Question: How to: Sep 27, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course on CUDA, NVIDIA's GPU programming language. You'll learn how to leverage Graphical Processing Units – chips with thousands of core processors – to do high-performance computing. You'll also get exposure to GPU architecture, writing kernels, matrix multiplication optimization, multi-layer perceptrons, and more. If you want to dive into serious machine learning, this is a great place to start. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cuda-programming/

2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive study guide for the Microsoft 365 Certified Fundamentals (MS-900) certification. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of similar cloud cert exams. He'll teach you all about Cloud Architecture terminology. Then he'll cover concepts like Scalability and Fault Tolerance. Finally, he'll walk you through the many Microsoft tools covered in the certification exam. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-microsoft-365-certified-fundamentals-ms-900-exam/

3. This week on the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview PhD drop-out turned Google Data Scientist Megan Risdal. We talk about how she helps oversee the Kaggle community, which hosts 300,000 open datasets. They also run data science competitions each week that anyone can participate in. We also talk about her time at Stack Overflow, and she compares the two developer communities. Megan studied Applied Linguistics in school, so she has a nuanced perspective on Large Language Models and AI research. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-phd-drop-out-to-google-data-scientist-with-megan-risdal-podcast-142/

4. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are essentially websites that feel snappy – even when you're on a slow internet connection. You can build PWAs that remain functional even when your users are completely offline. This in-depth tutorial will walk you through coding your own PWA using the popular Next.js framework. You'll learn all about Dynamic Caching, Service Workers, Fallback Pages, and more. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-a-nextjs-pwa/

5. And if you want to boost your web app's performance even further, you can use an approach called Prefetching. This tutorial will teach you key Prefetching concepts, then show you how to leverage its power through code examples. But – as with all good things – it's possible to go overboard with this and actually degrade your app's user experience. This tutorial will help you strike the right balance. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/boost-web-performance-with-prefetching/

Fact of the Week: Even though NVIDIA created the first modern GPU, the term “GPU” has been associated with stand-alone graphics chips since the 1970s, when it stood for “Graphics Processor Unit”. Sony then popularized the term in 1994 when they marketed the Playstation's “Geometry Processing Unit”, a Geometry Transformation Engine paired with a 2D co-processor. Finally in 1999, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce 256 “Graphics Processing Unit”, leading to modern GPUs like the one that's in the device that you're reading this Fact of the Week on right now.


Question: How to: Sep 20, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course on Design Patterns – a key programming concept. You'll learn fundamental Object-Oriented Programming concepts like inheritance, composition, encapsulation, and abstraction. You'll also learn Unified Modeling Language (UML), a powerful tool for diagramming your codebases. And you'll learn all 5 SOLID Principles and all 23 design patterns from the classic “Gang of Four” book. This course uses C#, but it's widely applicable regardless of which programming language you're focused on these days. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-object-oriented-programming-and-design-patterns-in-c

2. Learn the FARM stack. EE-EYE-EE-EYE-OH. This is a new JavaScript stack that incorporates FastAPI, React, and MongoDB. This project-oriented course is taught by freeCodeCamp instructor Beau Carnes. He'll teach you about the stack and how to deploy your apps with NGINX and Docker – all within the context of coding your own to-do app. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/use-the-farm-stack-to-develop-full-stack-apps/

3. On this week's podcast I interview prolific open source contributor and tutorial creator Eddie Jaoude. We talk about his journey into open source and tips for building your reputation through hackathons. He also shares his audio-video setup tips in case you want to create some tutorials of your own. He's a super chill dude whom I've followed for years, and it was a blast finally learning more about him. I hope you enjoy this as well. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lessons-from-freelancing-for-dozens-of-startups-eddie-jaoude/

4. Learn API security so you can harden your APIs against the most common types of attacks. This course will teach you about Cross Origin Resource Sharing, Error Disclosure, Information Leakage, Insecure Cookies, Path Traversal, Rate Limits, and more. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-to-secure-api-servers

5. If you want to make your websites accessible to as many people as possible – regardless of disabilities they may have – then you should learn about HTML Attributes. This tutorial will show you how to use these in your designs. You'll learn about ARIA Attributes, Role Values, Scope, Inert, Tabindex, and more. Super useful stuff for ensuring that your website is usable by everyone. (1 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-html-attributes-to-make-your-websites-and-apps-more-accessible/

Quote of the Week: *"If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better."* — John Carmack, programmer and co-creator of DOOM


Question: How to: Sep 13, 2024

Answer:
1. AI Engineering is an emerging software development field where you build apps on top of existing AI models. Microsoft recently unveiled a new certification in AI Engineering that you can earn by passing their exam. And already, freeCodeCamp is coming in clutch with a comprehensive course on it. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of similar cloud cert exams over the years. He'll teach you all about Azure's AI Search, Computer Vision API, Speech API, Video Indexer, and more. (14 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-azure-ai-engineer-associate-certification-ai-102/

2. And if you want to go even deeper into AI engineering, this handbook will teach you how AI Agents can help you supercharge your Language Models. You'll learn some of the history and philosophy behind AI agents, and how developers progressed from Rule-Based Systems to Machine Learning over the decades. You'll also learn what kinds of problems current generation AI Agents are best applied to, such as debugging a script or maximizing the amount of natural light in an architectural design. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-ai-agents-can-supercharge-language-models-handbook/

3. On this week's podcast I interview Jack Herrington, the Blue Collar Coder. As a kid, Jack had to work to overcome Dyslexia, and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he taught himself to code while working blue collar jobs. He has now worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. We talk about his war stories from the field, and the 6 programming books he's published along the way. We also talk about his love of bad movies. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/surviving-40-years-in-tech-jack-herrington-podcast-140/

4. Chart.js is an open source Data Visualization library. This tutorial will walk you through building your own charts that look great in a browser. You'll see real code examples of popular chart types like Scatterplots, Radar Charts, and Polar Area charts. You'll also learn how to load in your own JSON data, and how to add ARIA labels to make your charts accessible to people with disabilities. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-chart-js-for-interactive-data-visualization/

5. freeCodeCamp doesn't just teach programming. We also published a course on music production this week. You'll learn how to use the popular Digital Audio Workstation tool FL Studio. This course by music educator Tristan Wilcox will teach you key concepts like song structure, mixing, mastering, and automation. He also teaches music theory fundamentals like chords, melody, rhythm, and bass. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-music-production-for-beginners/

Quote of the Week: *"A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street."* — Doug Linder, Programmer


Question: How to: Aug 30, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published an in-depth beginner's course that will teach you how to code in the Java programming language. You'll also learn how to use Spring Boot, an industry-standard Java web development framework. This backend-focused course will walk you through coding your own ecommerce shopping cart. You'll start from scratch and generate a new project, implement the web server, code your API endpoints, and even add Spring Security to harden your system. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-shopping-cart-backend-with-spring-boot-and-spring-security/

2. And if you want to learn even more Java, freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive Selenium course this week. You'll learn Automated Web Testing so you can ensure your apps do what you want them to do. This way you can catch potential bugs and vulnerabilities before you deploy your code. This course will teach you about the Page Object Model, WebElements, Selenium Interfaces, and how to simulate user interactions like mouse movement and keyboard events. Enjoy. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-java-testing-with-selenium/

3. This week on the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview Hiroko Nishimura, who had a brain tumor removed when she was just 22 years old. At the time, the doctors told her she'd never be able to live independently again. But she learned how to walk again and talk again. And eventually she learned a ton about Systems Administration and Cloud Engineering. Today, more than 500,000 students have learned these developer concepts from her. We talk about Hiroko's entire life – from learning English as an immigrant from Japan, to getting her first job in tech, to becoming a prolific teacher. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-brain-tumor-to-teaching-500000-sysadmin-students-with-hiroko-nishimura-podcast-138/

4. React Compiler is a new feature in Version 19 of the popular React JavaScript library. The compiler can now handle optimization for you, saving you a ton of development time and sparing you many headaches. This in-depth tutorial will show you how React Compiler works, and give you practical tips for harnessing its full power in your JavaScript apps. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/react-compiler-complete-guide-react-19/

5. Microsoft Excel continues to be one of the most widely-used productivity tools – even among developers. This tutorial will teach you how to use Excel for Data Visualization. You'll learn about Excel's many chart types and how you can customize them. You'll even learn how to build your own interactive dashboards. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/excel-for-data-visualization/

Quote of the Week: *"When you have very large pieces of software, most of the tools look at the individual lines of code as text. It is often extremely powerful to look not at individual pieces of code but at a system as a whole."* — James Gosling, Software Engineer and the Father of Java


Question: How to: Aug 16, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive guide to the Amazon Web Services Developer Associate certification exam. If you're interested in learning some DevOps and cloud computing, this course will prepare you to earn this popular cert. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of similar cloud cert exams. He'll teach you all about AWS EC2, S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, and other key cloud computing tools. (81 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ultimate-aws-certified-developer-associate-dva-c02-course-from-andrew-brown/

