The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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