Question: How to: Speculative Fiction

Answer:
#### [Anathem](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2845024-anathem) (2008) _by [Neal Stephenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson)_ [4.2]
Description
> Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.
  >
  > Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.
  >
  > Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet… and beyond.
#### [Never Let Me Go](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334.Never_Let_Me_Go) (2005) _by [Kazuo Ishiguro](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4280.Kazuo_Ishiguro)_ [3.8] 🔥

A heartbreaking coming of age novel with a speculative, mysterious twist. Definitely a character-driven story. - [@sunrein](https://github.com/sunrein)
Description
> As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special— and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.
#### [Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/350.Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land) (1961) _by [Robert A. Heinlein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein)_ [3.9] 🌟 🔥
Description
> NAME: Valentine Michael Smith
  > ANCESTRY: Human
  > ORIGIN: Mars
  >
  > Here is Heinlein’s masterpiece—the brilliant spectacular and incredibly popular novel that grew from a cult favorite to a bestseller to a classic in a few short years. It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the man from Mars who taught humankind grokking and water-sharing. And love.
#### [The End of Eternity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/509784.The_End_of_Eternity) (1955) _by [Isaac Asimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov)_ [4.2]
Description
> Andrew Harlan is an Eternal, a man whose job it is to range through past and present Centuries, monitoring and, where necessary, altering Time’s myriad cause-and-effect relationships. But when Harlan meets and falls for a non-Eternal woman, he seeks to use the awesome powers and techniques of the Eternals to twist time for his own purposes, so that he and his love can survive together.
#### [The Shrinking Man](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33549.The_Shrinking_Man) (1956) _by [Richard Matheson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Matheson)_ [3.8] 🔥

This was pretty good; it's pretty obvious what it is about, and it reads predictably, but the ending is strong enough to make the entire book worth reading. - [@RichardLitt](https://github.com/RichardLitt)
Description
> While on holiday, Scott Carey is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks lat


Question: How to: Time Travel

Answer:
#### [Behold the Man](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60146.Behold_the_Man) (1969) _by [Michael Moorcock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock)_ [3.8]

Easily one of the most disrespectful, sacrilegious, memorable and funny books I have read. - [@RichardLitt](https://github.com/RichardLitt)
Description
> Karl Glogauer is a disaffected modern professional casting about for meaning in a series of half-hearted relationships, a dead-end job, and a personal struggle. His questions of faith surrounding his father’s run-of-the-mill Christianity and his mother’s suppressed Judaism lead him to a bizarre obsession with the idea of the messiah. After the collapse of his latest affair and his introduction to a reclusive physics professor, Karl is given the opportunity to confront his obsession and take a journey that no man has taken before, and from which he knows he cannot return.
  >
  > Upon arriving in Palestine, A.D. 29, Glogauer finds that Jesus Christ is not the man that history and faith would like to believe, but that there is an opportunity for someone to change the course of history by making the ultimate sacrifice.
  >
  > First published in 1969, _Behold the Man_ broke through science fiction’s genre boundaries to create a poignant reflection on faith, disillusion and self-sacrifice. This is the classic novel that established the career of perhaps contemporary science fiction’s most cerebral and innovative author.
#### [Future Times Three](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2509242.Future_Times_Three) (1968) _by [René Barjavel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Barjavel)_ [3.8]

A really good story about time travels, their consequences and the famous [Grandfather paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox). - [@Gibet](https://github.com/Gibet)
Description
> Here is a fantastic journey that takes you from the past into the near-future—then to the year 300,000 A.D. into a world where a single female creature, the size of a mountain, gives birth to all of society!
#### [The Dancers at the End of Time](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60147.The_Dancers_at_the_End_of_Time) (1977) _by [Michael Moorcock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock)_ [4.0]

I liked this series so much I got a tattoo partially inspired by it. - [@RichardLitt](https://github.com/RichardLitt)
Description
> _The Dancers at the End of Time_ is a series of science fiction novels and short stories, the setting of which is the End of Time, an era “where entropy is king and the universe has begun collapsing upon itself.” The inhabitants of this era are immortal decadents, who create flights of fancy using power rings which draw on energy devised and stored by their ancestors millions of years prior. Time travel is possible, and throughout the series various points in time are visited and revisited. Space travellers are also common, but most residents of the End of Time find leaving the planet distasteful and clichéd.
#### [The Door Into Summer](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/348.The_Door_Into_Summer) (1957) _by [Robert A. Heinlein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein)_ [4.0]
Description
> It is 1970, and electronics engineer Dan Davis has finally made the invention of a lifetime: a household robot with extraordinary abilities, destined to dramatically change the landscape of everyday routine. Then, with wild success just within reach, Dan’s greedy partner and even greedier fiancée steal his work and leave him penniless, and trick him into taking the long sleep—suspended animation for thirty years.
  >
  > They never imagine that the future time in which Dan awakens has a very limited form of time travel, just enough that Davis can travel back and recover his research. He then again undergoes suspended animation, and awakens again in the high-tech future of the year 2000, with his reputation, fortune, and his sweetheart.
#### [The Eyre Affair](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27003.The_Eyre_Affair) (2001) _by [Jasper Fforde](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4432.Jasper_Fforde)_ [3.9]

This novel is absurd fun -- think Douglas Adams style with a literary flair. Though flawed, the later novels in the series are in my reading pile. - [@neontapir](https://github.com/neontapir)
Description
> Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel.


Question: How to: Short Story Collections

Answer:
#### [Axiomatic](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156783.Axiomatic) (1995) _by [Greg Egan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan)_ [4.2]

Hard-as-nails science fiction, but wonderfully fresh and imaginative (especially if you haven't had a chance to read anything written by Greg Egan before.) The stories have aged surprisingly well — which only underlines Egan’s penchant for sounding out the shape of the future. - [@mihailim](https://github.com/mihailim)
Description
> _Axiomatic_ is a collection of Greg Egan’s short stories that appeared in various science fiction magazines (mostly _Interzone_ and _Asimov’s_) between 1989 and 1992. Like most of Egan’s work, the stories focus on science and ideas, sometimes at the expense of the writing. But although Egan may lack a certain stylistic flair, he more than makes up for it with his wonderful visions of the future. Some of the more interesting stories include _Into Darkness_, the tale of a rescue worker whose territory is a runaway wormhole, and the title story _Axiomatic_, which is about a man looking to find meaning in the senseless death of his wife.

  > Contents: _The Infinite Assassin_ (1991), _The Hundred Light-Year Diary_ (1992), _Eugene_ (1990), _The Caress_ (1990), _Blood Sisters_ (1991), _Axiomatic_ (1990), _The Safe-Deposit Box_ (1990), _Seeing_ (1995), _A Kidnapping_ (1995), _Learning to Be Me_ (1990), _The Moat_ (1991), _The Walk_ (1992), _The Cutie_ (1989), _Into Darkness_ (1992), _Appropriate Love_ (1991), _The Moral Virologist_ (1990), _Closer_ (1992), _Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies_ (1992)
#### [City](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222093.City) (1952) _by [Clifford D. Simak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak)_ [4.1]

You will never think about ants the same way again. - [@uraimo](https://github.com/uraimo)
Description
> Simak's "City" is a series of connected stories, a series of legends, myths, and campfire stories told by Dogs about the end of human civilization, centering on the Webster family, who, among their other accomplishments, designed the ships that took Men to the stars and gave Dogs the gift of speech and robots to be their hands.
#### [I, Robot](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41804.I_Robot) (1950) _by [Isaac Asimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov)_ [4.1] 🌟 🔥
Description
> The three laws of Robotics:
  >
  > 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  >
  > 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  >
  > 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
  >
  > With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov changed our perception of robots forever when he formulated the laws governing their behavior. In _I, Robot_, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future—a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.
  >
  > Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-read robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov’s trademark.
#### [Manhattan in Reverse](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10710770-manhattan-in-reverse) (2011) _by [Peter F. Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_F._Hamilton)_ [3.9]
Description
> This is a collection of short stories from the master of space opera. Peter F. Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a story featuring Paula Mayo, deputy director of the Intersolar Commonwealth’s Serious Crimes Directorate.