2. Most machine learning these days is done with Python, but there are some JavaScript libraries for building AI systems as well. ml5.js is a developer-friendly open source library that's built on top of Google's TensorFlow. This crash course will teach you key concepts, and how to use an open dataset from Kaggle to code your first model. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-ml5js-for-machine-learning-in-javascript/

3. This week on the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview Angie Jones, a test engineer and inventor who holds 27 software patents. She's worked at companies like IBM and Twitter, doing both test engineering and developer advocacy. We talk about how a bad performance review from a boss early in her career taught her to be less timid and more vocal about her ideas. We also talk about her love of virtual worlds like Second Life, and how she uses AI to debug code. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/developer-and-inventor-with-27-software-patents-angie-jones-interview-134/

4. Developers often build small chunks of reusable code called Components. And at some point it makes sense to pull these together into a full-blown Component Library. This tutorial will give you a solid understanding of what Component Libraries are, their history, and how they differ from Design Systems. You'll learn how to wield the power of Component Libraries for yourself, so you can avoid rewriting code that other devs have written so many times before, and instead focus on the novel work to be done. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-a-component-library-when-to-build-your-own/

5. Learn Control Theory by building a rocket control system. You're going to be sending real rockets up into space and making sure they don't explode. Just kidding – freeCodeCamp doesn't have the budget for that. So you'll have to use a bit of imagination here. This tutorial will teach you Control Theory concepts like Signal Input, Signal Processing, and Feedback. You'll learn about PID controllers, Transfer Functions, Nyquist Plots, and more. Have fun and don't blow up any expensive satellites in the process. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/basic-control-theory-with-python/

Quote of the Week: *"The first step of any project is to grossly underestimate its complexity and difficulty."* — Nicoll Hunt, programmer and game developer


Question: How to: Aug 9, 2024

Answer:
1. A vast majority of servers these days run Linux as their operating system. And a lot of developers run Linux on their laptops as well. It's safe to say that Linux is one of the most useful skills you can learn working in tech. freeCodeCamp just published this comprehensive book that will teach you how to install Linux and work with its file system and many packages. You'll learn about shell scripting, networking, command line automation, security, and more. You can read this right in your browser and bookmark it for future reference. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-linux-for-beginners-book-basic-to-advanced/

2. And while you're learning Linux, why not learn how operating systems work in more detail? This massive course will teach you about Kernels, von Neumann Architecture, Multitasking, API Calls, Interrupts, CPU Scheduling, Disk Structure, and more. (25 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-about-operating-systems-in-depth/

3. Did you know that Babe Ruth – the most famous home-run-hitting baseball player of all time – was blind in one eye? He made up for this by being extremely good at predictive analytics – honing his instincts for what type of pitch is coming across home plate. I learned this during my insight-filled conversation with Ken Jee. He's a golfer turned data scientist who works closely with professional athletes. During my podcast interview, Ken shares a ton of tips for folks interested in getting into data science and machine learning, and for athletes who want to gain a quantitative edge on their competitors. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/where-data-science-meets-sports-analytics-with-ken-jee-podcast-interview-135/

4. One of the most exciting areas of AI at the moment is Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This freeCodeCamp Python course will teach you how to combine your own custom data with the power of Large Language Models (LLMs). You'll code your own AI system that can summarize documents for you and even have conversations with you to answer your questions about those documents. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-rag-fundamentals-and-advanced-techniques/

5. Learn how to use JavaScript to code a desktop PC game. That's right – you don't necessarily need a full-blown GameDev framework like Unity or Unreal to build games. You can code along at home and build your own Flappy Bird-like game, step-by-step. You'll load sprite assets, implement collision detection, and code the menu and score-keeping logic. Enjoy. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-pc-game-using-javascript/

Quote of the Week: *"I often compare open source to science. Science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples' ideas – making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn't do."* — Linus Torvalds, programmer, creator of Linux, and open source advocate


Question: How to: Aug 2, 2024

Answer:
1. I learned to code in my 30s. I read a bunch of computer science books, built some apps, and won a few hackathons. Then I landed my first software engineering role at a small tech company. I wrote this book to summarize the insights I've heard from CTOs, professors, and fellow self-taught developers. Transitioning into tech is not easy, and it may take you several years of preparation. This book will give you practical, no-nonsense pointers so you can map out your road ahead. (full-length book and 4-hour audiobook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-book/

2. This new freeCodeCamp course will teach you .NET and MongoDB by coding your own restaurant reservation system. You'll learn how to use Entity Framework Core, a popular Object-Relational Mapper (ORM). ORM tools help your app talk to a wide variety of databases without you needing to learn all the database-specific implementation details. Beau Carnes teaches this course. He's an experienced developer and classroom teacher, and I think you'll dig his down-to-earth teaching style. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/using-entity-framework-core-with-mongodb/

3. On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview John Washam, a software engineer at Amazon. John's also the creator of one of the most popular open source projects of all time: Coding Interview University. This is John's first-ever appearance on a podcast, so we go really in-depth. We talk about his years working as an interpreter in the US military. Then we dive into how he taught himself software engineering, and what he's learned from climbing the ranks at a big tech company. (3 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-john-washam-crammed-for-8-months-got-a-job-at-amazon-then-taught-1000s-of-other-devs-134/

4. AI models are more powerful than ever. But most of them are a black box. We don't know why they create the output that they do. And this can be dangerous. Machine Learning researchers call this the problem of Interpretability. Thankfully, a lot of very smart people are hard at work on what's called Explainable AI. This primer by Tiago Monteiro will teach you about Glass Box Models, Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks, and other important concepts in the emerging field of Explainable AI. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-an-interpretable-ai-deep-learning-model/

5. Tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published an HTML, CSS, and JavaScript course for beginners. You'll practice your skills by building a responsive navigation bar with dropdown menus, and a landing page with a custom modal. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/practice-your-html-css-and-javascript-skills-in-spanish-by-building-3-projects/

Quote of the Week: *"The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic – some sensational method or tool whose application promises to render software development trivial. It is the mark of the professional software engineer to know that no such panacea exist."* — Grady Booch, software engineer and creator of Unified Modeling Language


Question: How to: July 26, 2024

Answer:
1. System Design questions come up all the time in developer interviews. Employers ask these because they want to make sure that you know how to turn design requirements into production-grade code. Thankfully, freeCodeCamp has a new crash course will teach you the key concepts. You'll learn about Scalability, Availability, Data Handling, High-Level Architecture, and more. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-system-design-principles

2. Learn to code your own sticky note app using React and Appwrite, a Backend-as-a-Service tool. Dennis Ivy is an excellent programming teacher, and he'll walk you through building this beginner-level app step-by-step. You can code along at home. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-sticky-notes-app-with-react-and-appwrite/

3. Learn how to do heavy-duty Machine Learning without first needing to get a PhD in mathematics. On this week's podcast, I interview Daniel Bourke, who has created many popular AI learning resources over the years. We talk about how as a kid he broke into his school's network and gave himself good grades, just like Matthew Broderick in Wargames. Daniel then spent years fixing people's computers from around the Brisbane area before learning how to code. He explains how Machine Learning actually works, and what LLMs are doing for you behind the scenes. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-machine-learning-skills-without-doing-a-phd-in-math-podcast-133-with-daniel-bourke/

4. Learn how to use React's Context API. This lets you share values between React components a lot more easily than the old-fashioned way of passing props down a component tree. This tutorial will give you lots of practical examples of how to leverage the power of the Context API in your apps. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/react-context-api-tutorial-examples/

5. Lazy Loading doesn't sound like it would be a good thing, but in the case of JavaScript performance, it is. Lazy Loading is a design pattern where you only fetch mission-critical data from the server first, then go back to get other data as needed. This tutorial will teach you how to perform Lazy Loading using React and the popular Next.js framework. You'll learn about Dynamic Import, Suspense, and React.lazy. You'll also learn the limits of this design pattern, and why developers don't just use it for everything under the sun. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/next-js-performance-optimization/

Joke of the Week: *"There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."* — Leon Bambrick, programmer


Question: How to: July 12, 2024

Answer:
1. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of cloud certification exams over the years. And he's back with an in-depth guide to the popular AWS SysOps certification exam. This course will not only teach you everything tested on the exam – it will also ground you in cloud engineering concepts. So what is SysOps? Well, it's like a traditional SysAdmin (System Administrator) role that pretty much every company has – but for cloud servers. This freeCodeCamp course will cover Networking, Logging, Metrics, Events, Security, Load Balancing, Serverless Architecture, and more. If you want to take the plunge and learn all these skills, this course has got you covered. (68 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-to-pass-the-aws-sysops-administrator-associate-soa-c02-certification/

