Today Quincy Larson interviews software engineer and manager Zubin Pratap from Melbourne, Australia. After nearly two decades working as a corporate lawyer, he taught himself using programming freecodecamp.org. Within two years, he landed a job as a software engineer at Google.
We talk about:
How tools are making programming easier, but other parts of being a developer are harder
How 2009 – 2022 Wasn’t the Normal Job Market and How the Giants Are Adapting
“The purpose of communication is to understand” and other lessons Zubin learned over the years
Watch the podcast freecodecamp.org YouTube channel Or listen on your favorite podcast player.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzvM161M4KK
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Link to our discussion:
Community News Section:
Let’s kick off 2026 with a ton of announcements. We just launched version 10 of FreeCodeCamp’s JavaScript certification, along with updated Python, SQL, and Responsive Web Design certifications you can earn. We even launched our beta Spanish and Mandarin Chinese curriculum. (10 minute announcement article with tons of data):
Now you can learn Spanish on FreeCodeCamp. We just launched our free A1 level Spanish curriculum. You will learn: pronunciation, introduction, numbers and more. More than 200 initiatives are now live. Let’s learn!
Over the holiday break I took my kids to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. If you’re in Houston you absolutely must go here. We visited the Mission Control Center that NASA used during the Apollo missions to the moon. They also had a great multimedia experience created by Tom Hanks about this year’s Artemis mission to the moon. This is an incredible museum. We spent 7 hours there. It wasn’t particularly expensive. Just make sure you book your tickets for Mission Control a few months before your trip.
During the road trip, I cataloged again through the entire Guns ‘n’ Roses catalog. Which brings me to today’s song of the week: the 1991 epic Stranger. It’s perhaps the most mature-sounding song they’ve ever done, with introspective lyrics and a series of tasteful, soulful guitar solos. Great drum fills too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmay059ttyE