. I imagine many programmers are familiar with it.[00:42:00] Dr. McKayla Yeah, we also have to be a little bit careful of the time now. But maybe the last thing that I want to add here is I'm writing a book on code reviews, right? [00:42:10] Jess Rose Are you?[00:42:10] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I'm right now in the middle of the feedback section, right? So how to give feedback, how to give respectful feedback, and how to communicate with each other and also cultural right? So how do we deal with, it gets really hairy there, right? So yeah, what are different cultures are expecting, what's respectful there, you know, how much you know, how harsh should a feedback be? Or can it be or, you know, what is seen as polite and so on? And this is not only, it's not only, it's not one standard thing, right? It depends on who's on the team, what's the background? What's the culture? But I think the expectation, setting the right expectations, and, you know, explicitly stating that, and talking about that, reflecting on that, and, you know, learning how others see those things and learning how, you know, like, if I would talk to you I'm originally from Austria lived in a couple of countries, right? You're from the States you're, you're in the UK now, right?[00:43:12] Jess Rose I am, yeah, everything's just fine here. Very chill. Not weird.[00:43:10] Dr. McKayla Yeah. And then maybe we have another person from Croatia and then somebody from India, right. And so I think it would be really important for us to talk about how we understand different terminologies, how we understand different you know, expressions in my career workshops, sometimes I have discussions about looks good to me. And I love those discussions because, you know, it's just a simple term looks good to me. Most of the time, people just, you know, have the acronym for it, right?[00:43:47] Jess Rose Like it's the thumbs up emoji in my head.[00:43:50] Dr. McKayla Exactly or you know, LGTM, right? And then some people are like, oh, yeah, this means you know, that I looked through it and you did a good job. And then the other person has no, you know, looks good to me means that you haven't looked at my code.[00:44:07] Jess Rose You just glanced at it. [00:44:07] Dr. McKayla Yeah, you just want it out of your way. Yeah. And the other person says, Oh, this means, I don't care. [00:44:07] Jess Rose Sometimes, sometimes.[00:44:16] Dr. McKayla And having those discussions in the team, you know, and understanding where everybody is coming from, and that they actually use, you know, one simple terminology. And everybody on the same team understood something else about it, I think it's so valuable, right? And only by these discussions, you know, we can really understand what's behind those terms and the way that we are communicating. But I'm also getting a little bit carried away.[00:44:45] Jess Rose No, no. So I'm going to ask you about your book. And yeah, I've just had a friend tell me that there are some questions you're not supposed to ask about someone's book. So I won't ask any of those. Instead, I've been told you're supposed to say, I hope it's going well. I'd like and I think it might be useful for hopefully some of the audience as well. I had an idea for a book that sounded really fun in my head. And I've sort of broken it down into chapters into essays and trying to write a couple of chapters. And my goal in writing a couple of essays is I'm trying to talk myself out of writing a book. [00:45:22] Dr. McKayla Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. [00:45:23] Jess Rose Do you have any advice for not, like, it's the worst. It's the worst idea ever. No one wants to write a book like, please, please, please. [00:45:32] Dr. McKayla No, I don't have.[00:45:32] Jess Rose No, I want to know what you're doing.[00:45:34] Dr. McKayla But I saw on Twitter that you said that and I thought, like, yeah, you won't be able to not write a book with this approach, right?[00:45:42] Jess Rose I love that it sounds like a th reat, where you're like, you're going to write that book.[00:45:45] Dr. McKayla Yeah, it looks like. I think if you're breaking it up in essays, that become more manageable. I think you will write this book. Yeah.[00:45:55] Jess Rose But for our beloved audience, for your beloved audience, they shouldn't write a book, they should, they should definitely do things that are not writing a book. Like, it's a terrible idea, isn't it?[00:46:04] Dr. McKayla I can't, I can't say it's a terrible idea. [00:46:06] Jess Rose Are you enjoying it?[00:46:08] Dr. McKayla I don't think it's a good idea. But I think a lot of people would like to write a book and I would be the last person that would discourage them. Because I was always discouraged to write a book, right? But I think I know what mess I got myself into. [00:46:25] Jess Rose That's what I'm looking for, there we go.[00:46:26] Dr. McKayla I would just tell the people that you're getting yourself into a big mess. But it's okay. You know, it's okay. I think people can write books, and people should write books.[00:46:36] Jess Rose The world is messy. It'll be fun. Oh, no, this is the opposite of what I was looking for. But it's so delightful.