#214 Lessons from 15,031 hours of coding live on Twitch with Chris Griffing

Today Quincy Larson interviews Chris Griffing is a software engineer and prolific streamer of live coding on Twitch. He spent 10 years as a "snowboard bum" doing odd jobs at ski resorts to facilitate him spending as much time on the mountain as possible. At age 28 he taught himself PHP programming and started building websites for friends. In 2018 he started streaming himself programming on Twitch, which blew up during the pandemic and has lead to more opportunities as a dev and developer advocate. We talk about: - How he learned programming at age 28 and built projects for friends before going pro  - How learning Go made him a better Rust Developer and why you should be a polyglot programmer - How Chris uses LLM tools but still builds most codebases manually - Tips for building projects in public for anyone interested in also stream coding Support for this podcast comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Chris's Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/cmgriffing - Chris's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@cmgriffing Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course that will walk you through using the popular AI-assisted development tool Claude Code. You'll learn about Code Harnesses, Agentic Loops, Sandboxing, and other key concepts. By the end of the course you'll be able to spin up an entire fleet of agents to help you fix bugs and build out new features. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/claude-code-essentials-exampro/ 2. We also published a course on the Hugging Face tool ecosystem. You'll learn how to connect your models, datasets, and deployment tools into a single unified build pipeline. (7 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/deploying-ai-models-with-hugging-face/ 3. Learn how to secure your Kubernetes Cluster. This in-depth tutorial starts by exploring real-world security breaches at big companies like Tesla, Shopify, and Capital One. Then it walks you through how to prevent each of these types of attacks by hardening your setup. (1 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-secure-a-kubernetes-cluster-handbook/ 4. Tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published a new Spanish-language course on SQL and relational databases. It covers tables, foreign keys, queries, data manipulation, and more. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-sql-course-for-beginners-in-spanish/ 5. Today's song of the week is the 1988 song by Genesis sideproject Mike + the Mechanics: "Nobody's Perfect". If you like synths and guitar solos, you'll love this song. Paul Young has an incredible voice. And I love the edifying message behind the song. The video is as 80s as they get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7mQ26YCsho

Today Quincy Larson interviews Landon Gray. He's a software engineer who worked at agencies for years. Then he taught himself AI assisted software development. And now he's helping other devs do the same.  Landon's famous for proving that RAG pipelines can be written in Ruby and popularizing Ruby as a language for building machine learning projects. He works as an AI Engineer at a enterprise software company and runs a popular newsletter. We talk about: - How Large Language Models are just the raw fuel, and harnesses are the real engine to get things done - Why building your professional network is so helpful for finding clients and landing job interviews - Why Landon helped port Python machine learning libraries to Ruby, and why he thinks that – now that AI is just an API call away – the Ruby ecosystem is better-positioned than ever. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Landon's Substack newsletter: https://landongray.substack.com Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new YouTube course that will teach you beginner Front-end Development skills like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You can code along at home and build a variety of projects: your own interactive quiz game, a currency converter app, and even a Trello-style kanban board. Along the way you'll learn how to use APIs and local storage to extend the functionality of these bite-sized apps. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-19-web-dev-projects-using-html-css-javascript/ 2. Learn how to properly test your software and ensure it doesn't break when you add new features. Prolific freeCodeCamp instructor Beau Carnes teaches this course. He'll introduce you to the Testing Pyramid and show you how to balance fast unit tests against complex end-to-end user journeys. You'll also learn how to automate some of this testing using an open source library called Playwright and an LLM testing tool. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/software-testing-with-playwright/ 3. More and more apps are relying on probabilistic LLM output alongside deterministic API calls. This makes life harder for devs who now need to ensure that hallucinations don't escape to end users. freeCodeCamp just published this advanced observability tutorial that will teach you emerging best practices and architectural patterns for dealing with this. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-end-to-end-llm-observability-in-fastapi-with-opentelemetry/ 4. Learn how to containerize your MLOps pipelines. This tutorial is the result of hard-won deployment wisdom. The author spent three weeks debugging a Python library error due to dependency conflicts. His eventual answer: containerize entire project with Docker. This tutorial will show you how to structure your containers with multi-stage builds. You'll also learn how to set up experiment tracking with MLflow, versioning with DVC, GPU passthrough, and other advanced techniques. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/containerize-mlops-pipeline-from-training-to-serving/ 6. Today's song of the week is 2006's Everybody by UK producers Basement Jaxx. If you're familiar with their work, you know you're in for a psychedelic yet silly romp. Between the spoons, bongos, and swooning chorus the song feels like it's held together with duct tape but it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrMot81VE8g

Today Quincy Larson interviews Chris Coyier. He's a front-end developer and co-founder of CodePen and the CSS Tricks blog. He has also recorded more than 700 podcasts about software engineering. We talk about: - How he thinks front-end development tools are 90% of the way to where they need to be - How developing for the web is "just as good as mobile, and you can reuse it everywhere." - And why high skilled devs working on novel problems don't need to worry about AI disrupting their careers Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Chris's personal site: https://chriscoyier.net/ - CodePen: https://codepen.io/chriscoyier - ShopTalk Podcast: https://shoptalkshow.com/ - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/chriscoyier.net - Mastodon: https://front-end.social/@chriscoyier Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive DevOps course that will teach you how to deploy your apps to production safely. You'll build your own CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) pipeline. Along the way you'll learn about branching strategies, Jenkins Freestyle Jobs, GitFlow, Maven, and more. This is a perfect way to build your skills over spring break. (17 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ci-cd-in-production-with-jenkins/ 2. Learn how to fine-tune an LLM to incorporate your own proprietary data. This is super useful if you need off-the-shelf LLMs to do novel tasks that they weren't originally optimized for. This course will teach you all about Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning, and how to use techniques like LoRA and QLoRA to train models on consumer-grade hardware. No data center needed. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-to-fine-tune-llms-in-12-hours/ 3. Learn how to protect your sensitive data by running your LLMs locally. This quick tutorial will show you how to get up and running with Ollama, Python, LangChain, and LangGraph. It will also walk you through the various trade-offs you face when you avoid sharing your data with big tech companies. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/protect-sensitive-data-with-local-llms/ 4. Learn how agents are changing the field of software development. This in-depth tutorial will get you hands-on experience with building your own Flutter mobile app using Antigravity and Stitch. You don't even need to know Flutter. You just need to understand the core concepts and make the architectural decisions. You'll quickly see how sophisticated these tools have gotten over the past few months. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-ai-agents-are-changing-development-by-building-a-flutter-app/ 5. Today's album of the week is 1982 jazz fusion classic Mint Jams by Casiopea. This is the perfect record to put on when you want to get a ton of work done, and feel great in the process. For every song, each of the performers gets a solo. That means every track you're going to hear a spicy bass solo, keyboard solo, drum solo, and guitar solo. Love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEI3PpXEAo

Today Quincy Larson interviews Luke Ciciliano. He's a front-end developer who runs Modern Website Design, a software consultancy that builds solutions for small to medium sized businesses. He taught himself programming in the 1980s and started landing clients in the 1990s. He's going to share tips for building your own software consultancy in your city and winning clients. We talk about: - How AI tools are actually creating MORE potential small business customers. Not fewer. - How to engage with clients and close the deal. - And why long term relationships are the key to building a business as a freelance developer Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Luke's website: https://www.modern-website.design/about-us/ - Luke's freeCodeCamp course: "How to Make Money as a Freelance Developer: Business Tips from an Expert" https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/tips-for-making-money-as-a-freelance-developer-39fae6b76972/ - Luke's many other freelance developer-focused courses on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/Luke-Ciciliano/ Community news section: 1. If you're interested in learning about AI infrastructure, freeCodeCamp just published this new course that will help you pass the NVIDIA Infrastructure and Operations Certification Exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. He'll introduce you to key concepts like GPU architecture, CUDA, and use cases for Accelerated Computing. Even if you decide not to pursue the certification, you'll still learn a lot from this course. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-nvidia-certified-associate-ai-infrastructure-and-operations-certification-exam/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a new course that will teach you full-stack JavaScript development by building your own professional-grade Loom-style screen-sharing platform. You can code along at home as you watch instructor Beau Carnes create a Next.js app, then add screen and mic capturing using standard media APIs. Then you'll learn how to store video data in the cloud, and automatically transcribe it. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/loom-clone-next-javascript-mux/ 3. You may have heard the term DevOps, or Development and Operations. Well now there's another emerging field, MLOps, or Machine Learning and Operations. freeCodeCamp just published an MLOps for beginners Python course that will teach you how to take your models beyond Jupyter Notebook and into production environments. Along the way, you'll learn tools like Hugging Face, MLflow, and Databricks. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mlops-with-mlflow-and-databricks/ 4. Learn how to enjoy the code review process with what Abbey Perini calls "pull request therapy." She explains her own struggles with perfectionism, her anxiety from hostile reviewers she's encountered in the past, and how she's overcome these hurdles to become a prolific contributor. Abbey also shares tips to help you identify friendly open source projects. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learning-to-enjoy-code-reviews-with-npmx/ 5. Today's song of the week is 1983's "City of Love" by London progressive rock band Yes. I love the sleezy guitar, synth hits, and lurching bassline. This song also has a super open, airy drum sound. Top it off with some vocal harmony and some cynical lyrics and you've got a great late night driving anthem. https://youtu.be/pZ6xV72oxo0

Today Quincy Larson interviews Justin Searls. He's a software engineer who cofounded a software agency 15 years ago that's still going – even after he figured out how to make a lot of money quickly and retire at age 38 once he had enough savings. These days he's gone from solving problems for client to solving solving problems for himself by building open source software. Often using emerging tools like agents. He says he getting way more done now than ever before. We talk about: - How software development is ceasing to be a team sport and is now more about individual devs working directly for the people paying them - How verifiability is everything - whether it's agents contributing to your codebase or humans - How someone just now entering the field can use emerging tools to get an edge over more experienced developers Note that I don't edit or censor these interviews at all. Justin uses some pretty blunt language so you may not want to listen to this around young children. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Justin's website: https://justin.searls.co - The Breaking Change podcast: https://justin.searls.co/casts - Justin's article "There's no AI in team": https://justin.searls.co/links/2025-08-03-there-is-no-ai-in-team/ - Justin's article about how software is supply-constrained: https://justin.searls.co/links/2025-11-04-software-is-supply-constrained-for-now/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a course that will take you deep into the modern Kubernetes ecosystem. You'll implement advanced industry standards such as Gateway API for traffic management, CloudNativePG for managing PostgreSQL databases, and cert-manager for automated HTTPS security. By the end of the course, you'll have the confidence to manage production-grade environments. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-kubernetes-through-production-ready-practice/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive Notion course. It's not just a fancy notebook – you can use it as a full-blown operating system. You can code along at home and build your own task manager using Notion's "Software Legos" philosophy. Then you'll integrate your project with mail and calendar functionality, dashboards, and other advanced features. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lean-notion-in-12-hours/ 3. Learn how to guide agents to write secure code using a robust framework of rules and tests. Software engineer and recent podcast guest Sumit Saha shares his step-by-step process by building a Node.js shopping cart app using an agent. Instead of just using naive "one-shot" prompts, he leverages server-side validation and test-driven development. Well worth reading. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-guide-ai-with-rules-and-tests/ 4. Learn the Python you need to know to build your own agents. This course starts by teaching you core Python syntax and best practices before moving on to NumPy, Pandas, and SQL. With these tools in your toolbelt, you can manage the data that fuels modern AI tools. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-python-and-build-autonomous-agents/ 5. Today's song of the week is from the UK band Unkle – 2003's hypnotic ballad "What Are You to Me?". The groove is mostly heald together by accoustic guitar and piano on top of layers of synth bass and breakbeats. We also get some Soulful, laid back feel from the featured vocalist, Joel Cadbury of the band South. This song just melts into the background. I think you're going to like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgrN2uQKq9k