  > Contents: _Watching Trees Grow_ (2000), _Footvote_ (2004), _If at First…_ (2007), _The Forever Kitten_ (2005), _Blessed by an Angel_ (2007), _The Demon Trap_ (2008), _Manhattan in Reverse_ (2011)
#### [Of Time and Stars](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21798296-of-time-and-stars) (1972) _by [Arthur C. Clarke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke)_ [4.1]

I can't praise this book enough. _The Nine Billion Names of God_ is brilliantly done; well written, executed, and frisson-inducing. _If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth_ is also a stark reminder that we only have one planet. One of the most memorable Science Fiction stories I have ever read. - [@RichardLitt](https://github.com/RichardLitt)
Description
> _Of Time and Stars_ is a collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. The stories all originally appeared in a number of different publications incl


Question: How to: Comic Books

Answer:
#### [Alex + Ada](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30896668-alex-ada) (2013-2015) _by [Jonathan Luna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_Brothers), [Sarah Vaughn](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7372180.Sarah_Vaughn)_ [4.11]

Categories: `ai` `drama` `sci-fi`

Alex + Ada is a thought provoking and moving exploration of what it means to be alive, and what rights can and should be afforded to non-human sentient beings. It's a short and effective near-future look at the obligations we have to both each other and to the intelligent life we create. - [@thejessleigh](https://github.com/thejessleigh)
Description
> From JONATHAN LUNA (THE SWORD, GIRLS, Spider-Woman: Origin) and SARAH VAUGHN (Sparkshooter, Ruined) comes ALEX + ADA, a sci-fi/drama set in the near future. The last thing in the world Alex wanted was an X5, the latest in realistic androids. But after Ada is dropped into his life, he discovers she is more than just a robot. Alex takes a huge risk to unlock Ada so she can think for herself and explore life as a sentient android.
#### [Arzach](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8748185-arzach) (1975) _by Moebius_ [4.06]

Categories: `hard-science-fiction` `sci-fi` `cyberpunk`

One of the most influential french sci-fi comics. It inspired a lot of what became Heavy Metal Magazine. Moebius in this onirical tale uses no words to this graphical prose. - [@matheusteixeira](https://github.com/matheusteixeira)
Description
> Arzach fut une révolution pour la bande dessinée de l'époque. Elle est constituée d'une série de cinq histoires autonomes, sortes de « nouvelles graphiques » de quelques planches chacune. Sa particularité réside tout d'abord en son absence totale de dialogues : on y croise un voire deux personnages récurrents (Arzach et son Ptéroïde, sorte de ptérodactyle) mais apparemment muets, en tout cas l'auteur ne leur autorise pas la parole pour s'exprimer.
#### [Black Science](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20881139-black-science-vol-1) (2014) _by [Rick Remender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Remender)_ [3.93]

Categories: `space-opera` `sci-fi`

Black Science is one of those stories where you explain it to people at a really high level and gradually get more excited as you do so. It's essentially what happens if Rick & Morty had a less skilled and lucky Rick. Grant McKay goes through some really dark experiences, and the multiverse around him feels nothing for his plight. It's a story to read and revisit. - [@EricPonvelle](https://github.com/EricPonvelle)
Description
> Grant McKay, former member of The Anarchistic Order of Scientists, has finally done the impossible: He has deciphered Black Science and punched through the barriers of reality. But what lies beyond the veil is not epiphany, but chaos. Now Grant and his team are lost, living ghosts shipwrecked on an infinite ocean of alien worlds, barreling through the long-forgotten, ancient, and unimaginable dark realms. The only way is forward. The only question is how far are they willing to go, and how much can they endure, to get home again? Join writer RICK REMENDER and the superstar art team of MATTEO SCALERA & DEAN WHITE for this face-melting science fiction epic spanning the lifetimes of a cast of dimensional castaways lead by the man who caused it all.
#### [Global Frequency](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15819022-global-frequency) (2002-2004) _by Warren Ellis_ [4.05]

Categories: `hard-science-fiction` `sci-fi`

Global Frequency is a very livid, strong, and fast-paced adventure/action-packed sci-fi. Each of the twelve issues is kinda independent and all of them are bursting with life. - [@matheusteixeira](https://github.com/matheusteixeira)
Description
> Created by Entertainment Weekly "It" writer, Global Frequency is a worldwide rescue organization that offers the last shred of hope when all other options have failed. Manned by 1001 operatives, the Frequency is made up of experts in fields as diverse as bio-weapon engineering and Le Parkour Running. Each agent-equipped with a special mobile vid-phone-is speciffically chosen by Miranda Zero, enigmatic leader of the Global Frequency, based on proximity, expertise, and, in some cases, sheer desperation!
#### [Saga](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17131869-saga-vol-2) (2014-) _by Brian K. Vaughan_ [4.56]

Categories: `fantasy` `sci-fi` `space-opera`

Saga is a comic that is an elevator pitch proof. It's impossible to describe it in a sentence. All I can say is that it's a beautifully written and drawn story about love and family, in a very interesting space opera-like world. It's kinda like Star Wars, but not at all. While in Star Wars the heroes are in a huge journey to end the war, in Saga they just want to be left alone to live with their family. - [@matheusteixeira](https://git


Question: How to: Audiobooks

Answer:
Some books are also exceptional as audiobooks. Some are not. Here is a space for the former.

#### [The Martian](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Martian-Audiobook/B082BHJMFF) _by Andy Weir_, narrated by _R.C. Bray_

I loved this audiobook. I am not sure if this narrator's edition is still publicly available, however. - [@RichardLitt](https://github.com/RichardLitt)

See the book above for the description.


Question: How to: December 24, 2025

Answer:
1. 2025 has been an amazing year for the global freeCodeCamp community. And we’re thrilled to cap it off with the launch of several Christmas gifts for you. We just launched Version 10 of freeCodeCamp's JavaScript certification, along with updated Python, SQL, and Responsive Web Design certifications that you can earn. We even launched our beta Spanish and Mandarin Chinese curricula. (10 minute announcement article with tons of data): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/christmas-gifts-freecodecamp-community-2025

2. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview the son of an Indian textile worker who's now been working as a dev for 16 years. Santosh Yadav has managed to climb the ladder at Indian and European tech companies without needing to become a manager himself. He shares practical tips for devs who don't want to become managers, but do want to continue to ascend. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-promoted-as-a-dev-without-becoming-a-manager-staff-engineer-santosh-yadav-interview-podcast-202/

3. And now for some advanced learning resources to tide you over the holiday break. First, learn eBPF Tracing for when you're debugging Kubernetes apps, but your logs are failing you. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-debug-kubernetes-apps-when-logs-fail-you-an-ebpf-tracing-handbook/

4. Second, learn how to perform secure hashing using Python's hashlib module. This is helpful for storing sensitive information, verifying file integrity, and other cybersecurity purposes. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-perform-secure-hashing-using-pythons-hashlib-module/

5. Third, learn how to build your own Log-Structured Merge Tree from scratch as a new way to store data in your apps. These work by “appending new data to the existing data, instead of looking for something that exists and updating it. In other words, you don't have to spend any CPU cycles thinking about where to store data. You just append it at the end.” (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-lsm-tree-storage-engine-from-scratch-handbook/

Quote of the Week:
*“The day you stop waiting for your manager to tell you what’s broken, and you start fixing the things everyone else is ignoring, is the day you start moving up.”* — Software Developer Santosh Yadav on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: December 19, 2025

Answer:
1. I'm thrilled to announce that freeCodeCamp just launched our new Python certification curriculum. You can learn Python by building projects right in your browser. You'll learn a ton of fundamental programming concepts through our extensive theory sections. Then you'll apply that theory and get lots of reps with Python syntax by building projects. You can sit for the final exam and earn a certification that you can add to your LinkedIn or portfolio website. This is just one of the six certs in Version 10 of freeCodeCamp's Full Stack Developer Curriculum. This Python module is years in the making, and I think you're going to learn a lot from it. (comprehensive interactive curriculum): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-python-certification-is-now-live/

2. Learn game development fundamentals by building your own 2D pixel art tower defense game. You'll use the popular Unity game development framework. You can code along at home and learn how to set up 2D tilemap levels, animate pixel-art characters, build towers, and spawn enemy waves. Then you'll learn how to export your game to be playable on Windows, Android, and in a web browser. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-2d-pixel-art-game-in-unity/

3. On this week's podcast I interview Jason Lengstorf, a college dropout who taught himself programming while building websites for his emo band. 22 years later, he's worked as a developer at IBM, Netlify, and run his own dev consultancy. He shares his observation that many CEOs over-estimated the impact of AI coding tools and laid off too many developers. He says the developer job market has already rebounded a bit, but will never be the same. He shares tons of tips for how to land roles in the post-LLM labor market. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-ai-is-going-to-replace-devs-hype-is-over-22-year-developer-veteran-jason-lengstorf-podcast-201/

4. Learn modern web development techniques by building your own sales dashboard app using React, JavaScript, and Supabase. You'll start by architecting your database schema. Then you'll set up session management. Finally, you'll implement real-time data operations. By the end of the course, you'll have a dashboard app you can show off to your friends. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/supabase-for-beginners/

