#113 AI and the Future of Education with Seth Goldin
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson discusses AI and the future of education with Seth Goldin. Among other things, Seth is co-founder of College Compendium, an education charity, and studies computer science at Yale. Also, the quote Quincy mentioned isn't by Ben Franklin. It's by William Blackstone in 1769 who said: "the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer (innocent person be convicted)." Seth's free "Google Like a Pro" course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-google-like-a-pro/ Seth's free "The Ethics of AI and ML" course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-ethics-of-ai-and-ml/ Follow Seth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/seth_goldin Seth's recommended article "ChatGPT is a Blurry JPEG of the Web": https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web Klara and the Sun book Seth recommended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_and_the_Sun Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
1 Mar 20241h 58min
#112 What it's like working at ChatGPT Creator Open AI – My Interview with Logan Kilpatrick
On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview Logan Kilpatric, a software engineer and ChatGPT creator Open AI's first-ever Developer Advocate hire. The week Logan started, ChatGPT hit 1 million users. (It now has 180 million monthly users.) During our conversation, Logan shares his journey from Illinois to Harvard, NASA, and now the world's most-watched tech company, Open AI. Along the way, he joined the board of NumFOCUS, which oversees Data Science Python libraries like NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib. This is my long, intimate conversation with an emerging star in the AI and Machine Learning world. Logan is also a prolific freeCodeCamp.org contributor. It was a blast talking with Logan for nearly two hours. I think you'll dig it. You can follow Logan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OfficialLoganK
23 Feb 20241h 40min
#111 How the Insane Pressure of Working in Classical Music Prepared Jessica Wilkins for Tech
On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview orchestral musician-turned software engineer Jessica Wilkins. Jessica found success in the extremely competitive field of classical music, playing the Oboe in orchestras, recording sessions, and even at major events such as the NFL awards on national television. She started her own business – a sheet music e-commerce website. This not only helped her survive in the high cost of living city of Los Angeles – it also helped her learn web development. During the pandemic, many of her performance and recording gigs were cancelled. This inspired her to dive much deeper into coding. She now works as a software engineer at freeCodeCamp, and has contributed substantially to freeCodeCamp's core curriculum. Also, her many freeCodeCamp tutorial articles have more than 400,000 readers each month. During our conversation, Jessica talks about the insane pressure she faced as a musician, where standards are incredibly high. So many people want to be professional musicians, and there is so little money in the industry. Jessica was a rare case of finding success. But even that success could not dissuade her from diving into software development. This is a long, intimate conversation with one of the sharpest minds behind freeCodeCamp.org. It was a blast talking with Jessica for more than two hours. I think you'll dig it. Some timestamps in case you want to skip some our lengthy discussion about music education and the music industry: - 0:00:00 My bass intro. See if you can guess this 1970 classic bassline. - 0:01:00 Our discussion of Jessica's upbringing by a school teacher and single mom, and her journey into classical music - 1:07:00 Jessica Learns to code and builds a profitable sheet music e-commerce business - 1:35:00 Jessica's decision to go all in on software development - 1:44:00 Contract work and thoughts on what caused recent tech layoffs Links we talk about during the interview: One of Jessica's articles - 40 JavaScript Projects for Beginners – Easy Ideas to Get Started Coding JS: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-projects-for-beginners/ The Black Excellence Music Project, Jessica's first React project: https://blackexcellencemusicproject.com/ Danny Thompson freeCodeCamp Podcast interview: https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/site/were-back-danny-thompsons-journey-from-chicken-fryer-to-software-engineer Danny's LinkedIn course that Quincy mentions: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/linkedin-profiles-for-technical-professionals/main-visuals-on-your-profile
16 Feb 20242h 32min
#110 AI Engineering with Scrimba CEO & Engineer Per Borgen
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Per Borgen about AI engineering and interactive developer education. Per is the co-founder and CEO of Scrimba and is a software engineer. Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Links we talk about during the interview: Per's HTML + CSS course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-html-and-css-from-the-ceo-of-scrimba/ Per's JavaScript course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/full-javascript-course-for-beginners/