Today Quincy Larson interviews Carl Brown, who runs the Internet of Bugs YouTube channel and has worked as a dev at Amazon, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and startups for over 37 years. We talk about: - The hype versus the utility in LLMs and agent code generation tools - Why you might want to target developer jobs at smaller companies, and how these differ from "big tech" - How everyone will face agism eventually. Carl argues that a consulting career is a great escape hatch. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - My interview with Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky whom we discuss: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/trello-stack-overflow-founder-joel-spolsky-podcast-interview/ - Quincy's free book "How to learn to code and get a developer job": https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-book/ Ted Chiang "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web" article Carl mentions:  https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web The Karpathy on Moltbook saga:     //Karpathy hyping up MoltBook     https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2017370646767145419 //Noon Jan 30     //Doubles Down after "being accused of overhyping" Moltbook     https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017442712388309406 // 9:39 PM  Jan 30     // Tweet showing Karpathy's (redacted) private information from a MoltBook security breach     https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2017732898632437932 // 4:53PM Jan 31     // Fortune quotes Karpathy saying MoltBook is "a dumpster fire, and I also definitely do not recommend that people run this stuff on their computers"     https://fortune.com/2026/02/02/moltbook-security-agents-singularity-disaster-gary-marcus-andrej-karpathy/  // Feb 2 Quote from Cory Doctorow about code failing well: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/  Excerpt from Cory's Mastodon with that quote in it: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115848576290992814 Mastodon from Carl to Cory telling him I'm going to use that quote (which he boosted): https://mastodon.social/@carlbrown/115867074293449215 Article on Claude 4.6 being good at finding bugs with fuzzing: https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/ Reference to it from Computer Security Guru Bruce Schneier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/llms-are-getting-a-lot-better-and-faster-at-finding-and-exploiting-zero-days.html  Older paper on LLMs being good at fuzzing prior to this new claim about claude 4.6: https://arxiv.org/html/2508.01750v1 Falsehoods programmers believe about names from Patio11: https://img.sauf.ca/pictures/2025-10-23/61fb6db44e7173cd9318753c955f7dda.pdf Same kind of article, but this one is about time instead of names (Carl said he was wrong in that Partick/Patio11 didn't write this one, but it's worth passing along): https://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time Article with discussion of ageism in tech with the Zuckerberg quote Carl was thinking of: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-valley-ageist-or-just-smart/ Book on (interpersonal) networking that Carl recommends:  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227558/never-eat-alone-expanded-and-updated-by-keith-ferrazzi-and-tahl-raz/ And another one: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105512/dig-your-well-before-youre-thirsty-by-harvey-mackay/ Carl's video on how AdTech is fracturing Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmYXyWbis9w Carl's Website: https://internetofbugs.com/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course that will teach you the fundamental concepts, protocols, and architectures of computer networking. You'll learn key network engineering topics like topology, subnetting, flow control, routing, IPv4 addressing, DNS, and more. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/computer-networking-fundamentals/ 2. And we just published our second-ever chess course. This time you'll learn the Italian Game, one of the most common chess openings. This handbook and accompanying video course are taught by freeCodeCamp engineer Ihechikara Abba, who has a chess Elo rating of 2285. He will lay out the many traps that white can set for black, and how to not fall for them. (full-length handbook and 1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-chess-italian-game-handbook-traps-for-white/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a full-length book on Product-Led Research. This is a must-read for any manager within a tech company. It's written by a CTO and security researcher named Omer Rosenbaum, who says: "if you manage Research like it's Development, things aren't going to go well for you." He breaks down the most common research frameworks and methodologies, and contextualizes them through a series of case studies. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/product-led-research-a-practical-guide-for-randd-leaders-full-book/ 4. If you're a Python developer and use the Django web development framework, this tutorial will help you optimize the heck out of your APIs. Mari will teach you how to use profiling and logging to find bottlenecks in your codebase. Then she'll show you how to get extra performance through caching, so you can serve users at scale. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-django-rest-apis-for-performance/ 5. Today's song of the week is 1984 synth jazz classic "No One Emotion" by George Benson. I love the driving synth bass, the vocal harmonies, and excellent guitar solo by Michael Sambello – the guy who made the She's a Maniac song. If you're looking for a pick me up jam this song any day of the week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-MyvbolxG0

Today Quincy Larson interviews Shawn Wang. He's a software engineer, founder of the AI Engineer conference, and host of the Latent Space podcast focused on applying the latest models toward getting work done. We talk about: - How even if LLMs plateau, there will be still paths to better output through surrounding harness code - And three big areas researchers are exploring to further improve model performance: World Models, Multi-modality, and Embodied AI - Which skills Shawn thinks are most important for developers going forward - And why Shawn thinks you should switch your own self teaching from "just-in-time learning" to "just-in-case learning" Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Shawn's Tiny Teams Playbook: https://www.latent.space/p/tiny - Shawn's interview with FeiFei Li: https://www.latent.space/p/after-llms-spatial-intelligence-and?utm_source=publication-search - Boots Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory - Wirth's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law - Adversarial Reasoning: https://www.latent.space/p/adversarial-reasoning Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course that will teach you how to use the security-focused Kali Linux operating system. You'll learn how to identify, exploit, and defend against real-world vulnerabilities. You'll also build a solid foundation in penetration testing, network security, and vulnerability assessment. Most importantly, you'll learn how to think like a security engineer and leverage tools of the trade like Nmap and Wireshark. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cybersecurity-and-ethical-hacking-using-kali-linux/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a guide to passing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam. Beau Carnes teaches this course, which will walk you through key DevOps concepts. You'll start by setting up your K8s practice environment. Then you'll bootstrap a multi-node cluster and your control plane. You'll learn about Helm, High Availability Autoscaling, CoreDNS, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-kubernetes-administrator-certification-and-pass/ 3. We also just published a full-length handbook on freeCodeCamp Press that you can read right in your browser. It will teach you modern React data fetching best practices. You'll learn how to leverage Suspense, ErrorBoundary, and the new Use API. If you're interested in web development, this is well worth bookmarking. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-modern-react-data-fetching-handbook-suspense-use-and-errorboundary-explained/ 5. Finally, I'm proud to share this new DevOps course that freeCodeCamp instructor Gavin Lon just published. You'll learn how to take a full stack app on your local machine and ship it to a fully containerized production environment. Along the way, you'll learn about CI/CD pipelines, Docker images, launching containers, and more. By the end of the course, you'll have a professional-grade pipeline that automatically builds and deploys updates with every push. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-production-ready-pipeline-with-docker-cicd-and-hostinger/ 5. Today's song of the week is the 1980 classic "Turn me Loose" by Canadian band Loverboy. Build on top of a super catchy syncopated bassline, this song has some super expressive vocals, buzzing synths, percussive piano, and the guitar solo is top shelf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnHm4ro_l8s