5. Now you can learn Spanish on freeCodeCamp. We just launched our Spanish curriculum today, which we've been working on all year. You'll learn proper Spanish pronunciation, greetings, introductions, numbers, and more. You'll also learn how to type Spanish characters like this one ñ on your phone and computer. We already have more than 200 steps live, with the rest of the CEFR A1 level going live in 2026. ¡Aprendamos! (fully interactive curriculum): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a1-professional-spanish-curriculum-beta-is-now-live/

Quote of the Week:
*“The promise was that AI was going to replace developers. We’re seeing pretty clearly that’s not the case. Anything beyond a toy, anything that requires maintenance or significant feature development, you can’t vibe-code that. The strongest developers in the future are the ones who have the right skills to leverage AI effectively.”* — Software Engineer Jason Lengstorf on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: December 12, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just launched our new JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms Certification. You can now take the final exam and earn this verified cert, then add it to your LinkedIn, CV, or personal website. This is version 10 of the core freeCodeCamp curriculum. The community collectively spent thousands of hours developing all this to serve as your shortest path to acquiring programming fundamentals. (300 hour interactive curriculum – announcement article and FAQ): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-javascript-certification-is-now-live/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a project-oriented course on building your own AI agents using the n8n framework. You'll learn about vector databases, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, multi-workflow builds, and more. You can code along at home, and by the end of the course you'll have a variety of agentic projects you can show off to your friends. (4 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-n8n-to-design-develop-and-deploy-production-grade-ai-agents/

3. On this week's podcast I interview Kunal Kushwaha. He's a software engineer and prolific computer science teacher on YouTube. After years of preparation, he failed India's Engineering Entrance Exam not once but twice. But he persevered. He built his own learning path by contributing code to open source projects. In his short career as a developer, he's worked at small startups as well as at a big UK cloud provider as their field CTO. He shares tons of tips for learning new skills, being productive while working remotely, and his thoughts on the Indian higher education system. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-your-own-learning-path-using-open-source-with-kunal-kushwaha-podcast-200/

4. Tell your friends who are learning English: freeCodeCamp just launched our English for Developers curriculum. You can learn vocab, grammar, reading, and listening – all through stories set in a Silicon Valley tech company. This is level A2 English, meaning it's lower intermediate. We'll introduce other CEFR levels in the coming months as well. (interactive curriculum with certification – announcement article and FAQ): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a2-english-for-developers-certification-is-now-live/

5. freeCodeCamp also published an advanced Python course that will teach you about sequence models and Neural Machine Translation. You'll learn about historical breakthroughs, architectural innovations, and mathematical insights as you reproduce the findings of 7 landmark AI papers using the PyTorch machine learning library. (7 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-nmt-from-scratch-pytorch-replications-of-7-landmark-papers/

Quote of the Week:
*“Open source saved my career. It gave me credibility, proof of work, skills, projects to showcase, and a network.”* — Software Engineer Kunal Kushwaha on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: December 5, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a Git and GitHub for beginners course. Git is a powerful version control tool that most developers now use to build software projects together. GitHub is a popular platform that adds tons of collaboration features on top of Git. You'll learn the basics of both in this course, which covers branching, merging, pull requests, and other key concepts. Well worth your time. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/git-and-github-crash-course-for-beginners

2. freeCodeCamp also just launched our new Responsive Web Design Certification. You can now take the final exam and earn this verified cert, then add it to your LinkedIn, CV, or personal website. This is version 10 of the core fCC curriculum. The community collectively spent thousands of hours developing all this as your shortest path to front-end development skills. This announcement and comprehensive FAQ will help you figure out where this fits into your journey toward your learning goals. (100+ hour interactive curriculum): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-responsive-web-design-certification-is-now-live/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Andrea Griffiths, who taught herself programming using freeCodeCamp while working in construction. She moved to the US from Colombia when she was 17, and within 6 months she joined the US Army. She ran a chain of gyms before landing a support role at a tech company, then ascended to Product Manager and ultimately Developer Advocate at GitHub. She shares tips for busy parents who want to learn new skills, and how to stay focused in an increasingly distracting world. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/tips-from-serial-career-changer-github-andrea-griffiths-podcast-199/

4. freeCodeCamp also just published a new Harvard CS50 course that will teach you R, a popular programming language for statistical computing and data science. You'll work with real-world datasets inside the RStudio Integrated Development Environment. You'll learn about Vectors, Matrices, Data Frames, filtering, visualizations, and more. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-r-programming-from-harvard-university/

5. It is with great pride that I announce our Top Open Source Contributors of 2025. It's been a super productive year for the global freeCodeCamp community. As we start our 12th year as a community, we’re firing on all cylinders, pushing forward more steadily than ever toward a future of open source education. (5 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamp-top-open-source-contributors-2025/

Quote of the Week:
*“Take a moment to stop and think about what it is that truly matters to you. And then start making the changes that you need to make.”* — Andrea Griffiths on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast talking about her decision to learn programming and launch into an entirely new career


Question: How to: November 26, 2025

Answer:
1. Before modern Large Language Models, scientists and developers worked with more fundamental Natural Language Processing tools. freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will help you understand the tools that power chatbots, machine translation, text summarization, and more. You'll learn how computers analyze syntax, model semantics, and interpret context. Then you'll use popular Python libraries to apply those concepts to real projects. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-nlp-techniques-and-tools-in-your-projects-full-handbook/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook that will give you a nuanced understanding of one of the trickier aspects of JavaScript development: Closures. First you'll learn about functions, parameters, and lexical scope. Then you'll learn how a Closure "closes over" a variable to keep it safe, while still granting you access to its values through function calls. If this sounds complicated, it is. But fear not – this handbook will give you tons of code examples of Closure mechanics, and teach you when to use them. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-closures-work-in-javascript-a-handbook-for-developers/

3. On this week's podcast I interview two university students who won a 24-hour hackathon. They built a project that helps people who are losing their vision learn how to read Braille. Alison Co and Cindy Cui talk about how, in the middle of the night, they decided to completely rip out their project's AI component. It made their code run so much faster. They share tips for succeeding at hackathons, and also for landing internships at companies like Shopify. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/when-not-to-use-ai-in-your-hackathon-project-with-mlh-winners-cindy-cui-and-alison-co-podcast-198/

4. Flexbox is a powerful CSS feature that lets you build user interfaces that fit any screen size. If you’ve ever struggled to center something with CSS or tried to make columns line up nicely, well, Flexbox simplifies this dramatically. freeCodeCamp just published a Flexbox for beginners course where you'll learn both the concepts and the code syntax while building a responsive website navigation bar. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-css-flexbox-for-beginners-free-2-hour-course

5. When you're working with Large Language Models, every additional token adds cost and latency. Microsoft just open-sourced a tool called LLMLingua that will compress your prompts and other context window data. freeCodeCamp published this tutorial to help you understand how this works and how you can add it to your Python projects. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-compress-your-prompts-and-reduce-llm-costs/

Quote of the Week:
*“Care less about school. It took me too long to realize that I should be doing more projects hands-on instead of worrying about trying to get like a 95 on a quiz that was worth 10 percent of my grade.”* — Developer and university student Cindy Cui on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: November 21, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published this beginner-friendly back-end development course. You'll learn how to build your own web servers and APIs using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. freeCodeCamp's website and mobile apps are built using these tools, which make up the popular MERN stack. You'll also get some exposure to database architecture, security principles, testing best practices, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/intro-to-backend-web-development-nodejs-express-mongodb/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive Blender and Three.js course where you'll build your own 3D portfolio piece: a render of an adorable home office. If you're interested in 3D rendering and computer graphics, this is the course for you. You'll learn key concepts like Quad Topology, Raycasting, OrbitControls, and more. By the end of the course, your 3D model will be live on the web so you can share it with your friends. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-cute-room-portfolio-with-threejs-blender-javascript/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I had the honor of interviewing Harvard CS50 professor David J. Malan. Over the years, freeCodeCamp has published many of his computer science courses, which millions of people have now taken. I was hyped to ask him how he uses emerging LLM tools, and where he thinks the software engineering field is heading. I had a LOT of questions for him and he answered all of them. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/harvard-cs50-prof-david-j-malan-on-why-you-should-learn-programming-slowly-podcast-197/

4. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook on using Docker with Node.js. You'll learn how to set up Docker and Docker Compose. You'll also learn fundamental concepts like Volumes, Images, and Containers. This is an excellent resource for you to read through and code along with. Bookmark it for future reference. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-to-docker-with-nodejs-handbook/