2. freeCodeCamp just published a TypeScript for beginners course to help you learn the art of statically-typed JavaScript. Most scripting languages like JavaScript and Python are dynamically-typed. But this causes so many additional coding errors. By sticking with static types – like Java and C++ do – JavaScript developers can save themselves a lot of debugging. Instructor and software engineer Bob Ziroll will teach you TypeScript fundamentals like Literal Types, Unions, Generics, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-typescript-with-interactive-lessons/

3. "The Swiss Army Knife is kind of bad at everything. But it's got a real good general sense, and it will help you survive. I want people to become Swiss Army Knife developers." That's an excerpt from my conversation with Scott Hanselman, a software engineer at Microsoft. He shares many of the lessons he's learned from his multi-decade career, and from conducting more than 900 podcast interviews with devs. I talk with him about so many topics, like how it took him 11 years to finish college, and what it's like to lead a fully remote team of devs from his hometown of Portland. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-scott-hanselman-learned-from-900-podcast-interviews-with-devs-podcast-131/

4. Optimistic UI is a new User Interface Design approach that gets its name from its blind optimism. Instead of waiting for confirmation from the server, an Optimistic UI front-end assumes everything will turn out OK, and immediately updates itself to reflect user input. This reduces perceived latency and simplifies complex UI interactions like dragging and dropping. This tutorial by developer Jaja David will teach you key concepts like Stale-While-Revalidate and Optimistic CRUD. It will also explore the drawbacks of this happy-go-lucky approach. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/improve-user-experience-with-optimistic-ui-swr/

5. Learn React Native by coding your own meditation mobile app. React Native is a JavaScript framework that you can use to build native apps that you can then publish in the Apple and Android app stores. This course will teach you how to structure your app and set up your developer environment. Then you'll learn about React Components, Props, Styles, and more. You'll also learn how to use React Router and NativeWind, a universal style system based on Tailwind CSS. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-meditation-app-with-react-native-expo-router/

Quote of the Week: *"Most people don’t even know what SysAdmins do. But trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time, they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants."* — Peter Welch, SysAdmin


Question: How to: July 5, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a game development course that will walk you through coding your own Metroidvania style game. The term “Metroidvania” comes from a genre of platformer adventure games where your character explores a large interconnected game world. Some of my favorite Metroidvania games include Hollow Knight and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. This beginner-level JavaScript course will show you how to implement enemy AI, room-linking logic, boss battles, and more. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-gamedev-with-kaboomjs/

2. Learn the fundamentals of the Go programming language (Golang) by coding your own payment platform. Georgio Tunson is a software engineer who uses Golang extensively, and he teaches this beginner-friendly course. You'll learn about Golang's basic syntax, data structures, concurrency model, and more. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/go-for-absolute-beginners/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview Alison Yoon. She started her career in Korea's fashion industry before transitioning into web design. From there, she used freeCodeCamp to further expand her skills. She now works as a front end developer at a tech company in London. We talk about her coding journey, and her leadership of the freeCodeCamp Korean translation effort. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-fashion-to-software-engineer-with-alison-yoon-podcast-130/

4. Learn about State Management in JavaScript with this new Redux Data Flow Handbook. Joan Ayebola is a Front End Developer who has a knack for explaining technical concepts in a way newbie devs can understand. Her book will teach you how to harness the power of Unidirectional Data Flows in your app. You'll learn about Reducer Functions, Dispatching Actions, Redux Middleware, and more. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-data-flows-in-redux/

5. And finally, tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published a new course on React for beginners. Carpi Coder, a Spanish-speaking software engineer, will teach you how to leverage the flexible React front-end JavaScript library. You'll also learn how to fetch data from a Firebase API and display it in your app. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-in-spanish-beginners-course

Quote of the Week: *"When I make characters, I try to design them in a way that teaches players how to play the game. In other words, if an enemy looks too pretty, they won't seem like an enemy to the player. But if you give them an enemy-like appearance, then the player won't need to read the manual or anything to know: ‘oh, I've got to avoid this guy.’"* — Gunpei Yokoi, who helped develop the original 1986 Metroid game that spawned the Metroidvania game genre


Question: How to: June 28, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a GameDev course on Godot, an open source game engine similar to Unity 3D and Unreal Engine. You can use Godot to build multi-platform games, then publish them on mobile and desktop platforms through Steam, Epic, Itch, and other game storefronts. This beginner course will teach you Godot fundamentals by walking you through step-by-step as you code your own fully-playable 3D RPG game. You'll learn how to build your game environment, spawn monsters. You'll add inventory systems, leveling systems, combat sounds, and even lighting effects. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-create-a-3d-rpg-game-with-godot/

2. Vim is a powerful code editor that comes built-in with most operating systems, including Linux and MacOS. Vim lets you to do almost anything with just a few keystrokes. You'll never need to take your hand off your keyboard to reach for your mouse again. This course by CTO Andrew Brown will give you a solid foundation in using Vim in just a few hours. Then if you want to become as proficient as he is, you can keep practicing while coding over the coming months, and feel that sheer build-up of speed. Ride like the wind! (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/mastering-vim-your-guide-to-efficient-text-editing/

3. On this week's podcast, I interview Adrian Twarog. He's a software engineer who started his career by working as the office IT guy for 10 years. He's since published YouTube courses that millions of people have watched. We talk about how he learned to code by volunteering to take on web design projects at work. He started making design tutorials on YouTube and published 300 in a single year. And he accomplished all this from Perth, Australia – as far as you can get from Silicon Valley. I think you'll dig our conversation. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-are-senior-developers-learning-low-code-and-ai-tools-adrian-twarog-interview-129/

4. React is a truly ubiquitous web development framework. And the React team just released their long-awaited Version 19. Well, freeCodeCamp moved quickly and published a comprehensive guide to all of React's new features. You'll learn about the new React Compiler that can find performance optimizations in your code for you. You'll also learn about improvements like the new Form Actions for managing states and handling user interactions. This course is an excellent starting point for React Newbies and returning React veterans alike. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/whats-new-in-react-19/

5. There's a ton of hype around Generative AI. But it's not all hype – there's some real utility there, too. This new handbook will lay out some of the ways companies are using GenAI to discover new medicines and coordinate responses to emergencies. It's a breezy read written with non-developers in mind, summarizing a lot of recent research papers. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/generative-ai-handbook/

Quote of the Week: *"Whether it's a 2D game or a 3D game, I always try to create a believable world for that game. Even the text of a game can contribute to that world feeling alive, I think. Having text prepared for every place you investigate, and having that text change depending on the circumstances, I think really helps create the illusion that you are “in” that world."* — Hideo Kojima, Creator of Metal Gear Solid


Question: How to: June 21, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a Linux course that will teach you how to use some of the open source operating system's most powerful features. It's designed with both Linux beginners and intermediate users in mind. You'll learn Linux's file system with hard links, soft links, permissions, and root accounts. You'll also learn how to use grep, a command line tool for finding what you need inside large datasets. This course also includes interactive labs, so you can apply the new skills you're learning. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/free-linux-crash-course-with-labs/

2. One of the most exciting areas of AI at the moment is Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This freeCodeCamp Python course will teach you how to combine your own custom data with the power of Large Language Models (LLMs). You'll use LangChain, Mistral AI, Ollama, and more. You'll learn straight from Per Borgan, a software engineer, teacher, and long-time friend of mine. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/building-intelligent-apps-with-mistral-ai/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast I interview designer and developer Colby Fayock. We talk about his journey from designing truck wraps to working as a software engineer. He also shares his day-to-day life building APIs and SDKs, and how he uses AI at work. Believe it or not, Colby doubled as a male model at ThinkGeek, which was kind of like The Sharper Image but for Star Wars fans. I think you'll enjoy our conversation. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/quincy-interviews-colby-fayock-dev-designer-male-model-prolific-fcc-contributor-podcast-128/

4. freeCodeCamp just published an entire handbook focused on PHP and its powerful array data structure. It's chock-full of code examples. You can code along at home and build your own soccer player sports card app. This is another excellent PHP reference from prolific author Kolade Chris. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/php-arrays-how-to-rebuild-the-football-team-cards-with-php-and-mongodb/

5. The Black-Scholes Equation is the most important mathematical formula that most people have never heard of. Black-Scholes completely revolutionized corporate finance when it was discovered in 1973. This tutorial will explain how the formula works, and how you can implement it in Python. Then you'll use it to predict the price of concert tickets, and learn about its many other real-world applications. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-the-black-scholes-equation-works-python-examples/

Quote of the Week: *"Innovation must lead infrastructure for a simple but compelling reason: Innovation produces new types of products and markets, and it is virtually impossible to know how to run those markets efficiently before they are created."* — Myron Scholes, Nobel Prize winning economist and co-creator of the Black-Scholes Equation


