How to: September 13, 2025
1. freeCodeCamp just published a GameDev for beginners course that will help you build your first 2D platformer game. First you'll learn the basics of the open source Godot game engine, and its Python-like GDScript programming language. Then you'll dive into Godot's editor, custom tile sets, game mechanics, scoring, checkpoint systems, and more. By the end of the course, you'll have your own game that your friends can play in any browser. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-game-development-by-building-your-first-platformer-with-godot/

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

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

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

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

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