Show Notes
Kaleb Garner is a software engineer working at a medical technology app company. He got a scholarship to play baseball at a state university, but a serious knee injury ended his career and he dropped out. After moving back in with his parents and working at an optometry office, he decided to teach himself programming. He used freeCodeCamp and 100Devs to learn for free, and got his first front end developer job when he was only 19. He has since expanded his skills to work on large legacy Python and C# codebases. We talk about: - How his Major League Baseball goals and his dream of becoming a doctor ended in the same catastrophic semester - His grind to get his first developer role after only 20 carefully researched job applications - Getting laid off right before his wedding and losing all discipline in his frantic job search - Tips for making your skillset and your network layoff-resilient Links we discuss: - Recent NY Times article Quincy mentions about people struggling to find developer jobs ("They're doing it wrong") [paywalled]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html - 1999 movie Office Space trailer about a simpler time in corporate life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_fG_zLbBeU - Leon Noel's 100Devs program and community that Kaleb used alongside freeCodeCamp: https://100devs.org/ Links from the news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published an in-depth Harvard course that will teach you SQL and relational databases. You'll learn key concepts like CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete). You'll also learn how to normalize data, join tables, and index your databases for faster performance. You'll use real-world datasets and write your own queries in SQLite, before moving on to working with PostgreSQL and MySQL. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-databases-and-sql-from-harvard-university 2. This advanced Python Machine Learning course will teach you the history of computer vision architectures. You'll learn about design philosophies like LeNet, AlexNet, Xception, and Vision Transformers. You'll see side-by-side comparisons, and learn how they've progressed over the past few decades. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-history-of-deep-learning-vision-architectures 3. freeCodeCamp also published this handbook that will teach you all about JSON Web Tokens, which are key to modern authentication and security. You'll learn their history and how they work, through a series of helpful diagrams and code examples. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-json-web-token-handbook-learn-to-use-jwts-for-web-authentication/ 4. Learn how developers are using the Compound Components Design Pattern to clean up their messy React code. You can code along at home and refactor several components. This will help you solidify your understanding of this design pattern and tighten up the front end logic on your projects. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/compound-components-pattern-in-react/ These are just some of the many open source learning resources that the freeCodeCamp community published this week. We have ridiculous momentum right now. We're teaching more and more programming topics, as well as world languages like Spanish and Chinese. If you're looking for a modern equivalent to the Library of Alexandria, well, we're building it. Start supporting our charity and our mission today: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
More from The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Today Quincy Larson interviews Rachel An Fernandez. She's a computer science student at Stanford and the youngest instructor at the entire university. She recently helped organize TreeHacks, Stanford's annual hackathon, which narrowed 15,000 applicants down to just 1,000 participants. They built projects over a single weekend and competed for a million dollars in prizes. Rachel grew up in Westminster, a small California town with a largely Mexican and Vietnamese population. 70% of students at her high school had family incomes so low that qualified for free school lunches. And Rachel was the first student from there to get into Stanford in years. We talk about: - The state of computer science education in 2026 - Her thoughts on C++, a language she teaches at Stanford, and its continued importance - And her tips for how devs should use AI tools without "deskilling" themselves 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: - Rachel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-fernandez28/ - freeCodeCamp book on AI Assisted Coding that Quincy mentions: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-become-an-expert-in-ai-assisted-coding-a-handbook-for-developers/ 1. freeCodeCamp just published an automation for beginners course. You'll learn how to automate your routine daily tasks by piping together triggers and actions. By the end of the course, you'll have your own Model Context Protocol server that can share info between your productivity apps and your agents. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/reclaim-your-time-master-automation-with-zapier/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a full-length handbook on data quality. You'll learn the most common ways that bad data enters a system, and how to prevent them. You'll get exposure to the different layers where data validation needs to happen: front end, back end, database, business logic, and data ingestion. The handbook will also walk you through testing strategies to keep bad data out of your projects. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-quality-handbook-data-errors-the-developer-s-role-validation-layers/ 3. AI Governance may sound like something only managers need to worry about. But in practice, it's us developers who have to actually build the responsible AI systems. You can bookmark this new freeCodeCamp handbook and code along with four hands-on Python projects: a model card generator, a bias detection pipeline, an audit trail logger, and a human-in-the-loop escalation system. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-ai-governance-handbook-build-responsible-ai-systems/ 4. Today's song of the week is Danza Marilù by French disco band L'Impératrice. This 2024 banger features a heavily syncopated bass line that I think you'll love. The singer subtly alternates between French and Italian. And the music video is unique and all good vibes as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC0ErOoQcUA