Question: How to: May 31, 2024

Answer:
1. My hero Dr. Chuck created this comprehensive C programming course and shared it with the global freeCodeCamp community. Dr. Chuck is a University of Michigan computer science professor, and he is a hardcore advocate for everyone learning C. Not only will this course help you understand computer architecture and low-level programming. It will also teach you Object-Oriented Programming concepts. This course even includes an interview with the creator of Python, Guido van Rossum. As you may know, Python – like most modern programming languages – is built on top of C. (18 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/complete-c-programming-course-from-dr-chuck/

2. Learn Linear Algebra so you can build your own AI systems. Tatev Aslanyan is a data scientist who has taught several freeCodeCamp courses over the past few years, mostly focused on Machine Learning. She'll teach you the key Linear Algebra concepts that come up over and over in developing modern AI tools. You'll learn about Vector Spaces, Euclidean Distance, Matrix Operations, Gaussian Elimination, and more. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/linear-algebra-crash-course-mathematics-for-machine-learning-and-generative-ai/

3. On this week's podcast, I interview software engineer Jerod Santo, who hosts the longest-running podcast on open source, The Changelog. We talk about his life as a remote dev in Omaha, Nebraska, where he's raising his 6 kids. We also talk about the new Changelog News podcast with its weekly 10-minute updates on the world of open source. He shares his process for researching and surfacing interesting developments. And he also talks about emerging trends in open source, such as the controversial relicensing of Terraform. I had a blast learning from Jerod and I think you will, too. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/open-source-is-changing-the-changelog-host-jerod-santo-on-how-to-keep-up-podcast-125/

4. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed dozens of cloud certification exams over the years. And he's back with an updated guide to the popular AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam. This course will not only teach you everything tested on the exam – it will also ground you in cloud engineering fundamentals. And no, that's not a typo. This really is a 50 hour course. But as opera singer Beverly Sills once said, there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going. (50 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-certification/

5. Two of the most important tools in any data scientist's toolbox are Linear Regression and Logistic Regression. This tutorial by data scientist Olu Samuel Praise will teach you how to apply each of these techniques for analyzing data and making predictions. In short, Logistic Regression will give you a binary classification of data: is this picture of a hot dog – yes or no? And Linear Regression will give you a continuous value like a percentage. For example, predicting exam scores from students based on their attendance and hours studied. Again, both approaches are super useful and I think you'll learn a lot from this quick read. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/linear-regression-vs-logistic-regression/

Quote of the Week: *"C retains the basic philosophy that programmers know what they are doing; it only requires that they state their intentions explicitly."* — Brian W. Kernighan, who created the C Programming language alongside Dennis Ritchie back in the 1970s


Question: How to: May 24, 2024

Answer:
1. This university-level precalculus course will help you learn mathematical concepts and apply them using Python. Ed Pratowski has decades of experience teaching both math and computer science. This hands-on course will not only teach you the mathematical concepts and notation – it will also show you how to implement these in Python as runnable code. This freeCodeCamp course will also prepare you for our more advanced engineering mathematics courses that we'll publish over the coming 36 months. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-college-precalculus-with-python/

2. On this week's podcast, I interview ThePrimeagen, a former Netflix engineer who live-streams his coding on Twitch. He shares his thoughts on AI tools and why he ripped GitHub Copilot out from his code editor. He thinks AI will create more software engineer jobs than it destroys. We also explore his love of hard Nintendo games and why he left Silicon Valley to live on a horse ranch in South Dakota. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ai-is-overrated-why-theprimeagen-ripped-out-github-copilot-from-his-code-editor-podcast-124/

3. freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that can help you prepare for coding interviews during your job search. You'll learn key JavaScript concepts like hoisting, closures, and currying – all with code examples. You'll also learn how to use Asynchronous Programming keywords like async and await. This is an excellent reference that you can come back to time and time again, so be sure to bookmark it. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/js-interview-prep-handbook/

4. We also published a comprehensive handbook on Object-Oriented Programming in JavaScript. This will teach you how JS Classes work, and how you can use them to implement design patterns. You'll learn about Constructors, Class Field Methods, the “super” keyword, and the famously confusing “this” keyword. Learn it, know it, live it. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-class-handbook/

5. In Machine Learning, Fine-Tuning is the process of taking a model that you've already trained (or a foundation model like Llama) and enhancing it with your own datasets. For example, you could take a Large Language Model and make it much better at chess by fine-tuning it by feeding it thousands of famous chess games. This course will first teach you about Quantization, a technique to optimize models for efficiency. Then you'll learn modern methods of fine-tuning like LORA and QLORA. Next you'll delve into Gradient-based optimization methods. Finally you'll learn how to build AI pipelines and how to fine-tune models using your own datasets. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/fine-tuning-llm-models-course/

Quote of the Week: *"Calculus is fundamentally naive. Almost childish in its optimism. Experience teaches us that change can be sudden, discontinuous, and wrenching. Calculus draws its power by refusing to see that. It insists on a world without accidents, where one thing leads logically to another. Give me the initial conditions and the law of motion, and with calculus I can predict the future – or better yet, reconstruct the past."* — Steven H. Strogatz, Mathematician, Author, and Professor at Cornell


Question: How to: May 10, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a practical guide to the math and theory that power modern AI models. This course for beginners is taught by Data Scientist and MLOps Engineer Ayush Singh. He'll walk you through some basic Linear Algebra, Calculus, and Matrix math so you can better understand what's happening under the hood. Then he'll teach you key Machine Learning concepts like Neural Networks, Perceptrons, and Backpropagation. If you want to expand your math skills so you can work with cutting edge tools, this course is for you. (14 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/deep-learning-course-math-and-applications/

2. Jose Nunez is a software engineer and running enthusiast. He recently ran a tower race – up 86 flights of stairs to the top of the Empire State Building. He wanted to analyze his performance data, but found the event's official website to be lacking. In this tutorial, he'll show you how he scraped the data, cleaned it, and analyzed it himself using Python. He'll also show how he created data visualizations and even coded an app so his fellow racers can view their results. If you're looking for real-life hands-on data science projects, this is an excellent one to learn from and find inspiration in. (1 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/empire-state-building-run-up-analysis-with-python/

3. On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview prolific programming teacher John Smilga. He talks about what it was like growing up in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. He worked construction in the US for 5 years before teaching himself to code and becoming a professional developer. Today he has taught millions of fellow devs through his many courses on freeCodeCamp. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-construction-worker-to-teaching-millions-of-developers-with-john-smilga-podcast-122/

4. Learn how to wield the most popular Version Control System in history: Git. Hitesh Choudhary is a software engineer who has published many courses on freeCodeCamp over the years. And this is one of his best. You'll learn how to use Git to make changes to a codebase, track those changes, submit them for review, and even how to revert changes if you break something. You'll also learn how to use Git to collaborate with developers around the world through the global Open Source community. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-git-in-detail-to-manage-your-code/

5. And if you want to go even deeper with Git, you can earn a certification in GitHub Actions. These are Serverless DevOps tools that let you automate development workflows like building, testing, and deploying code. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed more than 50 DevOps certifications over the years. He teaches this freeCodeCamp course, which covers everything that's on the certification exam. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-github-actions-certification-exam/

Quote of the Week: *"In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them."* — John von Neumann, Mathematician, Engineer, and Computer Scientist


Question: How to: May 3, 2024

Answer:
1. Kirby is a classic Nintendo game where you control a squishy pink alien with a massive appetite. And in this freeCodeCamp course, you'll code your own version of Kirby that runs in a browser. You'll learn TypeScript – a statically-typed version of JavaScript – and the Kaboom.js library. This course includes all the sprite assets you'll need to build a playable platformer game that you can share with your friends. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-a-kirby-clone-with-typescript-and-kaboomjs/

2. And if you want to learn what it's like being a professional GameDev, I interviewed Ben Awad, creator of Voidpet, which I can only describe as a sort of Emotional Support Pokémon-like mobile game. Ben is a prolific coding tutorial creator, and has a weird but popular TikTok channel as well. I had a blast learning more about his adventures over the past few years. Did you know he sleeps 9 hours every single night? He swears by it. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ben-awad-is-a-gamedev-who-sleeps-9-hours-every-night-to-be-productive-podcast-121/

3. You've heard of personal portfolio websites. But what about a portfolio that runs right in a command line terminal? That's right – this tutorial will teach you how to build an interactive portfolio experience, complete with ASCII art, a résumé menu, and even a joke command. You'll learn all about Shell Commands, Tab Completion, Syntax Highlighting, and more. And at the end of the day, you'll have a fun way to share your work with potential clients and employers. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-interactive-terminal-based-portfolio/

4. The great thing about emerging AI tools is that you don't need to be a Machine Learning Engineer with a PhD in Applied Mathematics just to be able to get things done with them. The burgeoning field of “AI Engineering” is essentially just web developers using AI APIs and off-the-shelf tools to power up their existing apps. We just published this course, taught by frequent freeCodeCamp contributor Tom Chant. It will introduce you to this new skill set and this new way of leveraging AI. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-ai-engineering-with-openai-and-javascript/

