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**Jerod Santo:** Kaizen. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Kaizen. |
• freeCodeCamp saw a significant increase in usage during the 2020 pandemic lockdown |
• The platform's community grew, with many people using the extra time to learn to code |
• freeCodeCamp's curriculum has been expanded to include more math and computer science topics |
• A new data science course is being developed, with a focus on machine learning and data analysis |
• The organization has a small full-time team, mostly composed of teachers and engineers with academic backgrounds |
• The team is supplemented by a large community of volunteers and casual contributors |
• The organization is led by Quincy Larson, who is joined by a team of experienced professionals from various backgrounds. |
• freeCodeCamp's approach to community development and contributor management |
• the organization's commitment to being donation-based and free to use |
• the importance of transparency in budgeting and finances |
• the differentiator between freeCodeCamp and other online learning resources |
• the philosophy behind freeCodeCamp's curriculum, which prioritizes a linear and simple progression to learning programming and related skills |
• the benefits of a more traditional, university-style approach to education and the potential drawbacks of overly specialized or elective-focused curricula. |
• FreeCodeCamp's design and purpose |
• The importance of teaching fundamental skills, such as SQL and Linux, to non-programmers |
• The drawbacks of self-directed learning and the benefits of a linear curriculum |
• The analogy of the Appalachian Trail as a model for a linear learning path |
• FreeCodeCamp's focus on JavaScript and its subsequent expansion to other topics, including data science |
• The impact and effectiveness of freeCodeCamp in terms of job placement and career advancement |
• The pay and job prospects for data scientists compared to software developers |
• The challenges and applicability of machine learning models in industrial settings |
• The skills required to be a data scientist, including programming, math, and domain expertise |
• The importance of building skills and experience over time, rather than trying to learn everything at once |
• The challenges of applying data science techniques in a production capacity, and the need for data engineers |
• The importance of lifelong learning and taking a long-term approach to skill development |
• The benefits of incremental learning, such as integrating new skills into daily routines, and the importance of sleep in solidifying knowledge |
• The contrast between trying to cram learning into a short period of time versus learning incrementally over time. |
• Inertia and momentum in productivity and decision-making |
• The pros and cons of "plowing through" tasks versus taking breaks and coming back to them later |
• The importance of routines and habits in maintaining productivity |
• The potential downsides of over-planning and the importance of flexibility and self-awareness |
• The concept of "effortless" work and the need for preparation and planning |
• The potential for planning to become a form of procrastination |
• Strategies for maintaining motivation and productivity, including setting small rewards for oneself |
• Designing courses to be addictive like video games |
• Gamifying learning with elements like RPG skill trees, leader boards, and cooperative gameplay |
• Creating an immersive learning environment that feels like a video game |
• Addressing the issue of attrition in online learning, with a graduation rate of around 5% |
• Measuring the effectiveness of freeCodeCamp by tracking alumni who get jobs after listing their certifications on LinkedIn |
• Expanding and improving the freeCodeCamp platform to make it more engaging and fun |
• Creating a sustainable and durable model for freeCodeCamp as a non-profit organization |
• Comparing freeCodeCamp to a AAA video game in terms of its long-term development and impact. |
• Certification process and its importance |
• Accessibility and translation of freeCodeCamp |
• Rollout of new curriculum, including data science |
• Prioritization of languages for translation |
• Approach to creating language-specific content, including video creation and subtitles |
• Norwegian education system and adapting to different cultural contexts |
• Decentralized approach to community management, giving contributors agency and autonomy |
• Evolution of study groups and curriculum development |
• FreeCodeCamp's fundraising strategy and community support |
• The importance of specialization and collaboration vs. individual expertise |
• Quincy Larson's role as a leader and fundraiser, wearing multiple hats within the organization |
• freeCodeCamp's community and funding model |
• Quincy Larson's experience and approach to business |
• freeCodeCamp's new push into data science and machine learning |
• Fundraiser with Darrell Silver to raise $150,000 |
• Where the fundraiser money will go (data science curriculum) |
• Quincy Larson's organizational philosophy and approach to deadlines |
• The timeline for the data science curriculum |
• Deadlines and their negative impact on game development, citing the example of Cyberpunk 2077 |
• Importance of planning and realistic expectations in software development, with managers listening to engineers rather than dictating deadlines |
• freeCodeCamp's approach to curriculum development, starting with specific deliverables and focusing on interactive learning |
• The importance of a cohesive, linear curriculum in learning, and freeCodeCamp's goal of creating a powerful mathematical curriculum using Python |
• The mission and goals of freeCodeCamp, including making the curriculum completely free, Creative Commons licensed, and available to people worldwide |
• The importance of donations to freeCodeCamp, with a goal of raising $300,000 to build out the curriculum, and the potential impact of even small donations. |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, we're always happy to have Quincy Larson here with us... Quincy, thanks for coming back on the Changelog. |
**Quincy Larson:** Hey, thanks for having me, Jerod. |
**Jerod Santo:** Happy to have you, as always. 2020, an interesting year, a challenging year... And probably a good year in terms of freeCodeCamp, because many people were locked down, and maybe looking for new work, and I know that a lot of people were transitioning... Just lots of shaking things up for people's lives... |
**Quincy Larson:** I mean, our community definitely grew. We had a lot of people in the community who lost their jobs, unfortunately... And I always tell people, "Hang on to your job, keep working at your job as long as you can, because you wanna be able to provide for your family while you're training", and freeCodeCa... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Did the service catch on fire? What happened? Was there was a massive uptick that you can share? |
**Quincy Larson:** Yeah, yeah. During the month of May -- April and May, when the lockdown came into effect in the U.S. and India, we did have a lot more people using freeCodeCamp. And then once people started going back to work, which - of course, my advice to everybody is try to stay at home, and I was very vocal abo... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You mentioned in that five-year show we did, too - we did a five years of freeCodeCamp two years ago, so hey, happy seventh year, I guess... Or into the seventh year... |
**Quincy Larson:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...you'd mentioned that China and India were the up-and-coming areas that were really leveraging and using the curriculum on freeCodeCamp. |
**Quincy Larson:** Yeah. And Nigeria, Brazil... A lot of countries are making heavy use of freeCodeCamp as well. I think we're even the official programming tool for Liberia. |
**Jerod Santo:** \[04:03\] Nice. Before we get too deep into the weeds, I just wanna thank you once again for freeCodeCamp, as a non-user, but as a person who just gets asked the question a lot, "How do I break into web development, or software as a career?" I used to have to ask a bunch of follow-up questions, and giv... |
**Quincy Larson:** Yeah, thanks. It means a lot to me that you're helping raise awareness of our community... And yeah, I feel honored, and at the same time it's a serious responsibility, taking your friends and family who wanna learn to code and making sure that they have as smooth and realistic an on-ramp as possible... |
**Jerod Santo:** So you had the foundation of what you think was necessary for curriculum, for getting started, for a while... But you're not satisfied or resting on your laurels on that; you've been building new things, you have a brand new data science course that you're ramping up right now... Can you tell us some o... |
**Quincy Larson:** Yeah, absolutely. First of all, the data science curriculum is something that I'd wanted to do really before I even started freeCodeCamp, back when I was experimenting with all these technology education tools; I really wanted to give people an avenue into a lot of technology careers... And the three... |
So what we're trying to do with the curriculum now is significantly expand it to include a lot more mathematics and a lot more traditional CS topics; a lot more data structures and algorithms related topics, and problem-solving fundamentals... And then a lot of more general-purpose, but very useful data-related skills,... |
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