5. Level up your JavaScript implementation skills with this new freeCodeCamp course on Clean Code. You'll learn how to detect “code smells” and refactor your JavaScript accordingly. You'll also learn how to use ESLint and Prettier to automate some of the more error-prone aspects of shipping code. (1 hour watch): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/level-up-your-javascript-detect-smells-and-write-clean-code/

Quote of the Week:
*“There’s something liberating about realizing that at the end of the day everything reduces to zeros and ones. It’s not magic. And once students see that, they think: OK, I got this.”* — Harvard computer science professor David J. Malan on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: November 14, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a Discrete Mathematics for beginners course. It'll teach you tons of math concepts that are key to modern Machine Learning. You'll learn some Number Theory and Combinatorics, then use Python to explore the Pigeonhole Principle, the Stars and Bars Principle, Stirling Numbers, the Chinese Remainder Theorem, and more. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-discrete-mathematics/

2. We also published this JavaScript course on the open source n8n agentic workflow automation tool. freeCodeCamp instructor Gavin Lon will teach you core concepts like working with loops, trigger nodes, webhooks, and more. You can code along at home and build 4 real-world projects, including a chatbot and an emergency notification app. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-complex-workflows-with-n8n-and-master-ai-integration/

3. On this week's podcast I talk with a dev who taught herself programming at age 27. Abbey Perini worked as an admin at a recruitment agency and has a unique perspective on the developer hiring process. She shares practical tips for applying and interviewing. She also shares how she has adapted to her adult ADHD diagnosis, and how she stays focused on shipping code. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/applying-into-the-void-with-recruiter-admin-abbey-perini-podcast-196/

4. Learn the popular Vue.js front end JavaScript framework. You'll learn Vue's core building blocks like components, reactivity, template syntax, dynamic data binding, and asset handling. By the end of the course, you'll have a simple Vue app that you can show to your friends. Also note that I recently interviewed Evan You, the creator of Vue, on the freeCodeCamp podcast. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-vuejs-javascript-framework-course/

5. Learn how to run an open source LLM locally on your own hardware using Ollama. This is a great way to unlock the power of LLMs without the privacy and security tradeoffs of using public LLM websites and APIs. This freeCodeCamp guide will walk you through the setup process and give you a feel for the options at your disposal. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-run-an-open-source-llm-on-your-personal-computer-run-ollama-locally/

Quote of the Week:
*“People get jobs years down the line because someone remembers them from an interview and wishes they could have hired them then.”* — Software Engineer and former recruitment agency admin Abbey Perini on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: November 7, 2025

Answer:
1. Learn how cryptography works, and how developers use it to secure both data and communication. freeCodeCamp just published a course that will teach you Python functions for symmetric and asymmetric encryption. You'll learn about SHA-256, AES, RSA, and public / private keys as well. You'll even code your own command-line cryptography tool. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/cryptography-for-beginners-full-python-course-sha-256-aes-rsa-passwords/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a course on building your own 3D games that run in a browser using Three.js and Blender. You'll learn how to model characters, design levels, detect collisions, and make the camera follow your playable character. You'll even deploy your game to the cloud so your friends can play it. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/creative-web-development-with-threejs-and-blender/

3. On this week's podcast I interview a self-taught developer with nearly a decade of software engineering experience. Patrick Hartley had to drop out of college to provide for his family. He taught himself programming while working at a thrift store, getting experience by freelancing and building his own apps. After 10 years as a dev, he turned down opportunities at big tech companies so he could continue working remotely from Oklahoma City. He shares tips for building foundational Python and JavaScript skills, surviving meetings as an introvert, and landing remote roles – even when you're competing with the global developer talent pool. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/he-turned-down-a-faang-dev-job-to-keep-working-remotely-with-patrick-hartley-podcast-195/

4. Learn Event-Driven Architecture. freeCodeCamp published this advanced JavaScript handbook that will teach you about Event Loops, Task Queues, Call Stacks, Backpressure, Websockets, Pub/Sub, and more. Take your full stack development skills to the next level and be sure to share this with your developer friends. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/event-based-architectures-in-javascript-a-handbook-for-devs/

5. freeCodeCamp also published our first ever guitar course. You'll learn beginner music theory concepts like chords and scales. You'll then map them to the guitar fretboard. You'll also learn guitar-specific techniques like barre chords. I learned guitar during the pandemic and am having an absolute blast with it. I hope you will, too. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/guitar-theory-course-for-beginners-learn-fretboard-major-scale-and-triads

Quote of the Week:
*“I'd be happy sitting in a basement coding 8 hours a day. But I'm growing a lot faster trying to be an extrovert.”* — Self-taught Software Engineer Patrick Hartley on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: October 31, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course taught by legendary Harvard computer science professor Dr. David J. Malan. This comprehensive cybersecurity for beginners course will teach you how to secure accounts, databases, and entire software systems. Dr. Malan also shares tons of practical tips for securing your privacy in an increasingly adversarial world. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cybersecurity-from-harvard-university

2. freeCodeCamp also published a guide to passing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam. Beau Carnes teaches this course, which will walk you through key DevOps concepts. You'll start by setting up your K8s practice environment. Then you'll bootstrap a multi-node cluster and your control plane. You'll learn about Helm, High Availability Autoscaling, CoreDNS, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-kubernetes-administrator-certification-and-pass/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview a software engineer who got his first developer job at age 45. Eric Carlson is a self-taught software engineer at Cisco. In his early 20s, he worked his way up to manager at the busiest Domino's Pizza in Canada. He eventually went to college and studied liberal arts, then worked as a teacher for two decades before teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp. He was able to gradually pivot into a developer role within the big telecom company where he was working. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/first-dev-job-at-45-interview-with-self-taught-freecodecamp-grad-eric-carlson-podcast-194/

4. Learn how to build high-performance mobile apps using Google's open-source Flutter framework. freeCodeCamp uses Flutter for our Android and iPhone apps, and it's way easier than maintaining two separate app codebases. This Flutter handbook will teach you how to efficiently lay out your apps with minimum widget rebuilds. You'll learn state management techniques, asynchronous patterns, and image caching best practices. You'll also learn how to use Isolates and lazy loading to make your apps really snappy. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-scalable-and-performant-flutter-applications-a-handbook-for-devs/

5. Learn Serverless Architecture using C# .NET and Azure cloud. This jam-packed course will teach you common microservice patterns, Onion Architecture, IoT functions, and more. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/serverless-and-microservices-with-c-and-azure/

Quote of the Week:
*“Most developer stories about learning to code involve having time to do things like go to meetups, build side projects, grind LeetCode, and so on. I didn’t have time or energy to do any of these things with a baby at home. So I found another way into my first developer job. For me, I had to find a way to get paid to code at my non-coding job. First I found a way to code for 5% of my job, then 10%, then a jump to 50%, and finally a jump to a 100% coding role.”* — Software Engineer Eric Carlson on how he transitioned into a developer role within his current company at age 45, on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: October 24, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a massive course that will teach you almost every major data structure and algorithm that may come up in a developer job interview. You'll learn about Time Complexity, Space Complexity, and Big O Notation. Then you'll learn concepts like Trees, Graphs, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, and more. (49 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-technical-interviews-by-learning-data-structures-and-algorithms/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook that will teach you React for beginners. React is a powerful front end development library that tons of companies use to make their websites more interactive. If you already know some basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, this handbook is for you. You'll learn about JSX, components, event handlers, hooks, and more. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/react-handbook-for-beginners-learn-jsx-hooks-rendering/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast: from injured athlete to self-taught software engineer. I interview Kaleb Garner who earned a university scholarship to play baseball. But after a career-ending injury, he dropped out and moved back in with his parents. While working at an optometry office, he used freeCodeCamp to learn programming. We talk about how he was able to land his first developer job after only 20 carefully-researched applications. He also shares tips for making your network and your skillset more layoff-resilient. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-injured-athlete-to-software-engineer-with-kaleb-garner-podcast-193/

4. This SwiftUI for Beginners course will give you the tools you need to build your first iPhone app. You can code along at home and build your own movie browsing app with powerful search features and the ability to stream movie trailers. You'll learn about navigation, API networking requests, SwiftData, and more. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-swiftui-and-create-an-ios-app-from-scratch/

5. Finally, freeCodeCamp published an advanced Python tutorial on Machine Learning Lineage. This is important to establish the safety of mission critical AI systems. You'll learn about ETL Pipelines, Data Drift Checks, Model Tuning, and Model Risk Assessment. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-end-to-end-machine-learning-lineage/