9 Feb 202450min
#109 Oh My Zsh Creator and Planet Argon CEO Robby Russell
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder 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 developer consultancy he created two decades ago. He's done work for Nike and lots of other companies. Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Links we talk about during the interview: - 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 - The Sandi Metz interview episode of Maintainable that Robby mentions: https://maintainable.fm/episodes/sandi-metz-making-is-easy-mending-is-a-challenge - The Mighty Missoula (Robby's Post Rock band) live set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63DE2tNlAWY - Planet Argon, the software development consultancy Robby co-founded two decades ago, and is CEO of: https://www.planetargon.com/
2 Feb 20242h 8min
#108: Running the Biggest Programming Channel on YouTube with freeCodeCamp's Beau Carnes
Beau Carnes has run the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel for the past 5 years, taking it from 75,000 subscribers all the way up to 9 million. Beau started out working as a Special Education teacher at a Michigan high school. He taught himself how to code before working as a software engineer. He has since taught dozens of programming tutorials and helped curate more than 1,000 courses for the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel. During our conversation, Beau shares the challenges he faced during his career transition as a father of 3 kids. He talks about how he finished a second degree in software development in just 6 months. And he even talks about his love of stilt-walking. For the first time ever, I've published this interview as a YouTube video podcast as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNPF0oPcMDs Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Beau's YouTube course style guide: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-a-great-technical-course/ How I got a second degree and earned 5 developer certifications in just one year, while working and raising two kids https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-got-a-second-degree-and-earned-5-developer-certifications-in-just-one-year-while-working-and-2b902ee291ab/ Beau's personal website: http://carnes.cc/
25 Jan 202452min
#107 Kylie Ying on MIT, CERN, Figure Skating, and Poker AI
I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freeCodeCamp.org. And each week, I'm bringing you insight from developers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people who are getting into tech. Today I'm joined by Kylie Ying. She's a software engineer and a teacher at freeCodeCamp. We talk about Kylie's 5 years at MIT, her time at CERN working on the Large Hadron Collider, competitive figure skating, and even poker-playing AIs. I hope these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts are firing you up about learning more about technology. Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Links to things we discuss: - Kylie review of her 5 years at MIT (20 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtujJjKmfN0 - Kylie's video about CERN's Large Hadron Collider (17 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmJ44z9hl8c - Kylie's Machine Learning for Everbody course (2 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-for-everybody/ - Kylie's Hot Dog or Not Dog Neural Networks course (2 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/convolutional-neural-networks-course-for-beginners/ - Real Genius movie trailer – classic 80s movie about graduate school (2 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuv7SIVNkx8
15 Des 20231h 39min
#106 The History of Online Courses with Class Central Founder Dhawal Shah
Dhawal Shah is creator of Class Central, a popular search engine for online courses. Dhawal talk about the history of online courses and the Massive Open Online Course revolution of the early 2010s. We also talk about his childhood growing up in India, and how his life changed one day when he won a computer from a Cartoon Network sweepstakes. Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Links we discussed: Dhawal's article: Here are 850+ Ivy League Courses You Can Take Right Now for Free: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ivy-league-free-online-courses-a0d7ae675869/ Dhawal's article: I uncovered 1700 Coursera Courses that Are Still Completely Free: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/coursera-free-online-courses-6d84cdb30da/ Dhawal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhawalhshah Dhawal's 3 recommended Massive Open Online Courses: - Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects: https://www.classcentral.com/course/learning-how-to-learn-2161 - University of Alberta's Mountains 101 Course: https://www.classcentral.com/course/mountains-101-7455 - Stanford's Data Structures and Algorithms Course: https://www.classcentral.com/course/algorithms-18869
8 Des 20231h 57min