5. What's the difference between React and Next.js? And while we're at it, what's the difference between a library and a framework? In this course, software engineer Ankita Kulkarni will explain these concepts. And she'll also teach you various data fetching mechanisms and rendering strategies. If you want to expand your understanding of Front End Development, this course is for you. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/whats-the-difference-between-react-and-nextjs/

Quote of the Week: *"Game development is very difficult. Nobody sets out to create a game that's not fun. It's all of the challenges and difficulties that happen throughout development that determine whether a game is a failure or a success. I think playing those thousands of games is the single best and easiest way to learn from my predecessors."* — Masahiro Sakurai, Software Engineer, Game Developer, and Creator of Kirby


Question: How to: Apr 26, 2024

Answer:
1. If you've used spreadsheets before, you're all set to learn SQL. This freeCodeCamp course, taught by Senior Data Engineer Vlad Gheorghe, will help you grasp fundamental database concepts. Then you'll apply what you've learned by analyzing data using PostgreSQL and BigQuery. You'll learn about Nested Queries, Table Joins, Aggregate Functions, and more. Enjoy. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-sql-for-analytics/

2. On this week's episode of The freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview my friend Andrew Brown. He's a CTO who has passed dozens of certification exams from AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and other cloud companies. We talk about Cloud Engineering and he shares his advice for which certs he thinks people should prioritize if they want to get into the field. We also talk about his love of Star Trek and of the classic Super Nintendo game Tetris Attack. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/cto-andrew-brown-passed-dozens-of-cloud-certification-exams-freecodecamp-podcast-episode-120/

3. Learn Next.js by building your own cloud photo album app. Prolific freeCodeCamp instructor Colby Fayock will teach you how to use powerful AI toolkits that let your visitors modify photos right in their browsers. He also teaches key image optimization concepts. This is a great course for anyone interested in sharpening their front end development skills. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-google-photos-clone-with-nextjs-and-cloudinary/

4. The Rust programming language has become quite popular recently. Even Linux now uses Rust in its kernel. A few years back, freeCodeCamp published a comprehensive interactive Rust course. And today I'm thrilled to share this new Rust Procedural Macros handbook. Procedural Macros let you execute Rust code at compile time, and Rust developers use these all the time. This handbook should serve as a helpful reference for you if you want to level up your Rust skills. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/procedural-macros-in-rust/

5. And finally, Tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published a new course on Responsive Web Design, taught by Spanish-speaking software engineer David Choi. This course will teach you how to set up your developer environment, structure your web pages using HTML, and define CSS styles for both mobile and desktop viewport sizes. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-responsive-website-with-html-and-css-full-course-in-spanish/

Quote of the Week: *"The word SEQUEL turned out to be somebody’s trademark. So I took all the vowels out of it and turned it into SQL. That didn’t do too much damage to the acronym. It could still be the Structured Query Language."* — Donald Chamberlin, Co-Creator of SQL


Question: How to: Apr 19, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn statistics for Data Science and AI Machine Learning. freeCodeCamp just published this handbook that will help you learn key concepts like Bayes' Theorem, Confidence Intervals, and the Central Limit Theorem. It covers both the classical math notation and Python implementations of these concepts. This is a broad primer for developers who are getting into stats, and it's also a helpful reference you can bookmark and pull up as needed. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/statistics-for-data-scientce-machine-learning-and-ai-handbook/

2. And if you want to dig even further into applied Data Science, freeCodeCamp also published this in-depth Python course on A/B Testing and optimization. It will teach you core concepts like Hypothesis Testing, Statistical Significance Levels, Pooled Estimates, and P-values. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/applied-data-science-a-b-testing/

3. One of the most exciting areas of AI at the moment is Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This freeCodeCamp Python course will teach you how to combine your own custom data with the power of Large Language Models (LLMs). You'll learn straight from a software engineer who works on the popular LangChain open source project, Dr. Lance Martin. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/mastering-rag-from-scratch/

4. This week I interviewed software engineer and visual artist Kass Moreno about her photo-realistic CSS art. Frankly you have to see her art to believe it. She painstakingly recreates manufactured objects like cameras, gameboys, and synthesizers using nothing but CSS. We talk about her childhood in Mexico and Texas, dropping out of architecture school, her listless years of working in retail, and how she ultimately learned to code using freeCodeCamp and got her first developer role. (1 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/css-artist-kass-moreno-freecodecamp-podcast-119/

5. Learn how to build your own movie recommendation engine using Python. You'll use powerful data libraries like scikit-learn, Pandas, and the Natural Language Toolkit. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a tool that can recommend movies to you based on content and genre. (1 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-movie-recommendation-system-with-python/

Quote of the Week: *"Python is everywhere at Industrial Light & Magic. It's used to extend the capabilities of our applications, as well as providing the glue between them. Every computer-generated image we create has involved Python somewhere in the process."* — Philip Peterson, Principal Engineer at ILM, the special effects company behind Star Wars and so many other Hollywood movies


Question: How to: Apr 12, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn Backend development by coding 3 full-stack projects with Python. Prolific freeCodeCamp teacher Tomi Tokko will take you step-by-step through building: an AI blog tool, a functional clone of Netflix, and a Spotify-like music platform. You'll learn how to use the powerful Django webdev framework, along with PostgreSQL databases and Tailwind CSS. This course is a big undertaking. But Tomi makes it enjoyable and accessible for beginners. If you can put in the time to complete this, you'll gain experience with an entire stack of relevant tools. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/backend-web-development-three-projects

2. Jabrils is an experienced game developer who makes hilarious videos about his projects. He's also taught a popular programming course on freeCodeCamp. I interviewed him on this week's freeCodeCamp podcast about AI, anime, and his new turn-based fighting game. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/indie-game-dev-jabrils-freecodecamp-podcast-118/

3. Learn how to turn your Figma designs into working code. Ania Kubów is one of freeCodeCamp's most beloved teachers. And in this course, she showcases the power of generative AI. She'll walk you through taking a Figma design of an Airbnb-style website and converting it into a fully-functional app. She'll also show you how to add authentication and deploy it to the cloud. (90-minute YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ai-web-development-tutorial-figma-designs

4. GitHub recently launched 4 professional certifications. And this comprehensive guide will help you prepare to pass first of these – the GitHub Foundations exam. Chris Williams has used Git extensively over the decades while working as a software engineer and cloud architect. He breaks down key Git concepts and makes them much easier to learn. (2-hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/github-foundations-certified-exam-prep-guide/

5. And speaking of Git, if you have Spanish-speaking friends, tell them that freeCodeCamp just published a new Spanish-language Git course. It covers basic version control concepts like repositories, commits, and branches. And it even teaches you more advanced techniques like cherry picking. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-git-in-spanish-git-course-for-beginners/

Quote of the Week: *"If you don't follow your curiosity, you won't end up where you deserve to be."* — Jabrils on his journey into coding and gamedev, on this week's freeCodeCamp Podcast


Question: How to: Apr 5, 2024

Answer:
1. In an era of powerful off-the-shelf AI tools, there's something to be said for building your own AI from scratch. And that's what you'll learn how to do in this beginner course. Dr. Radu teaches computer science at a university in Finland, and is one of freeCodeCamp's most popular instructors. He'll show you how to manually tweak neural network parameters so you can teach a car how to drive itself through a Grand Theft Auto-like sandbox playground. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/understand-ai-and-neural-networks-by-manually-adjusting-paramaters/

2. Learn how to code your own playable Super Nintendo-style developer portfolio website. Instead of just reading your résumé, visitors can walk around a Legend of Zelda-like cabin and explore your work. This tutorial includes all the sprites, tiles, and other pixel art assets you need to build the finished website. Practice your JavaScript skills while building an interactive experience you can share with friends and potential employers. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-developer-portfolio-as-a-2d-game/

3. Learn Git fundamentals. freeCodeCamp just published this new handbook that will teach you how to get things done with a version control system. You'll learn how to set up your first code repository, create branches, commit code, and push changes to production. You can code along at home with this book's many tutorials, and bookmark it for future reference. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-git-basics/

4. Learn the latest version of the popular React Router JavaScript library. This course will teach you how to build Single Page Apps where your users can navigate from one React view to another without the page refreshing. You'll also get practice defining routes, passing parameters, and managing state transitions. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-router-v6-course

5. On this week's freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview 100Devs founder Leon Noel. Growing up, Leon felt he needed to become a doctor in order to be considered successful. But his interest in coding inspired him to drop out of Yale and build software tools for scientists. He went through a startup accelerator, taught coding in his community, and ultimately built a Discord server with 60,000 people learning to code together. We talk about the science behind learning, and what approaches have helped his students the most. We even talk about Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, and Leon's love of the animated X-Men show. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/100devs-founder-leon-noel-freecodecamp-podcast-interview/