[00:46:42] Dr. McKayla Yeah, well, Jess actually, this brings us to the end of our show, I really enjoyed talking with you about all of that. And I think we should talk about cognition and cognitive load, and you know, all of that. So maybe I will invite you again, to another session[00:46:58] Jess Rose I'd love to come back any time. But I'll also pass you some contacts for folks who are much better at this than I am, I would just go back and be like, so books. And really, your audience deserves better.[00:47:13] Dr. McKayla Okay. And we will both all the things that we talked about down there also, maybe the Twitter handle or LinkedIn profile or whatnot, from the person that you mentioned in the middle, where you forgot the last name, I put it there. So she will be there as well. And then, yeah, so is there something that you want to wrap this episode up? Or?[00:47:36] Jess Rose Oh, gosh, can I bully your audience? Is that doable? Is it permitted? I've been doing advice calls all this week. And the big thing that I keep coming back to when I chat to people, I do do them just to be mean to people who are smarter than me is right now everything, everything is just so big and so loud and so stressful. One thing I've really enjoyed exploring with people is looking at ways that what they have to do, what they think they have to do can be smaller and softer and quieter. And I think that yeah, I'd love to gently bully folks to consider how what they need to do could be a little less. Maybe you don't have to write that book. It can just be an essay.[00:48:24] Dr. McKayla Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I actually did that this week with myself and just gave myself permission to let go of a couple of balls that I was juggling. And I think it's delightful. We should really do that. And I think it's it's the time that we are many people needed. Not everybody, right. I think a lot of people needed.[00:48:41] Jess Rose There's going to be one person out there who's having a real good week. I just haven't met him.[00:48:46] Dr. McKayla Or yeah, or that cat very nicely distracted by all of the work and don't have to think about the stuff that's going on. Yeah. Okay, so Jess, thank you so much. Thank you. It was really a pleasure talking to you.[00:49:01] Jess Rose Thanks so much. I'll let you go and thank you again. I won't get into a thank you loop with you.[00:49:06] Dr. McKayla Okay, bye-bye. [00:49:06] Dr. McKayla This was another episode of the Software Engineering Unlocked podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please help me spread the word about the podcast, send episode to a friend via email, Twitter, LinkedIn. Well, whatever messaging system you use, or give it a positive review on your favorite podcasting platforms such as Spotify or iTunes. This would mean really a lot to me. So thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and I will talk to you in two weeks. Bye
Shawn Wang joins the show to talk about his origin story, starting in the finance industry and how feeling like just a code monkey in a system drew him to learn front-end engineering and start working on product development and ultimately become a developer advocate. We discuss what the career path for a developer advocate might look like, as well as podcast listening tools Listen Notes and Listenbox and how they help allow people to look up and listen to podcasts on their own terms rather than being stuck in a corporate garden. https://www.freecodecamp.org/ (FreeCodeCamp) https://www.listennotes.com/ (Listen Notes) https://listenbox.app/ (Listenbox) https://www.learninpublic.org/ (The Coding Career Handbook) https://twitter.com/swyx (Shawn's Twitter: @swyx) https://www.swyx.io/ (Shawn's Website)
Jessica Wilkins joins the show to talk about her origin story coming from being a musician to building a passion project to promote diversity in classical music and how she got pulled into the tech industry by warm, friendly communities. We discuss a fun, approachable way to learn technology as we discuss Exercism, an online platform built to teach the joy of programming to everyone. https://blackexcellencemusicproject.com/index.html (Black Excellence Music Project) https://exercism.org/ (Exercism Learning Platform) https://www.freecodecamp.org/ (FreeCodeCamp) https://twitter.com/codergirl1991 (Jessica's Twitter: @codergirl1991)
Quincy Larson, founder of freeCodeCamp, was in his 30's after he quit his job as a school director. After learning how to automate some of the tedious tasks that staff had to deal with, he realized how many people's lives could be improved if they learned how to solve problems with technology.He spent the next nine months learning to code before landing his first software engineering position. He gained a ton of practical experience on the job and started to think about how to create a path to get people to this point as quickly as possible.freeCodeCamp was the result.freeCodeCamp, using game design as its guiding instructional design philosophy, has learners coding with rapid feedback and frequent challenges or "mini bosses". The idea being that a learner can't iterate and improve to their max potential unless the feedback that corrects and guides them is immediate. The idea of the mini boss is to strengthen a learner's problem solving and stop them from getting too overconfident in their abilities.Coding is hard.And don't let anyone tell you different. Unless the learner understands just how frustrating and ambiguous programming is, they're going to hit a wall once they are confronted with a blank canvas. Now what?Iteration is critical to the platform as well. Since freeCodeCamp is well, free, they are able to make changes freely without having to worry about wasting anyone's money. This gives them the freedom to get feedback, iterate and build something truly niceQuincy goes over all of the above and more in this episode of the Badass Courses podcast. Tune in to learn more about the business model, course design, and history of freeCodeCamp.Show Notes and SocialsBadass: Making Users AwesomeTwitter - Quincy LarsonfreeCodeCamp