Quote of the Week:
*"If they won't hire you without a degree, they weren't a good fit for you anyway."* — Software Engineer Kaleb Garner on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: October 17, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a course on how to build your own MCP server with Python. Model Context Protocol Servers are like APIs for AI agents. Lots of developers are now building them to help agents interact with their websites' data more accurately. This course will teach you how to leverage the open source FastMCP library to build a calculator project that agents can then directly interact with. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mcp-essentials-and-how-to-create-secure-agent-interfaces-with-fastmcp

2. Learn how to pass Google's new Generative AI Leader Certification Exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. He'll give you a business-level understanding of Google Cloud's gen AI offerings. By the end of this course, with the help of Andrew's practice materials, you'll be ready to sit for the exam. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-google-generative-ai-leader-certification-exam/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Evan You. He's the creator of the popular Vue front end development framework and the Vite JavaScript build tool that a lot of devs use as a boilerplate for their new projects. As a self-taught developer, he shares tips for getting involved in open source and ultimately leading open source projects and attracting sponsors. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/evan-you-from-art-school-kid-to-open-source-legend-podcast-192/

4. Teach your apps how to learn. This comprehensive Machine Learning fundamentals course will walk you through building systems smart enough to create their own algorithms. You'll use C++ to implement a Preceptron, which will then look at images of shapes and figure out ways to reliably label them. (interactive course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-tutorial-how-to-program-without-creating-your-own-algorithms/

5. Strix is a relatively new open source tool for testing the security of your apps and identifying vulnerabilities. It's essentially an AI-powered white hat attacker that you set loose in your codebase. This tutorial will explain how it works and how you can use it to harden your apps against common exploits. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-strix-the-open-source-ai-agent-for-security-testing/

Quote of the Week:
*"When I build things, I often start by prototyping the end developer experience I want for myself — then I reverse engineer from that to the implementation details."* — Software Engineer Evan You on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: October 3, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new in-depth course that will teach you full stack development fundamentals from the ground up. It covers front end development tools like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then it moves to back end development tools like Node, SQL, and TypeScript. You can code along at home and build a variety of projects while getting exposed to a ton of concepts. (47 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/become-a-full-stack-developer-with-one-video/

2. We also just completed work on this new Go programming course where you build your own movie streaming app. Go is a fast back end language, and here we're pairing it with the Gin-Gonic web server framework. As you build this project, you'll also integrate your movie database with OpenAI's API to analyze data and give your users personalized movie recommendations. (15 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-full-stack-movie-streaming-app-with-go-react-mongodb-openai/

3. On this week's podcast I interview the self-taught developer who built freeCodeCamp's relational database curriculum, and is now designing our daily coding challenges. Tom Mondloch shares how he finished community college and wasn't sure what to do next. So he spent the next few years working odd jobs in the great outdoors. He used freeCodeCamp to learn modern development tools and started contributing to open source projects. He shares tips for brushing up on your skills after you've taken a long break from programming. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lone-wolf-dev-turned-open-source-super-contributor-tom-mondloch-podcast-190/

4. When browsing the web, you may see the error message that something has been “blocked by CORS policy.” CORS stands for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. When fetching data, if the domain of the requester is different from the domain of the receiver, your browser will reject that request. It's an important security measure, but it can also be a headache for developers trying to maintain their web apps. Luckily, freeCodeCamp just published this tutorial – chock full of theory and code examples – to help you understand the basics. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-fix-cross-origin-errors/

5. You've probably heard people throw around terms like Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and Generative AI. But what do they mean in relation to one another? This quick article breaks down the jargon for you in plain English. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-vs-deep-learning-vs-generative-ai/

Quote of the Week:
*"Just start. Find an open source repo. Find an issue. Even if it’s just a typo. Fix it and move on from there. That’s how you gain experience and grow as a developer."* — Software Engineer Tom Mondloch on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: September 27, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published an in-depth Python course that will walk you through training your own Large Language Model. If you have some basic programming skills and want to get deeper into Machine Learning, this is an excellent place to start. You'll learn about key concepts like Reward Modeling, Supervised Fine-Tuning, Mixture-of-Experts Layers, RMSNorm, RoPE, KV caching, and more. Dive in. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-an-llm-from-scratch-theory-to-rlhf/

2. We also published a Python course that will help you build production-ready AI systems. This no-nonsense course will take you step by step through building a sophisticated data pipeline that scrapes training data, cleans it up, and ensures its integrity before feeding it into your model. I love this dude's relentless teaching style. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-enterprise-grade-ai-project/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Ihechikara Abba, a software engineer with a Chess Elo of 2285, which puts him among top players. We talk about his recent freeCodeCamp course on checkmate patterns, and how improving your chess game can also improve your programming. He also shares tips for getting into embedded systems development with Arduino. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-chess-and-become-a-better-developer-with-ihechikara-abba-elo-rating-of-2285-podcast-189/

4. freeCodeCamp also published a course on building advanced AI agents. You'll use Python to implement interactive voice agents and intelligent research assistants. This course will even expose you to multi-agent workflows. You'll use sample codebases and popular tools like LangChain and LiveKit to code along at home. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-advanced-ai-agents/

5. Memory leaks are one of the most common performance issues with React apps. This JavaScript tutorial will walk you through the most common ways they afflict your apps. Then it'll equip you with the tools you need to track memory leaks down and fix them. It's chock full of code examples for Event Listeners, Timers, Subscriptions, and Async Operations. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/fix-memory-leaks-in-react-apps/

Quote of the Week:
*"If you don't like playing the social media game, contributing code to open source projects can serve as an alternative to building up a social media presence."* — Software Engineer Ihechikara Abba on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: September 20, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published this comprehensive front end development course where you build your own browser-based code editor. You can code along at home and build your own single page app development environment with tabs for editing your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Along the way, you'll learn some intermediate JS techniques that allow for instant live preview, so you can see the results of your code changes right away. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-your-own-code-editor/

2. I also made a quick announcement about some big improvements to our core Full Stack Development curriculum. In short, we're breaking down our new coursework into a series of six new certifications you can earn along the way to the capstone cert. These include Python, Relational Databases, Front End Libraries, and more. (5 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-freecodecamp-checkpoint-certifications/

3. freeCodeCamp also just published this new course that will help you pass the Databricks Data Engineer Associate 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 Clusters, Structured Streaming, Data Lakes, and more. (8 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-databricks-data-engineer-associate-certification-exam-and-pass/

4. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview two legends in the self-taught developer community: 100Devs founder Leon Noel and prolific teacher Danny Thompson. We spent the entire hour talking about the developer job market, and how it's changed due to interest rate changes and AI hype uncertainty. Danny and Leon have helped thousands of people navigate the developer job search, so they have tons of practical advice. You'll learn about common misconceptions people have about résumés, recruiters, Applicant Tracking Systems, knockout questions, and more. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/playing-the-developer-job-search-game-to-win-in-2025-with-danny-thompson-and-leon-noel-podcast-188/

5. Finally, enjoy this breezy read about Cosine Similarity and the role it plays in Large Language Models. As its author, Manish, says, Cosine Similarity is “a bridge between human language and machine understanding. It allows a model to treat meaning as geometry, turning questions and answers into points in space.” Not only will you learn the math involved, you'll also see it implemented in Python code. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-does-cosine-similarity-work/

Quote of the Week:
*"If your goal is to ship something right now, you should use AI. But if your goal is to build something you can understand and talk about in front of employers, you shouldn't be using AI right now."* — Software Engineer Danny Thompson on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: September 13, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a GameDev for beginners course that will help you build your first 2D platformer game. First you'll learn the basics of the open source Godot game engine, and its Python-like GDScript programming language. Then you'll dive into Godot's editor, custom tile sets, game mechanics, scoring, checkpoint systems, and more. By the end of the course, you'll have your own game that your friends can play in any browser. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-game-development-by-building-your-first-platformer-with-godot/

2. freeCodeCamp just launched our daily coding challenges. You can solve these programming puzzles using Python or JavaScript. Build up your data structures + algorithms skills each day, right in your browser or in the freeCodeCamp iPhone or Android app. We're launching with a backlog of 30 challenges that are live now. See how many you can solve. (article with more details): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-freecodecamp-daily-python-and-javascript-challenges-solve-a-new-programming-puzzle-every-day/

3. Learn how to build your own secure PHP web apps using the popular open source Symfony framework. This intermediate course is taught by Beau Carnes, who has many years of experience as a software engineer and as a high school special ed teacher. He'll quickly fill you in on Symfony's security features, which enable you to query encrypted data without ever even needing to decrypt it on your MongoDB database server. You can code along and home and build your own secure personal finance app while applying these new concepts. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-secure-web-applications-with-php-symfony-and-mongodb/

4. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Ania Kubów. She's a software engineer and a prolific programming teacher on YouTube. She shares tips for how to keep your focus and expand your skills in today's increasingly distracting world. She's passionate about building games, and has lots of advice for getting into GameDev by using JavaScript-based browser games as an entry point. We also talk about the JS13k competition that she judges each year, where devs build entire games that fit within just 13 kilobytes. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-focus-on-building-your-skills-when-everythings-so-distracting-with-ania-kubow-podcast-187/

5. I also recommend reading this quick post by a freeCodeCamp community member on the importance of Hackathons. They opened all sorts of doors for him in his job search. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-every-student-should-join-hackathons/

Quote of the Week:
*"My worry is that with AI now people just stop learning the fundamentals. But then how do you fully understand something, really? You should definitely still learn the fundamentals before using all these AI tools."* — Software Engineer Ania Kubów, who has taught some of YouTube's most popular LLM-focused courses, on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: September 6, 2025

Answer:
1. Learn about AI-assisted coding from a software engineer who's maintained freeCodeCamp's platform and infrastructure for the past 7 years. Mrugesh was initially skeptical of AI tools but has recently used them to great effect. And he wrote this handbook to help you do the same. He says experienced developers can complete tasks faster with AI assistance. But they need to know how to use these tools effectively. And they also need strong foundational programming skills. This handbook is a no-nonsense guide to emerging tools and best practices. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-become-an-expert-in-ai-assisted-coding-a-handbook-for-developers/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a course on building your own AI agent from scratch using Python. You'll implement the agentic loop. Then you'll endow your agent with the ability to read, write, and execute code. Finally, you'll supervise your agent as it goes through and makes fixes to an intentionally buggy codebase. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-ai-coding-agent-in-python/

3. For this week's podcast, I've changed the format. I now start off the show with a few minutes of freeCodeCamp community updates and useful news about programming. Then I do a shorter, more focused interview with a software engineer. This week I talk with Ankur Tyagi, a freelance developer and prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp's open source learning resources. He's worked at Volvo, Barclays, Accenture, and other multinationals. He shares his own tips for leveraging AI tools, and why he doesn't think they'll result in fewer jobs for devs. He also has tons of tips for running your own developer consultancy. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-ai-as-an-accelerator-not-a-crutch-with-freelance-engineer-ankur-tyagi-podcast-186/

4. The freeCodeCamp community also just published our first-ever Mandarin Chinese course. It's aimed at absolute beginners. It'll teach you fundamentals of the language and help you prepare for the standardized HSK exam. As you may recall, we've published beginner courses on Spanish and German as well. We eventually hope to have courses on a wide range of world languages at many levels of proficiency. I started learning Mandarin 23 years ago and I can tell you this course just scratches the surface. But it should be a good starting point for you if you're curious. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mandarin-chinese-for-beginners-full-hsk-1-level/

5. Learn the graph algorithms that power Netflix's video recommendation engine and Google Maps' routing logic. This Python tutorial will introduce you to Breadth-First Search, Depth-First Search, Dijkstra’s Algorithm, and other key computer science concepts. It includes plenty of code examples to help you understand these powerful programming structures. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/graph-algorithms-in-python-bfs-dfs-and-beyond/

Quote of the Week:
*"To build any complex software, you need a lot of good engineers. You need engineers who can think about problems. You need engineers who can drill down into your own tasks and your own use cases."* — Software Engineer Ankur Tyagi on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: August 30, 2025

Answer:
1. The freeCodeCamp community just published this Python Machine Learning course where you'll learn how to control a robotic arm using computer vision. You'll set up serial communication between Python and a cheap Arduino microcontroller board. Then you'll learn how to detect physical objects using the open source Python libraries MediaPipe and OpenCV. You'll also learn how to manipulate servo motors and LED displays. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/use-arduinos-for-computer-vision/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a course that will help you prepare for the Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. You'll learn about Infrastructure as Code, Serverless Architecture, networking, monitoring, logging, and more. (16 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-google-professional-cloud-architect-certification-exam-and-pass/

3. Three.js is a powerful 3D rendering tool that tons of artists use to build games and interactive experiences that can run right inside a browser. This new freeCodeCamp course will walk you through building 5 practical projects. You'll learn about foundational concepts before moving on to textures, dynamic particle effects, and interactive physics. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-3d-web-experiences-with-javascript-and-threejs/

4. On this week's podcast, I interview Emmett Naughton, a software engineer who taught himself programming over several years while working as a janitor at a hospital. He talks about making ends meet while raising a family and recovering from getting laid off twice. He also shares how discovering he had sleep apnea and treating it dramatically improved his thinking. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-hospital-janitor-to-developer-with-emmett-naughton-podcast-185/

5. The Bag of Words algorithm is an important method that machine learning engineers have used to turn text into numbers so they can train their models. This tutorial will teach you how Bag of Words works, using Python code examples. It also describes the limitations of Bag of Words, and how scientists have gone on to create Word2Vec, GloVe, and other algorithms for mapping the relationships between words. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-bag-of-words-works/

Quote of the Week:
*"I was mopping floors in an outpatient surgical recovery room listening to the Code Newbies podcast when I first heard an interview with Quincy."* — Software Engineer Emmett Naughton on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, sharing how he discovered the freeCodeCamp community and dove deeper into programming


Question: How to: August 23, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published our first-ever chess course, taught by a software engineer on our team who has an ELO rating of 2285, putting him among top competitive players. Ihechikara Abba will teach you how to think strategically and checkmate your opponents. This beginner-level course starts off with algebraic chess notation and identifying the squares. Then you'll learn several endgame patterns. We published both a handbook and an accompanying YouTube course for you to reference and share with your friends. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/checkmate-patterns-in-chess-for-beginners

2. freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive course on how to build your own AI shopping agent. Software Engineer Ania Kubów will teach you how to use Node, LangChain's LangGraph, Gemini, MongoDB, and other popular tools to build your agent. By the end of this course, your agent will be able to autonomously perceive, plan, act, and respond to your users. It will also be able to decide when it has enough information to respond, and when it needs to first reach out for external information by searching product databases. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-an-ai-powered-e-commerce-chat-assistant-with-mongodb/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview a developer who dropped out of college and worked as a park ranger, preventing Yogi Bear from stealing pic-a-nic baskets. In all seriousness, he performed important preservation work and even hiked the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail. He shares tips for learning programming even when you have no money, and how to surround yourself with ambitious peers who can help you learn faster. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-drop-out-to-backpacker-to-self-taught-developer-with-dominick-monaco-podcast-183/

4. Alibaba just dropped the latest version of their Qwen LLM and already the freeCodeCamp community has a comprehensive course on how to train it from scratch. You'll learn about its architecture, Training Hyperparameters, Muon Optimization, RoPE Positional Embeddings, inference, text generation, and more. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-and-train-qwen3-from-scratch/

5. Learn the field of System Design from a dev who applies the principles both to software development and to his day-to-day life. You'll learn about scalability issues, the CAP Theorem, Caching & CDNs, Rate Limiting, and other key concepts. (50 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-key-system-design-principles-behind-high-traffic-platforms-like-gaming-and-job-discovery/

Quote of the Week:
*"Big change happens in small increments. Big change is possible with really small, consistent effort."* — Software Engineer Dominick Monaco on how he iterated his way to working as a developer over time, on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: August 16, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published this full length book on how to architect a database using SQL and relational database management systems. This book is aimed at beginners, and includes a Jupyter Notebook you can interact with as you follow along. It will teach you Postgres and a bit of SQL. Then you'll learn how to design and maintain efficient, secure databases that support complex data-driven apps. (Full length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-design-structured-database-systems-using-sql-full-book/

2. freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive data science course on Time Series Forecasting with Python. You'll learn about key Time Series components like trend, seasonality, and residuals. You'll start by building some baseline models. Then you'll dive into Cross-Validation, Exogenous Features, Prediction Interval Generation, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-time-series-forecasting-in-python/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview Edidiong Asikpo about her journey from medical school into software engineering. She talks about Nigeria's tech scene, how to break into tech when you live outside the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and how she transitioned from mobile app development to DevOps. Tons of actionable tips here. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/abandoning-med-school-to-become-a-software-engineer-with-edidiong-asikpo-podcast-182/

4. freeCodeCamp also published this in-depth guide to passing the Google Cloud Associate Engineer certification exam. Andrew Brown will teach you about Infrastructure as Code, Serverless, Google Kubernetes Engine, data storage solutions, and more. If you're interested in a career in DevOps, take a gander. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-google-cloud-associate-cloud-engineer-exam/