Today Quincy Larson interviews Robby Russell. Robby created the open-source project Oh My ZSH. Oh My Zsh is a framework for managing your Zsh configuration for your command line terminal. It's been extremely popular among developers for more than a decade. Robby is also the CEO of Planet Argon, a software consultancy he created two decades ago. He's done work for Nike and lots of other companies. Note that this discussion is aimed at more advanced devs and engineering managers. We talk about: - How a "Don't let that happen again" culture can make it take forever to get new code into production, and how to reverse this - Tips for reducing your team's dependency on that one developer who's been there for years - Robby's perspective on LLM tools and how they're speeding up his workflows Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - My previous interview of Robby with his full journey: from painting houses to running a popular open source tool (2 hour listen): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-oh-my-zsh-creator-and-ceo-robby-russell/ - Robby reading his classic "d'Oh My Zshell" article recording on an older freeCodeCamp podcast episode: https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/site/ep-34-doh-my-zsh - A recent interview Robby did with Kent Beck, the software engineer who created the Extreme Programming agile methodology, on his Maintainable Podcast: https://maintainable.fm/episodes/kent-l-beck-youre-ignoring-optionality-and-paying-for-it - Robby's Robby on Rails blog he's been maintaining for over 20 years: https://robbyonrails.com/links/ - Robby's "On Rails" podcast, the official podcast of the Ruby on Rails framework: https://onrails.buzzsprout.com/ - The Mighty Missoula (Robby's Post Rock band): https://mightymissoula.com/ - The Ghostty cross-platform terminal that Robby recommended: https://ghostty.org/ - The fzf command line fuzzy finder tool Robby recommended: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf - The new omarchy Linux distribution Robby recommended: https://omarchy.org/ Community news section: 1. Learn to code in Python from one of the greatest living Computer Science professors, Harvard's David J. Malan. This is the 2026 version of the famous CS50 course. It will teach you Python programming fundamentals like functions, conditionals, loops, libraries, file I/O, and more. If you're new to Python, or to coding in general, this is an excellent place to start. (25 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/harvard-cs50-2026-free-computer-science-university-course 2. That Harvard computer science course will get you started with programming. But where do you go from there? freeCodeCamp just published a helpful tutorial that will help you bridge from beginner projects to building real-world applications that solve real-world problems. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-go-from-hello-world-to-building-real-world-applications/ 3. freeCodeCamp also just published a comprehensive intro to OpenClaw. If you've heard of Clawd Bot or Moltbot, this is the same tool, which they renamed to avoid confusion with the Claude LLM tool. OpenClaw is an agent and messaging gateway that lets you automate digital tasks through platforms like Discord. First you'll learn how to set it up. Then you'll learn security practices like implementing Docker-based sandboxing to protect your host system while your agent executes complicated workflows on your behalf. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/openclaw-full-tutorial-for-beginners 4. You may be using Bluetooth as you read this. It's been a key networking tool since 1999, and now it's getting 3 major upgrades: Passive Scanning, Bond Loss Reasons, and propagation of Service UUIDs. If you're interested in network engineering or IoT–style devices, this tutorial is well worth your read. (90 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-aosp-16-bluetooth-scanner-works-the-ultimate-guide/ 5. Today's song of the week is 2009 banger Sometimes by Australian band Miami Horror. I love the layers Peter Hooke-style guitar riff, the anthemic snyths, and the driving bassline. This is a perfect song to start of your morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn7FXGaHTNs

Today Quincy Larson interviews Tapas Adhikari. He's a software engineer who runs a firm of 20 developers who build projects for companies around the world. He's also a prolific teacher, having written 300 programming tutorials - including 47 for freeCodeCamp – and runs a popular English and Bangla-language YouTube channels. We talk about: - The changing nature of software engineering - Tips for building your own fully-remote software development firm and landing clients abroad - Lessons from mentoring more than 500 developers over the years Support for this podcast comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Tapas's handbook on how to get started contributing to open source projects (required reading IMHO): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-practical-guide-to-start-opensource-contributions/ - Tapas's many tutorials and handbooks on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/atapas/ - The developer firm Tapas co-founded and nows runs with more than a dozen developers: https://www.creowis.com/ - Tapas's personal website: https://www.tapasadhikary.com/ - Tapas's English-langauge programming tutorial YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tapasadhikary Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new Python Data Structures & Algorithms course that will help you understand key Dynamic Programming patterns. These approaches come up all the time in technical interviews. You'll learn Constant Transition, the Grid Pattern, Two Sequences, Interval DP, Non-Constant Transition, Knapsack-like problems, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-dynamic-programming-through-dynamic-visuals/ 2. If you're interested in building projects on top of Large Language Models, freeCodeCamp just published a Python course on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). You'll learn how to turn documents into embeddings then store them in vector databases. The course will also walk you through building your own Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-rag-and-mcp-fundamentals/ 3. Learn How Execution Context Works in JavaScript. If you're a JS dev, this is essential reading. You'll learn about interpretation vs compilation. Then you'll see how Node.js and the V8 engine load and execute code. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-execution-context-works-in-javascript-handbook/ 4. Finally, this weekend you can build your own fully-playable horror game based on the legendary "The Backrooms" liminal space. For some reason my kids are terrified of this weirdly normal-looking office setting. You'll build your own environment using Unreal Engine 5 and the Blueprints visual scripting tool that abstracts away all the C++ code for you. Throw in a body-cam style camera perspective and some creepy monsters and you'll have the perfect way to scare friends and family alike. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-the-backrooms-game-in-unreal-engine-5/ 5. Today's song of the week is And the Cradle Will Rock off Van Halen's 1980 album Women and Children first. The song starts out with a groove on a heavily distorted Wurlitzer elctromechanical piano. I love Michael Anthony's 8th note bassline and the loose high hats under Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo. This is a great lunch break song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11mBDT5mpdw

Today Quincy Larson interviews Sumit Saha, a software engineer and prolific teacher on YouTube. Sumit is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he runs a developer agency building projects for clients throughout Asia. We talk about: - How the hunger for learning is dying and people are increasingly drawn to shortcuts over taking the time to truly understand concepts - Sumit's information diet and his tips for expanding your skills - 5 key developer concepts explained like you're 5 Support comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Sumit's many freeCodeCamp handbooks and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sumitsaha/ - Sumit's website: https://www.sumitsaha.me/ - Sumit's Bangla-language YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@LearnwithSumit - Sumit's English YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@logicBaseLabs Community news section: 1. I spent three days at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts recording a documentary about the world's largest collegiate hackathon. More than 3,000 student developers participated in this year's UC Berkeley Cal Hacks hackathon. Over the course of 36 hours, they built a broad array of projects, then demo'd them to judges from industry. I now present to you the finished documentary. I hope you find it both enjoyable and inspiring. (80-minute documentary): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/inside-cal-hacks-2025-36-hours-at-the-worlds-largest-collegiate-hackathon/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a new course on building your own custom Kubernetes operators and controllers from scratch. You'll learn everything from the internal architecture of Informers and Caches to advanced concepts like Finalizers and Idempotency. If you're interested in DevOps, this is the course for you. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-your-own-kubernetes-operators-with-go-and-kubebuilder/ 3. Learn how to select the best GPU for economically training your models and running inference workloads. This no-nonsense guide will help you understand why certain specs matter more than others. It will also help you navigate around common pitfalls when buying or renting GPUs. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-choose-the-best-gpu-for-your-ai-workloads/ 4. Learn how to benchmark embedding models using your own custom data. This course will walk you through leveraging Vision Language Models for precise text extraction. You'll also learn how to use LLMs to generate synthetic evaluation data. Finally, you'll get exposure to the rigorous statistical tests that can help you find the best models for whatever hardware you have on hand. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-benchmark-embedding-models-on-your-own-data/ 5. Our song of the week: Supergroup The Power Station's 1985 hit "Some Like it Hot". This entire album features incredible drumming by Chic drummer Tony Thompson. And with Bass and Guitars by Duran Duran's John Taylor and Andy Taylor, the whole song has insane groove. 80s icon Robert Palmer sings and brings the texture. The guy reportedly smoked 60 cigarettes a day and paid the price a few years later, but man is his voice golden on this recording. Fun fact: Duran Duran's official site says they achieved the massive drum sound by putting mics at the top of a nearby elevator shaft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1t7OCESUw