Quincy Larson is the founder of freeCodeCamp. A Non-Profit with a mission to make learning to code free to everyone. Currently over 40,000 freeCodeCamp graduates have gotten jobs in tech. Quincy worked as a teacher and a school director for a decade before learning to code at hackathons and makerspaces around California. He enjoys reading history books, taking his kids to the park, and trying to teach anyone who will listen to him. In this episode, we learn how Quincy went from being an English teacher to now running arguably the largest free coding non-profit in the world. We also learn the benefits and drawbacks of running a non-profit vs a private enterprise, and Quincy's secret technique for his incredible output. I loved this conversation with Quincy, he is down to earth and clearly cares about his mission. I'm so happy I could share this one with you.
In this episode, we talk about how to transition from the arts into a career in tech, with Jessica Wilkins, software developer at This Dot Labs, technical writer at Free Code Camp, and former professional classical musician. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Cockroach Labs (sponsor) New Relic (sponsor) Porkbun (sponsor) Stellar (sponsor) Bright Data (sponsor) This Dot Labs Black Excellence Music Project HTML CSS JavaScript React Tailwind CSS edX Udemy freeCodeCamp How freeCodeCamp has evolved over time CS50: Introduction to Computer Science What it's like to be in a computer science class Node.js Express
We talked about: Jessica's background Giving a talk at a tech conference about coffee Jessica's transition into tech (How to get started) Going from learning to actually making money Landing your first job in tech Does your age matter when you're trying to get a job? Challenges that Jessica faced in the beginning of her career Jessica's role at PyLadies Fighting the Imposter Syndrome Generational differences in digital literacy and how to improve it Events organized by PyLadies Jessica's beginnings at PyLadies (organizing events) Jessica's experience with public speaking The impact of public speaking on your career Tips for public speaking Jessica's work at Ecosia Discrimination in the tech industry (and in general) Finding Jessica online Links: Ecosia's website: https://www.ecosia.org/ Ecosia's blog: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/ PyLadies Berlin: https://berlin.pyladies.com/ PyLadies' Meetup: https://meetup.com/PyLadies-Berlin Code Academy: https://www.codecademy.com/ Freecodecamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/ Coursera Machine Learning: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning ML Bookcamp code: https://github.com/alexeygrigorev/mlbookcamp-code/tree/master/course-zoomcamp Google Summer code: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/ Outreachy website: https://www.outreachy.org/ Alumni Interview: https://railsgirlssummerofcode.org/blog/2020-03-17-alumni-interview-jessica Python pizza: https://python.pizza/ Pycon: https://pycon.it/en Pycon 2022: https://2022.pycon.de/ Join DataTalks.Club: https://datatalks.club/slack.html Our events: https://datatalks.club/events.html
SELECT*: Your Resource for Innovative Tech & Developer Topics Hosted by HarperDB
In this episode we chat with Jessica Wilkins, a former classical musician who came across an awesome opportunity in software development through technical writing. Questions we covered include:What do you do now, how did you get to where you are today?How did you transition into tech, how did platforms like FreeCodeCamp help with the transition and create strong connections in the community? What was it like coming from a non-technical background?Were there parallels between being a classical musician and learning to code? How were you able to pull from previous knowledge to assist with the learning process?Other tips for folks just starting out with their dev career?What technologies and/or tools are you focused on right now or excited about?Jessica Wilkins is a classical musician turned junior developer and technical writer. Prior to joining the tech industry, she spent her time running her own sheet music company (JDW Sheet Music) as well as performing and teaching in Los Angeles, CA. She now enjoys working as a developer and working with React, Node and Express. She is also a prolific technical writer for freeCodeCamp, and created the Black Excellence Music Project which is dedicated to black artists who have made significant contributions to the arts.
