Interview with freeCodeCamp founder

How did you come up with the idea of freecodecamp?

I wanted people to be able to learn to program in a way that was more straight forward than how I learned to program. When I learned to program, it was a lonely, ambiguous process. I wanted people to be able to learn to code together in a community, and to have a clear path they can follow to their first job.

How you organize, plan, and prioritize your work?

I have a text file that I write what I need to do in. As new things come up, I add them to the text file. As I finish tasks, I delete them from the text file. At the beginning of each day I move items up and down the list to prioritize them.

What type of mindset a person need to have to learn programming languages?

In order to learn to program, you have to be curious about why things are the way they are. You have to follow that curiousity and dig deep.

But at the same time, you have to have a sense for when to quick digging and to move on. There are so many layers of abstraction. If you try to understand everything, you won’t get very far in terms of actually building the breadth of knowledge you need to be able to build out a full project.

What books you recommend to the people who are starting learning how to program?

I recommend reading “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. It addresses the biggest challenge in learning to program — the challenge of being consistent and sitting down put in the time and effort to improve your skills.

What is the next milestone to freecodecamp?

We’re working a replacement for Facebook Groups for organizing our study groups. This will make it much easier for people to find freeCodeCamp events in their city and participate in them.

What motivates you?

I want to help as many people as possible learn to code, so they can participate in the jobs of the 21st century. So they can have exciting careers and provide for their family.

There are so many job openings that require programming ability, and their number is steadily increasing. At the same time, there are very few people who are able to do these jobs.

Through convenient resources like freeCodeCamp, we can help millions of people develop the skills they need to get these new jobs.

What’s your definition of sucess?

In my situation, success means helping people learn to program well enough to get developer jobs. At this point, thousands of people are getting developer jobs after learning through freeCodeCamp. So it’s a question of how we can help even more people succeed in this way, and further magnify this success.

What do you think of work/life balance?

Over the long run, people need balance in their life. But in the short run, if you want to accomplish significant things, they often require bursts of extreme work.

I am skeptical of people who say they can work 80 hours a week every week indefinitely. But I’m similarly skeptical of people who think they can achieve incredible success while working only 40 hours a week.

I think “death marches” — as we call them in software — are probably necessary at various points along the process, but they shouldn’t last long. Everyone needs time of relative calm to recover from crunch mode. Otherwise they will eventually burn out.

- Quincy Larson

Teacher at https://www.freecodecamp.org

I share useful things on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/ossia

Huge thank you to Mr.Quincy Larson for answering this questions. If you like It leave comment and, share. Stay Hungry.