Quote of the Week: *"I wrote nearly a thousand computer programs while preparing this material, because I find that I don't understand things unless I try to program them."* — Donald Knuth on all the code he wrote from scratch in researching his classic book “The Art of Computer Programming”


Question: How to: Mar 29, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn to build apps with the popular Nest.js full-stack JavaScript framework. In this intermediate course, you'll code your own back end for a Spotify-like app. You'll learn how to deploy a Node.js API to the web. And you'll build out all the necessary database and authentication features along the way. (Note that Nest.js is similar to Next.js, but Nest.js uses TypeScript and is heavily inspired by Angular. freeCodeCamp also has comprehensive Next.js courses if you want to learn that as well.) (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/comprehensive-nestjs-course/

2. You may have heard the term “no-code” before. Essentially these types of tools are “not only code” because you can still write custom code to run on top of them. This said, these tools do make it dramatically easier for both developers and non-developers to get things done. This new course is taught by one of freeCodeCamp's most popular instructors, Ania Kubów. She'll teach you how to automate boring tasks by leveraging AI tools and creating efficient automation pipelines. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/automate-boring-tasks-no-code-automation-course

3. Kanban task management boards were invented at Toyota way back in the 1940s. I speak Chinese and a little Japanese, and I can tell you that the Chinese characters in the word “Kanban” translate to “look board” – something you can look at to quickly understand what's going on with a project. You may have used popular Kanban tools like Trello. But have you ever coded your own Kanban? Well, today's the day. This project-oriented tutorial will teach you how to use React, Next.js, Firebase, Tailwind CSS, and other modern webdev tools. (90 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-full-stack-app-with-typescript-nextjs-redux-toolkit-firebase/

4. Learn how to do hard-core data analysis and visualization using Google's stack of freely available tools: Sheets, BigQuery, Colab, and Looker Studio. This beginner-friendly course is taught by a seasoned data analyst. He'll walk you through each of these tools, and show you how to pipe your data from one place to the other. You'll walk away with insights you can apply to accomplish your practical day-to-day goals. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-analytics-with-google-stack/

5. In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview Jessica Lord – AKA JLord. You may not have heard of her, but you probably use her code every day. She's worked as a software engineer for more than a decade at companies like GitHub and Glitch. Among her many accomplishments, she created the Electron team at GitHub. Electron is a library for building desktop apps using browser technologies. If you've used the desktop version of Slack, Figma, or VS Code, you've used Electron. We had such a fun time talking about her journey from architecture student to city hall to working at the highest levels of tech. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-jlord-jessica-lord/

Joke of the Week: *"Me: I'm afraid of JavaScript keywords. Therapist: tell me about THIS. Me: Aghhh!"* — Carla Notarobot, Software Engineer and Bad Joke Sharer


Question: How to: Mar 22, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a massive TypeScript course to help you learn the art of statically-typed JavaScript. Most scripting languages like JavaScript and Python are dynamically-typed. But this causes so many additional coding errors. By sticking with static types – like Java and C++ do – JavaScript developers can save so much headache. This beginner course is taught by legendary coding instructor John Smilga. I love his no-nonsense teaching style and the way he makes even advanced concepts easier to understand. And you can apply what you're learning by coding along at home and building your own ecommerce platform project in TypeScript. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-typescript-for-practical-projects

2. On this week's podcast, I interview Phoebe Voong-Fadel about her childhood as the daughter of refugees, and how she self-studied coding and became a professional developer at the age of 36. Phoebe worked from age 12 at her parent's Chinese take-out restaurant. After college, the high cost of childcare forced her to leave her career so she could raise her two kids. After two years of teaching herself to code using freeCodeCamp, she got her first job as a developer. (1 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/stay-at-home-mom-to-developer-podcast/

3. How can two people communicate securely through an insecure channel? That is a fundamental challenge in cryptography. One approach is by using the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange algorithm. freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will teach you how to leverage Diffie-Hellman to protect your data in transit, as it moves from between clients and servers. This handbook dives deep into the math that makes this possible, and uses tons of diagrams to explain the theory. It also explores older solutions, such as Hash-based Message Authentication Code. And you'll immediately put all this new knowledge to use by building a secure messaging project. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/hmac-diffie-hellman-in-node/

4. Spring Boot is a popular web development framework for Java, and it's used by tons of big companies like Walmart, General Motors, and Chase. Dan Vega is a prolific teacher of Java. He developed this new course to help more people learn the latest version of Spring Boot so they can build enterprise-grade apps. His passion for Java really comes through in this course. (3.5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-app-development-with-spring-boot-3/

5. Learn Microsoft's ASP.NET web development framework by building 3 projects. You'll start off this course by learning some C# and .NET fundamentals while coding a menu app. Then you'll dive into some advanced features while building your own clone of Google Docs. Finally, you'll bring everything together by building a payment app. Along the way, you'll get familiar with Microsoft's powerful Visual Studio coding environment. (2.5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-asp-net-core-by-building-three-projects/

Quote of the Week: *"‘TypeScript is silly because it just gets turned back into typeless code when you hit compile.’ Oh man do I have some upsetting news about C++ for you."* — Jules Glegg, Game Developer


Question: How to: Mar 15, 2024

Answer:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive roadmap for learning Back-End Development. You'll start off by learning full-stack JavaScript with Node.js. Then you'll learn how to use Django to build a Python back end. After building several mini-projects, you'll dive deep into database administration with SQL. You'll then build your own APIs, write tests for them, and secure them using OWASP best practices. This roadmap will also teach you Architecture and DevOps concepts, Docker, Redis, and the mighty NGINX. (70 hour roadmap of YouTube courses): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/back-end-developer

2. Learn the algorithms that come up most frequently in employers' coding interviews. This new course will teach you how to use JavaScript to solve interview questions like Spiral Matrix, the Pyramid String Pattern, and the infamous Fizz-Buzz. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/top-10-javascript-algorithms-for-coding-challenges/

3. On this week's freeCodeCamp Podcast I interview Cassidy Williams about her climb from Microsoft intern to Amazon software engineer to startup CTO. Cassidy's famous for her many developer memes and funny coding videos. In this blunt, un-edited conversation, she shares a ton of career tips – including some that will be especially helpful for women entering the field. (2 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-cassidy-williams-cassidoo/

4. Learn how to localize your websites and apps into many world languages. Of course, anyone can just drop in a translation plugin. But if you want your users to have a good experience, you should create bespoke translations that resonate with native speakers of those languages. This course will introduce you to a powerful translation crowdsourcing tool used by many websites and apps – including freeCodeCamp. You'll learn how to combine machine translation with the intuition of native speakers to quickly craft translations that sound natural. Then you'll learn how to use the front-end libraries necessary to get those translations in front of the right users. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/localize-websites-with-crowdin/

5. And speaking of localization, tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive Tailwind CSS course taught by David Ruiz, a Front-End Developer and native Spanish speaker. We've been publishing tons of Spanish-language courses to help Spanish speakers around the world, and this is just the beginning. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-tailwind-css-in-spanish-full-course/

Quote of the Week: *"In the particular is contained the universal."* — James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet


Question: How to: Mar 8, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn the C# programming language. This course will teach you C# syntax, data structures, Object Oriented Programming concepts, and more. Then you'll apply this knowledge by coding a variety of mini-projects throughout the course. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-c-sharp-programming/

2. Prolific freeCodeCamp author Nathan Sebhastian just published his React for Beginners Handbook. You can read the full book and learn how to code React-powered JavaScript apps. Along the way you'll learn about Components, Props, States, Events, and even Network Requests. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/react-for-beginners-handbook/

3. This new Machine Learning course will give you a clear roadmap toward building your own AIs. Data Scientist Tatev Aslanyan teaches this Python course. She covers key statistical concepts like Logistic Regression, Outlier Detection, Correlation Analysis, and the Bias-Variance Trade-Off. She also shares some common career paths for working in the field of Machine Learning. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-machine-learning-in-2024/

4. But you don't have to learn a ton of Statistics and Machine Learning to get more out of AI. You can first focus on just getting better at talking to AI. This new Prompt Engineering Handbook will give you practical tips for getting better images, text, and code out of Large Language Models like GPT-4. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/advanced-prompt-engineering-handbook/

5. In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview education charity founder Seth Goldin. He's a computer science student at Yale and has taught several popular freeCodeCamp courses. We talk about the future of education, and the risks and opportunities presented by powerful AI systems like ChatGPT. During this fun, casual conversation, we make sure to explain all the specialized terminology as it comes up. And like most of our episodes, this podcast is 100% OK to listen to around kids. (2 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-ai-and-the-future-of-education-with-seth-goldin/

Joke of the Week: *"Why do Java developers wear glasses? Because they can't C#."


