In this special crossover episode, we celebrate 10 years of The Changelog. It's the home of the biggest podcast focused on open source, and a favorite of freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson. This 4-hour episode is actually 2 interviews: 1. For the first 2.5 hours, Quincy interviews Changelog co-hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo about how they got into software development and podcasting, and the history of their legendary podcast. 2. Then we end with Adam and Jerod turning the tables and interviewing Quincy about the past and future of freeCodeCamp.org. If you haven't heard of The Changelog before, it is website that hosts a podcast about open source software. Each week they interview new developers from around the software galaxy and explore what makes those projects tick. Adam Stacoviak founded The Changelog exactly 10 years ago. And Jerod Santo joined as co-host 7 years ago. Together - across 370 episodes - they've interviewed everyone from programmer legends, to the maintainers of open source projects you may have never even heard of. Quincy has listened to hundreds of The Changelog episodes over the years, and credits The Changelog with giving him such a broad view of open source, and the philosophies of the developers who started these projects. These interviews were conducted in-person in Adam's Houston-based studio. If you haven't yet, you should subscribe to The Changelog podcast. They have a variety of shows. We recommend starting with their Master Feed, which lets you explore all of their shows: https://changelog.com/master And check out the special website they built to celebrate their 10 year anniversary: changelog.com/ten Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamstac Follow Jerod on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jerodsanto And Quincy is: https://twitter.com/ossia

This week, for the last podcast episode of 2019, Abbey chatted with freelancer and content creator Jessica Chan - known as CoderCoder on social media - about how she got into tech and started her educational website and YouTube channel. Jessica grew up around computers, and her mother was a software engineer. But she didn't take a serious interest in coding until a bit later in life. After studying photography in college, she held a series of odd jobs before taking a contract data entry position. That data entry job happened to be at a small web dev shop, and while she was there she learned the basics of the trade. Once she'd honed her beginner's skills for a couple years, she got her first proper job as a web developer working for a small ad agency. She jumped in the deep end, learned a ton of new skills on the job (most of which she taught herself and figured out by googling and asking questions on Stack Overflow), and gradually got over her intense feelings of imposter syndrome. “When you’re going up against these people who have degrees in computer science and engineering, it really creates strong imposter syndrome. And unfortunately I think the only real cure for imposter syndrome is simply time. Just learn one new thing every day and in time you’ll keep progressing in your skills. Just try to make incremental changes and improvements.” Jessica realizes that part of her difficulties in learning how to code came from the fact that there weren't as many resources out there online when she was learning. The bootcamp explosion hadn't happened yet, freeCodeCamp didn't exist, and it was a lot harder to figure things out. But she pushed through. And she gained some important perspective on learning to code - which, she admits, is really, really hard. But after sticking with it for a while, she learned something important: “Over time, I learned that if I just spent time googling, asking people, finding and reading documentation, I knew I’d be able to figure out pretty much anything. So that realization that I could teach myself was a big confidence boost.” After about four years with the ad agency, she moved across the country and started working remotely. Which led her to realize she wanted to be her own boss. She also started her educational website and blog, Coder Coder, around that time. “I felt really passionate about coding – I really love web development. And I think seeing how many other people were struggling learning – I was part of these groups for newbie coders and I saw all these questions I had when I was learning to code. So it stemmed from my desire to help beginners and add my own voice and style to the other resources out there.” To give herself more time to work on the site and her side projects, she decided to strike out on her own and get into freelancing. Now, Jessica writes articles for her blog and other sites (including Developer News), posts tutorials and info on Instagram and Twitter, and has lately started live streaming on YouTube. She focuses on CSS, responsive web design, and other web dev topics. One of her goals for the coming year is to grow the YouTube channel and work on creating super high quality videos with her video editor/animator husband. And she's working on another huge project: a course on responsive web design for beginners. She has all sorts of fun ideas about how to make it engaging, so be on the lookout. In this episode, Jessica discusses so many valuable skills developers should have, like how to teach yourself to code how to beat imposter syndrome how to be your own mentor how to work with clients as a freelancer how to get the most out of online tutorials and how to tackle the job hunt among many other beginner-friendly topics. Regarding the job hunt, and building your portfolio, Jessica offered this perspective: “First of all, focus on learning the basic skills. Then once you have the skills to create portfolio projects, that’s a huge thing that can help you even if you don’t have actual clients. You don’t have to have an actual working website - but you need to be able to demonstrate to a potential employer what your skills are. Because if they can’t see what skills you have, why would they hire you?” And she's all about encouraging new developers to keep going and not give up. She knows how hard it is to learn to code - again, it's really hard - and she offered a treasure trove of helpful advice (like setting sustainable pace for your learning, having realistic expectations of yourself, and finding an online community). You can find Jessica on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/thecodercoder Check out her website here:https://coder-coder.com/  

