How to: Aug 2, 2024
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