The freeCodeCamp Podcast

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

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