On today's episode of the podcast, Abbey chats with software engineer Jackson Bates who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Jackson used to be a high school English teacher, but gradually taught himself to code and landed a pretty sweet gig as a React dev, partly by chance. Today he works part time as a developer, part time as a stay at home dad, and volunteers his time with various open source projects. Finding his way into tech Jackson grew up in England, and studied English in school. Although going into education seemed a logical choice, he dabbled in other fields - like working at a prison cafeteria - for a while before landing a teaching job. That first job had some unpleasant aspects, and he began to doubt if teaching was for him. After moving to Australia to be with his wife, he started dabbling in basic HTML and CSS. Even though he continued teaching high school English, Jackson couldn't tear himself away from coding completely. We’ve all got computers, but being able to write code and make your computer do something – once you learn to do that it becomes quite an addictive thing. I just loved the problem solving aspect and how creative you could be. Learning to code After about six years of teaching without all the proper Australian certifications, he decided to go back to school and get his masters. He budgeted a bit too much time for his studies, however, and ended up with six months before he was scheduled to go back to work. So he dove back into learning more about coding. And those teaching skills? They came in quite handy when he was teaching himself to code. As a teacher, you kind of understand what it really takes to learn something. When you’ve helped 11-18 year olds overcome really frustrating experiences in their own learning, you learn to give yourself a break when you hit roadblocks. You learn to put in the work that’s necessary, but you get a more realistic expectation of the timeframes involved to learn something. And he was hooked. He got through one more year of teaching before deciding to try to get a job as a software engineer. Getting that first tech job But the job hunt sucked. While this was no surprise, it was particularly demoralizing when he was rejected for the most basic role for which he felt quite overqualified. I always had it in the back of my mind that I was never really ready enough – and I know everyone always says oh I’ll just finish this certification and brush up my CV and do this course…we always give ourselves a million reasons not to do it, and really those reasons will always be there. At that point, a friend encouraged him to try out a new meetup group, just for the heck of it. So he went. And ended up meeting his future boss. You might get knocked back from things you’re overqualified for – but it only takes the right person to see you and decide you’d be a good fit for their team, and then all the rejections don’t matter anymore. You just have to keep putting yourself out there. A tentative follow-up email, a quick round of interviews, and an onsite later, he had the job. It was an excellent cultural fit, and he's never looked back. He gets to work on fun internal projects, support the data scientists on his team, and pick up new skills constantly. And he's even developed a refreshing perspective on debugging and facing challenges in his code: I really like working with broken code. Because you know staring down a bug until you’ve fixed it really gives you a better understanding of the whole thing that you’re trying to do. Even though it’s a bit slow, it helps it sink in a bit more. Now, 14 months later, he's learned a lot about different tech, Machine Learning, how to learn new skills, and what it takes to switch careers. It really is a long game that you’re playing. It’s easy to be discouraged, but people have made the change you’re trying to make. It feels impossible but people do actually do it. In this episode, Jackson offers valuable advice about job hunting, finding your learning style, dealing with imposter syndrome, and how to take chances - among many other things. Find Jackson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacksonbates

Quincy interviews Jeff Meyerson, the creator and host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast. Jeff grew up in Texas, played competitive poker, and ultimately worked as a software engineer at Amazon. We talk about how he got into tech, how left Amazon to become an entrepreneur, and the many lessons he learned along the way. Follow Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_prion And subscribe to software engineering daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com

In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy Larson interviews Ruben Harris, who runs Career Karma, a social network for people interested in attending coding bootcamp. He also hosts the Breaking into Startups Podcast. Ruben just finished Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, where he and his team raised their first round of venture capital funding. Ruben grew up in Atlanta and worked in finance. He met his future co-founders - Ukrainian-born brothers Artur and Timur Meyster - years ago. The three of them agreed to spread out, get jobs in different industries, then later regroup to build a startup together. Ruben shares his insights on coding bootcamps. He also shares what he learned going through Y Combinator. And he talks about his close bond with his co-founders. Follow Ruben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubenharris Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia Subscribe to the Breaking Into Startups podcast: https://breakingintostartups.com/ Ruben interviews Quincy way back in 2017 (50 minute listen): https://breakingintostartups.com/quincy-free-code-camp/ Ruben interviews Gary V (an episode he mentions during this interview): https://breakingintostartups.com/76-gary-vaynerchuk-ceo-vaynermedia/