5. Learn how the popular Next.js web development framework handles caching and rendering. This course uses the latest version of Next.js – version 15. It will teach you all about Static Site Generation, Server-Side Rendering, Incremental Static Regeneration, and other important concepts. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-nextjs-15-caching-and-rendering/

Quote of the Week:
*"To this day, I remember when my first open source pull request got merged. It was one of the best days of my life. I was so, so happy. I couldn't believe that a code contribution that I made was now part of an application used by thousands of people."* — Software Engineer Edidiong Asikpo on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: August 9, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive beginner course on modern Front End Development using React and Tailwind CSS. You can code along at home and build your own  React project. Along the way, you'll learn about component-based development, utility-first styling, state management, and more. By the end of the course, you’ll have foundational knowledge that you can use to build more of your app ideas. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-and-tailwind-css-for-front-end-development/

2. Learn about Zero-Trust Architecture and how to implement it. “Trust no one, verify everything.” That's the approach that these authentication systems take to minimize risk of intrusion or attack. This security tutorial will teach you about Role-Based Access Control, JWT Token Management, Continuous Verification, and other approaches to architecting your apps. (50 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-implement-zero-trust-authentication-in-your-web-apps/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Dilip Krishnamoorthi. He's a senior software engineer who works at Sony building user interfaces for Playstation game consoles. We talk about how he dropped out of a traditional Indian university and used an inexpensive distance learning program to finish his engineering degree for about the cost of a Playstation 5. He also shares what it's like to work in Bengaluru – the Silicon Valley of Asia – and contrasts that with San Francisco where he now works. Dilip loves learning new tools and shares his thoughts on AI agents and tips for keeping up with the state of the art. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/senior-playstation-engineers-tips-for-learning-new-tools-and-getting-things-done-podcast-184/

4. freeCodeCamp also published this handbook on how to leverage React and Next.js streaming functionality to turbo-charge your app loading speeds for your users. Instead of waiting for the server to send one big bundle of HTML, streaming lets you progressively send blocks as others finish rendering. This makes your app feel much smoother. If you're serious about performance and user experience, this is the handbook for you. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-nextjs-15-streaming-handbook/

5. And if you want to go even deeper into React, freeCodeCamp also published this advanced handbook on Shared State Complexity. What happens when several different parts of your app need to access and update the same information at the same time? This handbook breaks down several approaches to addressing this fundamental problem. You'll learn about State Management, The Context API, Prop Drilling, and more. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/shared-state-complexity-in-react-handbook/

Quote of the Week:
*"History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did."* — Bruce Schneier, software engineer and security expert


Question: How to: August 2, 2025

Answer:
1. Don't be content merely knowing how algorithms work – understand WHY they work the way they do. freeCodeCamp just published this advanced Python course that will level up your computer science knowledge. CS Professor Qiang Hao will help you refine your algorithmic thinking and your intuition for translating abstract mathematics into working code. He touches on Sorting Algorithms, Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms, Amortized Analysis, the Master Theorem, and more. Put your thinking cap on and dive in. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/algorithm-analysis-deep-dive/

2. Learn Object-Oriented Design Patterns using Java. This interactive course built by prolific freeCodeCamp contributor and computer science professor Dr. Mark Mahoney will teach you the Composite Pattern, the Observer Pattern, the Visitor Pattern, and more. (interactive course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/object-oriented-design-patterns-with-java/

3. freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive course on cloud-based AI engineering. AWS software engineer Suman Debnath will teach you all about LLM Embeddings, RAG, Multimodal Models, and LangChain-powered Agents. You'll build an end-to-end app that automates insurance claims: claim creation, document management, data retrieval, and more using a variety of AWS services including Bedrock. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-enterprise-ai-embeddings-rag-and-multimodal-agents-using-amazon-nova-and-bedrock/

4. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Nick Taylor, a Montreal-based software engineer and prolific open source contributor. He shares tips on getting started contributing to open source projects, and then converting that track record into job opportunities. He also talks about the changing nature of working in tech, and how he gets mileage out of both emerging AI tools and time-tested open source libraries. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-turn-open-source-into-a-job-with-nick-taylor-podcast-181/

5. And if you're already working as a developer and are keen to climb the ladder at your organization, this is the article for you. freeCodeCamp contributor Shruti Kapoor wrote this detailed guide to progressing from Senior Engineer up to Staff Engineer. She shares her own journey upward at big tech companies. Then she breaks down the differences in engineering roles and the typical promotion process. She shares practical tips for evaluating your own readiness and building a portfolio of work that will impress your higher-ups. (25 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-promoted-from-senior-to-staff-engineer-tips-from-my-experience/

Quote of the Week: *“The real skill for working with AI is communication. If you can’t explain precisely what you want, the tool will churn out junk. Soft skills suddenly matter a lot.”* — Software Engineer Nick Taylor on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: July 25, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course that will teach you how to gracefully answer common LeetCode-style questions you'll get asked during developer job interviews. It covers essential data structures and algorithmic patterns. You'll build up your intuition so you can recognize which patterns to apply, and how to avoid brute force solutions. You'll start by learning fundamental data structures like Arrays, Sets, and Hashmaps. Then you'll bust out Python and learn about Big O Notation, before moving on to more advanced concepts like Sliding Windows, Binary Search, Backtracking, and Priority Queues. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-structure-and-algorithm-patterns-for-leetcode-interviews/

2. And if you want to go much deeper into Python Machine Learning, this week we also published a comprehensive Computer Vision course. You'll use the open source PyTorch library to implement one of the most influential convolutional neural networks: Visual Geometry Group Networks (VGGNets). You'll learn the theoretical origins of VGGNets and the math that powers them. Then you'll fire up Colab and start implementing one for yourself. Whenever you're looking for courses on advanced topics like this, remember to use freeCodeCamp's search bar. We have thousands of tutorials, books, and full-length courses like this. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/implement-vgg-from-scratch-with-pytorch-deep-learning-theory/

3. Want to get a developer job? Be shameless. That's the advice of this week's freeCodeCamp podcast guest, Namanh Kapur. He's a senior software engineer at LinkedIn and has a ton of hot takes on where the field is heading. He shares tips for how to interact with recruiters, which foundational developer skills he thinks you should prioritize learning, and how to get hired in what he calls the “post-LeetCode world.” (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-are-truly-in-the-hackathon-era-namanh-kapur-interview-podcast-180/

4. Not every codebase is run by a team of developers. A lot of projects are built by a single person who's just iterating on their ideas and trying to find customers. That's where this week's Ultimate Tool Stack for Indie Hackers comes in. Manish breaks down a lot of Lean Startup Methodology and translates it into specific tools you can use to quickly build the first version of your products. He covers prototyping tools, payment gateway tools, analytics, and more. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ultimate-tool-stack-for-indie-hackers/

5. freeCodeCamp also published this quick guide for more experienced developers. It shares some practical tips for incorporating AI tools into your day-to-day programming workflows. Author Spruce Emmanuel doesn't pull any punches or sugar-coat any of his observations about the utility of these tools or the future of manually writing most code. (12 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-ai-effectively-in-your-dev-projects/

Quote of the Week: *“Let's get one thing straight: AI is here to help, not to replace. Your job, my job, was never just to write code. Writing code was always just a part of it. Our real job is to build software solutions that work.”* — Spruce Emmanuel, developer and prolific freeCodeCamp contributor, in his article on incorporating AI tools into your software development workflows


Question: How to: July 18, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published this comprehensive guide to AI app security and the most common vulnerabilities. You'll learn about Threat Modeling, Prompt Injection, Data Poisoning, supply chain risks, and more. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-to-build-security-into-ai/

2. JavaScript is the most popular language on the planet. But it's also super duper prone to errors. Luckily, freeCodeCamp just dropped this comprehensive handbook to help you understand how JavaScript's error handling works. You'll learn about Try-Catch, Error Rethrowing, the Finally keyword, and the Error Object itself. We also show tons of example code that you can scrutinize and learn from. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-javascript-error-handling-handbook/

3. On this week's podcast, I interview a developer who had to apply to 800 jobs, but eventually landed one. Braydon Coyer started out building mobile apps in high school. At one point his iPhone game even out-sold Angry Birds for a day or two. He shares tons of strategies for applying for developer roles, sane ways to integrate AI into your developer workflows, and how to switch from mobile app dev to full stack dev. This dude is a blast. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/799-rejections-but-he-got-the-job-braydon-coyer-developer-interview-podcast-179/

