How to: July 25, 2025
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course that will teach you how to gracefully answer common LeetCode-style questions you'll get asked during developer job interviews. It covers essential data structures and algorithmic patterns. You'll build up your intuition so you can recognize which patterns to apply, and how to avoid brute force solutions. You'll start by learning fundamental data structures like Arrays, Sets, and Hashmaps. Then you'll bust out Python and learn about Big O Notation, before moving on to more advanced concepts like Sliding Windows, Binary Search, Backtracking, and Priority Queues. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-structure-and-algorithm-patterns-for-leetcode-interviews/

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

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

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

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

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