#178 From freeCodeCamp to NASA with Data Engineer Joe Hill

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Hill. He's a software engineer who works on a data platform for NASA. Joe taught himself programming for 4 years while working as a janitor. As the single father of two Autistic boys, he first used his programming skills to build an iPad app to help them learn how to talk. We talk about: - Data Engineering and wrangling Department of Defense data into a central platform - The role of soft skills in getting things done in big organizations - The need for patience and practice in self-teaching - How to stop jumping from one tool to another and to instead go deep - Tips for parents raising kids with Autism Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - The trailer of the 1992 classic hacking heist movie Sneakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEhgUxQ322A - Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-hill-4a138123/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tai Groot. He's a back end software engineer and maintains an open source project used by companies like Google. For the first half of the interview we talk about back end programming languages. Then he shares tips for running learning back end development and running your own developer consultancy. We talk about: - The Performance VS Developer Experience trade-offs of Rust, Go, and TypeScript - How to run a free open source project profitably - How to mentor junior devs and ramp them up to work at your consultancy - Why he recommends devs learn Arch Linux Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org. Links we talk about during our conversation: - Tai's website: https://taigrr.com/ - Why Tai doesn't use Salt Stack anymore and how it inspired grlk: https://taigrr.github.io/blog/so-long-salt-project/ - The promise-breaking app: https://bridgetime.net/ - freeCodeCamp's Arch Linux handbook: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-install-arch-linux/ - The Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kelly Vaughn. She's a self-taught software engineer who ran her own developer agency. She was also the founding CTO at financial technology startup. Kelly runs the popular Ladybug Podcast focused on women in tech. We talk about: - How to freelance and ultimately create a developer agency and get clients - Tips for navigating the current developer job market - How to move from freelance to working for someone else - Tips for recognizing burnout so you can know when to take break Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kelly's website: https://kvlly.com - The Ladybug Podcast talks about tech, career, and code lead by women in tech: https://ladybug.dev - Kelly's engineering leadership newsletter: https://modernleader.is - Kelly's new burnout-focused newsletter: https://afterburnout.co

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews former CTO and prolific programming teacher Hitesh Choudhary. We talk about: - The limits of AI in building a robust codebase - Time management - Higher Education in India - Lessons from training developers - Lessons you've learned from your travel Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Hitesh's TypeScript course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/programming-in-typescript/ - Hitesh's project-oriented Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/comprehensive-full-stack-react-with-appwrite-tutorial/ - Hitesh's Git course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-git-in-detail-to-manage-your-code/ - Hitesh's TED talk on time management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1KrFy_3LYQ

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Attardi. He's a software engineer and prolific author of programming books.   We talk about: How software development has changed over the past 21 years Tips for suriving AI's sweeping changes to the field The evolving role of Computer Science degrees Why people should still read O'Reilly style programming books on dead trees Links we talk about during our conversation: Joe's freeCodeCamp books and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/joeattardi/ Joe's website: https://joeattardi.com/ Joe's Web API Cookbook: https://www.webapis.info/ Joe's open source projects on GitHub: https://github.com/joeattardi What Joe's desk looks like: https://x.com/JoeAttardi/status/1849819837360480658 Some games Joe's recently played: https://backloggd.com/u/jattardi/games?page=1

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews MacKevin Fey. He just got laid off last week from his senior engineering role at Microsoft. We talk about: How Mack's approaching the job search after being laid off Tips for building your own financial safety net while working as an engineer How to use your dev skills to help people around you in the meantime And how Mack trains mentally and physically for the rigors of modern work Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,423 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: Mack's Oscilliscope course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBfhD_4FPIYsQ9LiWYoHVrLbuvwnb_bvC

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews software engineer and live coding streamer Code;Life. For those of you watching the video version of this interview, she lives in Iraq and she uses a 3D avatar to protect her identity. We talk about: Training language models to work well with low-resource languages from Africa and the Middle East Growing up in Iraq and her early experiences with computers and the internet How streaming yourself coding can be a good way to practice your skills, update your knowledge, and motivate fellow devs How to participate in coding competitions and hackathons even if you feel intimidated Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Correction: Quincy mentioned half of all articles on Wikipedia are English. While this is no longer true, as of 2025 half of all Wikipedia pageviews are still for English articles. Links we talk about: Quincy's interview with Eammon Cottrell who automated his coffee shop chain: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/self-taught-coding-automating-coffee-shop-chain-eamonn-cottrell-interview-151/ MNIST character dataset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MNIST_database Zepeto tool for creating your own V-tuber avatar: https://page.zepeto.me/en/u4EEl3wK89atkdyUiivGEck Hugging Face AI Agent course (freeCodeCamp also has several courses on this on YouTube but this is the one CL mentioned): https://huggingface.co/learn/agents-course/en/unit0/introduction A video of Code;Life doing a Kaggle data science competition: https://youtube.com/live/WGLqd_sGiVA?feature=share

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Sam Crombie. He's a software engineer and prolific open source contributor to freeCodeCamp. He abandon his job at Microsoft, got into Y Combinator, and is currently in startup pivot hell trying to decide how to use the half million he raised. We talk about: How useful are AI coding tools, really? Tips for getting new users to care about your projects What's its really like running a Y-Combinator-funded tech startup Tips for getting into an Ivy League computer science degree program Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Links we talk about during our conversation: Sam's course on how to audit university courses: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-audit-a-class-university-course/ College Compendium, a univeristy course auditing tool Sam built with fellow freeCodeCamp podcast alum Seth Goldin: https://collegecompendium.org/

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Shashi Lo. He's a software engineer at Microsoft. He grew up the child of refugees. He wanted to start earning money and build his family so he abandoned his art school degree and taught himself how to program. He immediately hustled to land freelance development clients – something he still does today on top of his full time job and raising his 4 kids. We talk about: - Making ends meet doing freelance work - How to bootstrap your reputation toward getting a job in big tech - Mistakes he sees careers changers make - The pros and cons of working in big tech VS working at developer agencies Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Shashi's conference talks and other podcast interviews: https://bento.me/shashilo

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tae'lur Alexis. She's a developer and security analyst. Instead of going to college, Tae'lur spent years working various fast food and retail jobs. Tae'lur taught herself Python and JavaScript using freeCodeCamp and worked as a software engineer for 5 years before specializing in security engineering. Now instead of building applications, she breaks them. We talk about: - Making ends meet working McDonalds in Florida - How she taught herself programming using freeCodeCamp and the #100DaysOfCode challenge - Leveraging local meetups to make developer friends - Moving to Thailand and working remotely Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Tae'lur's website and blog articles: https://taeluralexis.com - Tae'lur's YouTube channel about working remotely in Bangkok: https://www.youtube.com/@TaelurAlexis - Tae'lur on Twitter: https://x.com/TaelurAlexis