Today Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Rose. She's a dev and teacher who's worked on open data projects at Mozilla and lots of open source projects. We talk about: - How the whole world is hard, and how embracing that difficulty rather than avoiding it can make you a better thinker - The Bad Website club, a free online bootcamp where people learn front end development together that starts this April - Why building "silly little things" is one of the best things you can do as a learner Links from our discussion: - Bad Website Club announcement: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/bad-website-club-bootcamp-based-on-freecodecamp-rwd-cert/ - Study Jess mentions about AI and worker productivity: https://www.raconteur.net/technology/ai-meaningful-work Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new Python course that will teach you how to program your own aerial drone. You don't need to own a drone. You'll use the PySimverse simulator to practice autonomous flight. First you'll learn the basics of drone components, 3D movement, and common computer vision tasks. Then you'll learn about navigation, image capture, hand gesture control, autonomous following, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-ai-drone-programming/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a massive course that will teach you how to program NVIDIA's H100 GPUs using CUDA. You'll learn about CUTLASS optimizations, multi-GPU scaling, and the primitives developers use to train large models. (24 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/cuda-programming-for-nvidia-h100s 3. If you've ever wanted to build a video editor or live streaming tool that runs entirely in a browser, this handbook is worth bookmarking. You'll see how the WebCodecs API can give you low-level, hardware-accelerated control over video processing. You'll learn key concepts like video frames, codecs, containers, and muxing. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-webcodecs-handbook-native-video-processing-in-the-browser/ 4. Kubernetes doesn't have a built-in user database. Instead it relies on a chain of authenticators. This course will teach you how x509 client certificates work, why they're not ideal for human users in production, and how to instead deploy your own self-hosted browser-based OpenID Connect login. (29 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-authenticate-users-in-kubernetes-x509-certificates-oidc-and-cloud-identity/ 5. The song of the week is 1983's "Oblivious" by Scottish New Wave band Aztec Camera. I love the song's Django Reinhart-style Flamenco guitars, mischevous bass line, and stereo percussion. Believe it or not, front man Roddy Frame was only 18 years old when he wrote the song, sang it, and played it's iconic guitar solo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdVb4Iuq0e8
Today Quincy Larson interviews Mark Mahoney. He worked as a dev before becoming a computer science professor. He's taught computer science for 23 years at Carthage College, a 180-year-old US university. He's also taught thousands of developers through his free programming courses built on top of his own open source course platform, Playback Press. We talk about: - Why learning programming the hard way is still the right way - How to not deskill yourself when programming with LLM tools - And why now is a great time to study computer science 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: - Playback Press, Mark's free interactive courses: https://playbackpress.com/books - Mark's personal website: https://markm208.github.io/ - One of the many vibe-coded projects Mark mentions: https://markm208.github.io/vibeCodingInClassTools/git-workflow-simulator.html - Mark's tutorials on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/markm208/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course on AI-assisted software development. You'll learn common terminal workflows and tips for "pair programming" alongside LLM tools. You'll also get exposure to tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw. At the end of the day, the entire goal of using these tools is to build more features without compromising the maintainability of your codebase. (90 minute YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ai-tools-for-developers/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a beginner level course on AI literacy for everybody that you can also share with your family. First you'll learn about the two traits that definte artificial intelligence: autonomy and adaptivity. Then you'll build your own image classifier right on your own phone or laptop. This course also delves into considerations like algorithmic bias the environmental costs of training and running LLM systems. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ai-literacy-for-everybody/ 3. Learn how to build your own QR code generator using JavaScript. This tutorial will walk you through generating QR codes entirely in a browser without the need for a backend. You'll learn how to validate input, clear previous output, and use a JavaScript library to render the code instantly on the client side. Then you'll see how to extend the project with downloads, custom styling, WiFi support, and more. (7 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-qr-code-generator-using-javascript/ 4. I'm thrilled to announce that the Bad Website Club is back for another Responsive Web Design bootcamp based on freeCodeCamp's curriculum. It starts April 24 and runs for 10 weeks. You can join their Discord community and tune in for live streams. It's lead by volunteer devs who are passionate about helping folks learn CSS and JavaScript fundamentals. (5 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/bad-website-club-bootcamp-based-on-freecodecamp-rwd-cert/ 5. Today's song of the week is 2008's Strange Overtones. The Talking Heads singer David Byrne blends his voice with Brian Enos, who handles organs and synths. The entire affair plays over an infectious palm-muted guitar line, and driving bass. This is a perfect mid-week jam. Put it on during during your commute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvZhpCYWFzs
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