Question: How to: Mar 1, 2024

Answer:
1. Generative AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence that creates new content based on its training data, rather than just returning a pre-programmed response. You may have tried creating text or images using models like GPT-4, Gemini, or the open source Llama 2. But how do these models actually work? This in-depth freeCodeCamp course will teach you the underlying Machine Learning concepts that you can use to create your own models. And it'll show you how to leverage popular tools like Langchain, Vector Databases, Hugging Face, and more. (30 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-generative-ai-in/

2. One Generative AI model that just came out is Google's new Gemini model. And freeCodeCamp instructor Ania Kubów just finished her comprehensive course showcasing Gemini's many features. You'll learn how Gemini works under the hood, and about its "multimodal" functionalities like image-to-text, sound-to-text, and even text-to-video. The course culminates in grabbing an API key and coding along with Ania to build your own AI Code Buddy chatbot project. (1.5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/google-gemini-course-for-beginners/

3. And if that wasn't enough AI courses for you, Microsoft recently started offering a professional certification in AI fundamentals. This course – taught by CTO and prolific freeCodeCamp contributor Andrew Brown – will help prepare you for the exam. You'll learn about classical AI models, Machine Learning pipelines, Azure Cognitive Services, and more. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/azure-data-fundamentals-certification-ai-900-pass-the-exam-with-this-free-4-hour-course/

4. freeCodeCamp just published another full-length handbook – this time on Regular Expressions. RegEx are one of the most powerful – and most confusing – features of modern programming languages. You can use RegEx to search through data, validate user input, and even find complex patterns within text. This handbook will teach you key concepts like anchors, grouping, metacharacters, and lookahead. And you'll learn a lot of advanced JavaScript RegEx techniques, too. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/regex-in-javascript/

5. Serverless Architecture is a popular approach toward building apps in 2024. Despite the name, there are still servers in a data center somewhere. This isn't magic. But the tools abstract the servers away for you. In this intermediate JavaScript course, Software Engineer Justin Mitchel will teach you how to take a simple Node.js app and run it on AWS Lambda with a serverless Postgres database. He'll even show you how to automate deployment using GitHub Actions and Vercel. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/serverless-node-js-tutorial/

Also, on this week's podcast I interviewed an emerging star in the Machine Learning community: Logan Kilpatrick. The day he started working at Open AI, ChatGPT was brand new and hit its first 1 million users. We talk about Logan's journey from the suburbs of Chicago to the heart of Silicon Valley, his work at NASA, and his many freeCodeCamp tutorials on the Julia programming language. (2 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-chatgpt-open-ai-logan-kilpatrick/

Quote of the Week: *"The plural of regex is regrets."* — Steve, a Brooklyn-based Golang developer and reluctant user of Regular Expressions


Question: How to: Feb 23, 2024

Answer:
1. Data Structures and Algorithms are tools that developers use to solve problems. DS&A are a huge chunk of what you learn in a computer science degree program. And they come up all the time in developer job interviews. This in-depth course is taught by a Google engineer, and will teach you the key concepts of Time Complexity, Space Complexity, and Asymptotic Notation. Then you'll get tons of practice by coding dozens of the most common DS&A using the popular Java programming language. (48 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-data-structures-and-algorithms-2/

2. Many of the recent breakthroughs in AI are thanks to advances in Deep Learning. In this intermediate-level handbook, Data Scientist Tatev Aslanyan will teach you the fundamentals of Deep Learning and Artificial Neural Networks. She'll give you a solid foundation that you can use as a springboard into the more advanced areas of machine learning. You'll learn about Optimization Algorithms, Vanishing Gradient Problems, Sequence Modeling, and more. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/deep-learning-fundamentals-handbook-start-a-career-in-ai/

3. The Document Object Model (DOM) is like a big Christmas tree that you hang ornament-like HTML elements on. This front-end development handbook will teach you how the DOM works, and how you can use it to make interactive web pages. You'll learn about DOM Traversal, Class Manipulation, Event Bubbling, and other key concepts. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-in-the-browser-dom-and-events/

4. On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview Jessica Wilkins, an orchestral musician from Los Angeles turned software engineer. We talk about how ridiculously competitive the world of classical music is, and how it gave her the mental toughness that she needed to learn to code. Jessica ultimately turned down contracts from Disney and other music industry titans so that she could focus on transitioning into tech. She was a prolific volunteer contributor to the freeCodeCamp codebase and core curriculum, and now works on our team. I think you'll dig our conversation – especially if you're interested in the overlap between music and technology. (2.5 hour listen in your browser or favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-jessica-wilkins-classical-music-learning-to-code/

5. Finally, if you have Spanish-speaking friends, tell them about this new CSS Flexbox course that we just published. freeCodeCamp now has tons of courses in Spanish, along with a weekly Spanish podcast – all available on our freeCodeCamp Español channel. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-css-flexbox-in-spanish-course-for-beginners/

Quote of the Week: *"Less than 10% of code has to do with the ostensible purpose of a system. The rest deals with input-output, data validation, data structure maintenance, and other housekeeping."* — Mary Shaw, Software Engineer and Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor


Question: How to: Feb 16, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn how to use JavaScript to create art with code. More and more contemporary artists are using math and programming to create digital art and interactive experiences. This course is taught by artist and software engineer Patt Vira. She'll show you how to use the popular p5.js library. You can code along at home and build 5 beginner art projects. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/art-of-coding-with-p5js/

2. It's hard to predict the exact order in which things will happen in life. That's certainly the case in software. Thankfully, developers have pioneered a more flexible approach called Asynchronous Programming. And JavaScript is especially well-equipped for async programming thanks to its special Promise objects. freeCodeCamp just published this JavaScript Promises handbook to teach you common async patterns. You'll also learn about error handling, promise chaining, and async anti-patterns to avoid. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-javascript-promises-handbook/

3. Code your own product landing page using SveltKit. Software Engineer James McArthur will teach you all about Svelt, SveltKit, Tailwind CSS, and the benefits of Server-Side Rendering. He'll even show you how to deploy your site to the web, and add a modern CI/CD pipeline. This course will give you a good mix of theory and practice. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-sveltekit-full-course/

4. Learn how to code your own video player that runs right in your browser. This in-depth tutorial will teach you how to use powerful tools like Tailwind CSS and Vite. You'll also learn some good old-fashioned JavaScript. This is an excellent project-oriented tutorial for intermediate learners. (1 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-custom-video-player-using-javascript-and-tailwind-css/

5. On this week's freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview developer and Scrimba CEO Per Borgen. We talk about Europe's tech startup scene and the emerging field of AI Engineering. Per is a fellow founder whom I've known for nearly a decade, and we had a fun time catching up. I hope you're enjoying the podcast and learning a lot from these thoughtful devs I'm having as guests. (1 hour YouTube video or you can listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-ai-engineering-scrimba-ceo-per-borgan/

Quote of the Week: *"I think we'd all feel much better if we instead saw bad code as a form of contemporary art. Unused functions? Surrealism. Mixing tabs and spaces? Postmodern. My code isn't spaghetti, it's avant-garde."* — Cain Maddox, Game Developer


Question: How to: Feb 9, 2024

Answer:
1. This new freeCodeCamp course will walk you step-by-step through coding 25 different front-end React projects. I've always said: the best way to improve your coding skills is to code a lot. Well, this course will build up your JavaScript muscle memory, and help you internalize key concepts through repetition. Projects include: the classic Tic Tac Toe game, a recipe app, an image slider, an expense tracker, and even a full-blown blog. Dive in and get some reps. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-react-by-building-25-projects/

2. freeCodeCamp alum Zubin Pratap worked as a corporate lawyer for years. But deep down inside, he knew he wanted to get into software development. After years of starting – and stopping – learning to code, he eventually became a developer. He even worked as a software engineer at Google. Zubin created this career change course to help other folks learn how to transition into tech as well. In this course, he busts common myths around learning to program. He also shares open industry secrets, and gives you a framework for mapping out your path into tech. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/career-change-to-code-guide/

3. Gavin Lon has been a C# developer for two decades, writing software for companies around London. And now he's distilled his C# wisdom and his love of the programming language into this comprehensive book. Over the past few years, freeCodeCamp Press has published more than 100 freely available books that you can read and bookmark as a reference. And this is one of our most ambitious books. It explores C# data types, operators, classes, structs, inheritance, abstraction, events, reflection, and even asynchronous programming. In short, if you want to learn C#, read Gavin's book. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-csharp-book/

4. Roughly 1 out of every 7 Americans lives with a disability. As developers, we should keep these folks in mind when building our apps. Thankfully, there's a well-established field called Accessibility (sometimes shortened to “a11y” because there are 11 letters in the word that fall between the A and the Y). This nuts-and-bolts freeCodeCamp course will teach you about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Accessible Rich Internet Applications, Semantic HTML, and other tools for your toolbox. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-make-your-web-sites-accessible/