In this episode, we talk about the evolution of freeCodeCamp with the teacher who founded freeCodeCamp, Quincy Larson. Quincy talks about creating the online learning resource he wished he had when he transitioned mid-career into tech, how freeCodeCamp has grown over time in community and content, and what the future of freeCodeCamp holds. Show Links DevDiscuss (sponsor) DevNews (sponsor) Appwrite (sponsor) VeroSkills (sponsor) New Relic (sponsor) Compiler (sponsor) freeCodeCamp Visual Basic Head First Programming Project Euler JavaScript Rust Visual Studio Code SQL PostgreSQL WordPress Python Django Node.js COBOL HTML CSS Git Linux C Learn to Code RPG – A Visual Novel Video Game Where you Learn Computer Science Concepts Web3 Jupyter Notebook The Coding Bootcamp Handbook: Immersive Engineering Programs Explained
In this episode of the Tiaras and Tech podcast, Shelley Benhoff talks to Sumudu Siriwardana on the topic of being a Project Leader vs. Project Manager. Shelley is a Business Owner, Author, and Professional Speaker. She is also a Sitecore Technology MVP with experience as a Lead Developer for many years. Intro Hello Gems! Welcome to another episode of Tiaras and Tech. I'm your host, Shelley Benhoff, and today I'm talking to Sumudu Siriwardana about Being a Project Leader vs. Project Manager. She is a Project Manager at Hashnode, aspiring web developer, tech influencer, and a Mother. We talked about the importance of emotional intelligence, the relationship between dev and PM, and our thoughts on project management practices gone wrong. Without further ado, on to the episode! Links to learning resources: Freecodecamp - https://www.freecodecamp.org/ Scrimba - https://scrimba.com/ The Odin Project - https://www.theodinproject.com/ Traversy Media - https://www.youtube.com/c/TraversyMedia The Net Ninja - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNetNinja Kevin Powell - https://www.youtube.com/kepowob The Complete JavaScript Course 2022: From Zero to Expert by Jonas Schmedtmann - https://www.udemy.com/course/the-complete-javascript-course/ Connect with Sumudu! https://twitter.com/sumusiriwardana https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumudusiriwardana/ Connect with Shelley! https://twitter.com/sbenhoff https://pluralsight.pxf.io/mgGLbO Tiaras and Tech is dedicated to providing inspiration for women & marginalized groups in tech. We aim to provide support, celebrate successes, & discuss how we're treated. Follow us! YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram @tiarasandtech tiarasandtech.com Tiaras and Tech is a HoffsTech production. Theme music by Nobuo Uematsu and Juan Medrano https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03610 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tiaras-and-tech/support
Quincy Larson is founder and CEO of the non-profit software school freeCodeCamp, where anyone can go and lear to program for free. Quincy is making real change in the world. This episode was recorded for my podcast Lunch with LyleQuincy mentioned two corses on freeCodeCamp Learn Responsive Web Design by Building 20 Projects Relational Database Course
Become a blockchain developer with the freeCodeCamp smart contract and Solidity tutorial on freeCodeCamp. Tutorial creator Patrick Collins from Chainlink Labs joins to explain why this is the internet's best resource for learning Solidity coding and smart contract development. freeCodeCamp Tutorial: https://bit.ly/3vOgTSO Patrick Collins: https://twitter.com/PatrickAlphaC Chainlink Labs: https://chainlinklabs.com/ Chainlink Today: https://twitter.com/ChainlinkToday Andy Boyan: https://twitter.com/andyboyan