4. I'm a huge fan of data visualization, and I love me some D3.js. So I was jazzed about this new course that'll help you shore up your Data Viz fundamentals. You'll go from bare-bones scatter plots to dynamically updating charts with fancy animations. If you want to learn how to make your data more accessible and more fun, this course is for you. (90 minute YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-interactive-data-visualization-with-svelte-and-d3/

5. As you may know, freeCodeCamp is a big open source project. And we have tons of developers who jump in to help us improve our curriculum and our codebase. But it's common for many of them to lose steam and drop off the map. This guide will help ensure that this doesn't happen to you. It'll give you actionable tips for setting open source goals, finding the right projects to get involved in, engaging with fellow devs, and more. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-sustainable-open-source-contribution-routine/

Quote of the Week: *"When I was learning to code, the big picture didn’t click until I needed to solve real problems. That’s when variables and arrays started making sense — not in theory, but in practice."* — Software Engineer Braydon Coyer on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: July 11, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published this comprehensive course that will teach you how to build apps using the LAMP Stack – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This is a classic toolchain that a huge number of websites still use to this day. You can code along at home and build your own clone of Google Calendar – complete with multi-appointment support and booking conflict logic. Then you'll use JavaScript to add a dynamic user interface. This project will help you expand your horizons and get in some serious reps. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-google-calendar-clone-with-php-mysql-and-javascript/

2. You may have heard the term “vibe coding”, where you write the specifications for your app, then hand it over to code generation agents who write the code for you. This approach has been a bit polarizing in the developer community, with vocal critics and vocal advocates. My advice is don't listen to any of them. Think for yourself. freeCodeCamp just published this course that will introduce you to vibe coding tools like n8n – an open source workflow automation tool – so you can wire together APIs and services without needing to write a ton of code manually. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-vibe-code-with-help-from-n8n/

3. On this week's podcast I interview Joe Hill. He's a software engineer who works on a data platform for NASA. Joe taught himself programming for 4 years while working as a janitor. As the single father of two Autistic boys, he first used his programming skills to build an iPad app to help them learn how to talk. He shares tons of practical tips for learning new skills and for getting things done inside big orgs. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-freecodecamp-to-nasa-with-data-engineer-joe-hill-podcast-178/

4. Learn how to write Python tests so you can make your codebase more robust. This tutorial will teach you the basics of pytest and show you tons of examples. You'll learn about Markers, Fixtures, Parameterization, and more. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-pytest-a-guide-to-testing-in-python/

5. Tell your gardener friends: freeCodeCamp just published a tutorial on how to monitor the moisture of your soil using an Arduino microcontroller. This tutorial will show you what hardware to get and how to wire it up. Then it'll walk you through the code you'll run, and explain how everything works. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-a-resistive-soil-moisture-sensor/

Quote of the Week: *"Becoming tool agnostic is one of the biggest strengths you will ever have as a programmer. If you walk into a place and they say "we use XYZ", you can go “Great. I'll learn it." That is so powerful."* — Software Engineer Joe Hill on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: July 6, 2025

Answer:
1. We just published a full-length interactive book by computer science professor and freeCodeCamp contributor Dr. Mark Mahoney. It will teach you the foundations of both back end and front end web development. You'll learn some Node, Express, SQLite, GraphQL, Web Components, React, and more. Mark even built his own open source “code playback” system to walk you through the book's code step-by-step with detailed explanations. Pretty cool. (full interactive book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/an-animated-introduction-to-web-development-from-back-to-front/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive guide to the Google Cloud Cybersecurity Certificate exam. You'll learn the basics of being a Cloud Security Analyst such as System Safeguarding, Risk Management, and Threat Analysis. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/beginners-guide-to-cloud-cybersecurity/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview Back End engineer Tai Groot about Go, TypeScript, and Rust. We dive into the Developer Experience VS Performance tradeoffs of each of these programming languages. One piece of advice Tai shares: Rust is a superb language for rewriting an older codebase... but never use it to write your first version of something new. He also shares tips for running open source projects, and for senior engineers who want to mentor new devs who are entering the field. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/rust-vs-go-vs-typescript-which-back-end-language-is-for-you-with-tai-groot-podcast-176/

4. The freeCodeCamp community uses Flutter to build our Android and iOS apps. It's a great way to maintain several apps with a single codebase. And one of the most important features developers get out of a mobile app is Local Notifications. This comprehensive tutorial will show you how to use the open source Awesome Notifications library to share updates with your users and remind them of time-sensitive events in your app. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-local-notifications-in-flutter/

5. Finally, did you know that JavaScript is now one of the most popular languages for writing games? You can build some pretty sophisticated experiences that run right in a browser. This guide will walk you through five powerful JS libraries you can use to simplify your game development workflow and get your game in front of players as quickly as possible. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-frameworks-for-game-developers/

Quote of the Week: *"Running an open source project taught me more about software design and communication than any job I’ve had. You have to think about every decision from the perspective of a stranger reading your code."* — Software Engineer Tai Groot on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: June 29, 2025

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new handbook on how to build your own custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. The entire MCP paradigm was just invented 7 months ago, so let me explain how it works. Before MCP, you needed to write custom connector code for each data source your LLM used – such as calendars, map APIs, and sensor data streams. Sure – tools like LangChain helped with this. But MCP makes things so much simpler. You just lay out how your data is structured. That way when an LLM connects, it can figure out how to get whatever data it needs all on its own. This MCP approach is an excellent complement to the Retrieval Augmented Generation technique developers were using last year. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-custom-mcp-server-with-typescript-a-handbook-for-developers/

2. Many of the recent breakthroughs in AI tools have been thanks to the Transformer Architecture pioneered at Google. This course will teach you how Transformers work, and how they're evolving. You'll learn about Attention Mechanisms, Positional Encoding, Activation Functions, and Normalization. Transformers! More than meets the eye! (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-the-evolution-of-the-transformer-architecture-used-in-llms/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview Kelly Vaughn. She's a software engineer who went from building apps for freelance clients to running her own full-blown developer agency. She shares tips for scaling up your business in your community and not burning yourself out in the process. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-therapist-to-six-figure-freelance-dev-podcast-176/

4. Learn how to build your own embedded systems – from smart fridges to home security systems. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive handbook that will teach you Firmware Design from the ground up. You'll learn about the Sense-Process-Act cycle that governs the behavior of most devices. Then you'll learn about low-level system design and modern best practices. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-embedded-systems-firmware-basics-handbook-for-devs/

5. Finally, freeCodeCamp also published our first-ever course on the German language. Learn how to speak the native language of more than 100 million Europeans with this A1-level course for absolute beginners. You'll learn grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and a ton of common phrases you can use while traveling. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-speak-german/

Quote of the Week: *"There’s a difference between freelancing and running an agency. Freelancing is a hustle. Running an agency is about systems, people, and risk."* — Software Engineer Kelly Vaughn on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast


Question: How to: June 21, 2025

Answer:
1. The freeCodeCamp community just released three new sections of our Certified Full Stack Developer curriculum: React Hooks and State, Testing, and Performance. These include dozens of lectures, workshops, and interactive labs. As you progress through the coursework, you'll build your own fully playable Tic Tac Toe game, color picker, and more. We'll continue to publish the remaining modules throughout 2025. If you start the curriculum now, you can be one of the first people to earn the cert when we add the final exam and capstone project in early 2026. (fully interactive curriculum): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-in-your-browser-freecodecamp-full-stack-curriculum-mid-2025-update/

2. freeCodeCamp also published this comprehensive course that will help you earn the Google Cloud Data Analytics certificate. You'll learn about SQL, BigQuery, data visualization, data lakehouse architecture, and more. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/beginners-guide-to-cloud-data-analytics/

3. Logic and reason underpin all of software development. And this freeCodeCamp handbook will teach you how to think critically when testing your code. You'll learn how to use Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, Contrapositives, Truth Tables, and other philosophical tools to map out all the places where your software can go off the rails. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-logic-philosophy-and-science-of-software-testing-handbook-for-developers/

4. Learn the fundamentals of data communication and networking in this new freeCodeCamp handbook. You'll learn about routing, switching, Network Topologies, the seven layers of the OSI Model, and more. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-data-communication-and-networking-handbook/

5. Finally, you may practice good operational security on your laptop. But what about your phone? This quick article will give you some practical tips for locking down your phone. (7 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-improve-your-phones-privacy/

Quote of the Week: *"A top coder sees a program graphically. A data structure as a hierarchy of relationships, a program as a network of data pipes. The first and only time they reduce pictures to words is when they write code."* — Robert Wagner, Programmer and Computer Science professor