5. On this week's freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview the creator of one of the most successful open source projects ever. Robby Russell first released the Oh My Zsh command line tool 15 years ago. We talk about his web development consultancy, which has built projects for Nike and other Portland-area companies. We also talk about his career-long obsession with code maintainability, and his post-rock band. (2 hour watch on YouTube, or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-oh-my-zsh-creator-and-ceo-robby-russell/

Quote of the Week: *"I tried to teach myself to code THREE times. In 2014, in 2015, and in 2017. And all three times I quit because I tried to jump too high, set myself up for failure, and then assumed I was not smart enough. But actually, I had just tried to run before I’d learned to walk."* — Zubin Pratap, freeCodeCamp alum who went on to become a software engineer at Google


Question: How to: Feb 2, 2024

Answer:
1. My friend Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every cloud certification exam under the sun. Within weeks of GitHub publishing their new official certs, Andrew has already studied, passed the exam, and prepared this course to help you do the same. If you're considering earning a professional cert to demonstrate your proficiency in Git and GitHub, this course is for you. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-github-foundations-certification-course/

2. Among many of my web developer friends, a new set of tools is emerging as a standard: Tailwind CSS, Next.js, React, and TypeScript. And you can learn all of these by coding along at home with this beginner course. You'll use each of these tools to build your own weather app. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/beginner-web-dev-tutorial-build-a-weather-app-with-next-js-typescript/

3. And if you want even more JavaScript practice, this tutorial is for you. You'll code your own browser-playable version of the 1991 classic "Gorillas" game, where two gorillas throw explosive bananas at one another. You'll use JavaScript for the game logic and core gameplay loop. And you'll use CSS and HTML Canvas for the graphics and animation. (2 hour read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/gorillas-game-in-javascript/

4. Deep Learning is a profoundly useful approach to training AI. And if you want to work in the field of Machine Learning, this course will teach you how to answer 50 of the most common Deep Learning developer job interview questions. You'll learn about Neural Network Architecture, Activation Functions, Backpropogation, Gradient Descent, and more. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ace-your-deep-learning-job-interview/

5. My friends Jess and Ramón are starting a new cohort of their freely available bootcamp on Friday, February 9. You can join them and work through freeCodeCamp's new project-oriented JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures certification. This is a great way to expand your skills alongside a kind, supportive community. (8 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/free-webdev-and-js-bootcamps/

Quote of the Week: *"Git and I are in a committed relationship but it pushes me sometimes."* — Cassidy Williams, Software Engineer


Question: How to: Jan 26, 2024

Answer:
1. Learn Python data analysis by working with astronomical data. In this course, you'll start by learning some basic Python coding skills. Then you'll use measurements from the stars to learn how to work with tabular data and visual data. You'll pick up tools like Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Jupyter Notebook. You'll even apply some advanced image processing techniques. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-data-analysis-and-visualization-with-python-using-astrongomical-data/

2. And if you want to learn even more Python, freeCodeCamp just published an entire handbook on the art and science of Python debugging. You'll learn how to interpret common Python error messages. You'll also learn common debugging techniques like Logging, Assertions, Exception Handling, and Unit Testing. Along the way, you'll use Code Linters, Analyzers, and other powerful code editor tools. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/python-debugging-handbook/

3. OpenAI just released their new Assistants API to help you build your own personal AI assistants. And this project-oriented course will show you how to code up some minions that can do your bidding. You'll learn how to use Python, Streamlit, and the Assistants API to code your own news summarizer project and your own study buddy app. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-ai-assistants-with-openais-assistants-api/

4. Learn LangChain by coding and deploying 6 AI projects. You'll use 3 popular Large Language Models: GPT-4, Google Gemini, and the open source Llama 2. Along the way, you'll build a blog post generator, a multilingual invoice extractor, and a chatbot that can summarize PDFs for you. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-langchain-and-gen-ai-by-building-6-projects/

5. This week on the freeCodeCamp Podcast, I interview Beau Carnes, who oversees the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel. Over the past 5 years, Beau has taught dozens of coding tutorials and helped curate more than 1,000 courses. We talk about his transition from high school special education teacher to software engineer. He shares the story of how he earned his second degree in just 6 months while raising 3 kids and running a stilt-walking service. This is my first video podcast, so you can actually watch me and Beau talk while you listen. Or you can just listen the old-fashioned way in your browser or podcast app of choice. (1 hour listen): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-biggest-youtube-programming-channel-beau-carnes

Quote of the Week: *"Thanks to advances in hardware and software, our computational capability to model and interpret this deluge of [astronomical] data has grown tremendously... The confluence of ideas and instruments is stronger than ever."* — Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan, Yale professor, on the growing importance of data analysis in her field of Astronomy


Question: How to: Jan 19, 2024

Answer:
1. Many people who are learning to code have the goal of eventually working as a developer. But landing that first developer role is not an easy task. Luckily, my friend Lane Wagner created this course to help guide you through the process. It's jam-packed with tips from me and a lot of other developers. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-a-developer-job

2. For years, people have asked for an in-depth course on Data Engineering. And I'm thrilled to say freeCodeCamp just published one, and it's a banger. Data Engineers design systems to collect, store, and analyze data – systems that Data Scientists and Data Analysts rely on. This course will teach you key concepts like Data Pipelines and ETL (Extract-Transform-Load). And you'll learn how to use tools like Docker, CRON, and Apache Airflow. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-the-essentials-of-data-engineering/

3. freeCodeCamp also just published a full-length book on Advanced Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in Java. It will teach you Java Design Patterns, File Handling, I/O, Concurrent Data Structures, and more. And freeCodeCamp published a more beginner-friendly Java OOP book by the same author a while back, too. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/object-oriented-programming-in-java/

4. freeCodeCamp uses the open source NGINX web server, and more than one third of all other websites do, too. NGINX uses an asynchronous, event-driven architecture so you can handle a ton of concurrent users with fewer servers. We just published a crash course on using NGINX for back-end development. You'll learn how to use it for load balancing, reverse proxying, data streaming, and even as a Microservice Architecture. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/nginx/

5. You may have heard the term “ACID database”. It refers to a database that guarantees transactions with Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. MySQL and PostgreSQL are fully ACID-compliant. Other databases like MongoDB and Cassandra have partial ACID guarantees. So what are these properties and why are they so important? This article by Daniel Adetunji will explain everything using helpful analogies and some of his own artwork. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/acid-databases-explained/

Quote of the Week: *"Data engineers are the plumbers building a data pipeline, while data scientists are the painters and storytellers, giving the data a voice."* — Steven Levy, author of many excellent books about developers and tech companies


Question: How to: Jan 12, 2024

Answer:
1. This week freeCodeCamp published a massive book on Git. Git was invented by the same programmer who created Linux. It's a powerful Version Control System that virtually all new software projects use. This said, even experienced developers can struggle to understand Git. So my friend Omer Rosenbaum – the CTO of an AI company – wrote this intermediate book. It will teach you how Git works under the hood, and how you can use it to collaborate with other devs around the world. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/gitting-things-done-book/

2. Learn Data Analysis with Python. This comprehensive course will teach you how to analyze data using Excel, SQL, and even specialized industry tools like Power BI and Tableau. Along the way, you'll improve your Python and build several real-world projects you can show off to your friends. The instructor, Alex Freberg, has worked as a data analyst in a variety of industries. He's adept at explaining advanced topics. I think you'll enjoy this course and learn a lot. (19 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-data-analysis-with-comprehensive-19-hour-bootcamp/

3. If you're new to coding but still want to quickly build prototype apps, AI tools can definitely help. ChatGPT is no substitute for programming skills, but it's reasonably good at creating code. This course will teach you some prompt engineering techniques. It will also give you a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of AI-assisted coding. Along the way, you'll build a drum set app and even a Whac-a-Mole game. This course is a great starting point for absolute beginners, and can serve as a gateway into full-blown software development. Be sure to tell your non-programmer friends about it. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-without-being-a-coder/

4. A String is one of the most primordial of data types. You can find String variables in almost every programming language. Strings are just a sequence of characters, usually between two quote marks, like this: "banana". And yet there are so many things you can do with Strings: Concatenation, Comparison, Encoding, and even String Searching with Regular Expressions. Joan Ayebola wrote this in-depth handbook that will teach you everything you need to know about JavaScript Strings. (full handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-string-handbook/

5. Hugging Face is not just what happens in the 1979 movie “Alien”. It's also a "GitHub of AI" platform where machine learning enthusiasts share models and datasets. This tutorial will show you how to set up the Hugging Face command line tools, browse pretrained models, and run a few AI tasks such as sentiment analysis. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/get-started-with-hugging-face/

Quote of the Week: *"Duct tape programmers don’t give a damn what you think about them. They stick to simple, basic, and easy to use tools. Then they use the extra brain power that these tools leave them to write more useful features for their customers."* — Joel Spolsky, developer and founder of Stack Overflow and Trello