From Construction Worker to Teaching MILLIONS of Developers with John Smilga [Podcast
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews prolific programming teacher John Smilga. John grew up in the Soviet Union. He worked construction for 5 years before becoming a developer. Today he has taught millions of fellow devs through his many courses on freeCodeCamp.
John spent his childhood in Latvia before the Soviet Union fell. He sought work in the UK as an expat hospitality worker on the tiny island of Guernsey.
But he had his sights set on moving to the US. There he worked construction and taught himself to code. He also attended online university courses to get a degree.
He met his wife, a nurse from Ukraine. Together they started a family and live together in Florida.
During this conversation, John talks about his journey into teaching the programming and computer science concepts he's learned. He talks about his free courses on freeCodeCamp and his paid courses that help him pay the bills.
John's voice is instantly recognizable by developers. He shares that this is because he has condition where is vocal cords are partially paralyzed, for which he has to receive frequent injections.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1982 song produced by Quincy Jones.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,003 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Guernsey island: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey
John's personal website: johnsmilga.com/
John Smilga on Twitter: / john_smilga
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I must say because of John Smilga I switched careers and got a job as a software engineer. I started as a beginner. Took his courses from HTML and CSS to JS to React to Node JS to MERN. Thanks, John!
Smilga has taught me so much that I went on to buy his courses. A great teacher. A mind grenade of a human
John's courses were essential in me getting fluency with Javascript, his Node.js course worked wonders for me, so much so that I went and completed his JS, React and MERN courses. For me he was kind of an online mentor, always answering the questions I came up with just by explaining his thought process. Much appreciation for him and his work!!!
Shake and bake, mind grenade. I am gonna hang a photo of this guy on my wall.
Professor Dr. John smilga, I love this guy. He is like a consultant in javascript. A mentor, great teacher 👏
So much love from me John❤You're the best
Im from Brazil🇧🇷 and starting to study code with John's course and Free Code Camp.
I dind't know that about his story.
Incredible didatics! Congrats, my friend. You have the gift of teaching.
Regards from Brazil.
John, I love you so much. I learned HTML/CSS and JavaScript from you, from scratch, and that helped me get my first job as a web developer.
Greetings from Ukraine! 💙💛 John is one of my fav teachers ever, but I didn't know that his wife is from my country. I couldn't explain better why we continue to fight although it is extremely hard... Thank you, John and Quincy, for this interesting, inspiring, and heart-warming interview! ❤
I am thinking about starting over in Web Development I was thinking where to start with so many places, tutors etc its so overwhelming. This video just got uploaded 6 min ago got a notification. I think I'll head over to John Smilga channel and continue where I left off last time few months ago
Thanks for the inspiration. I hope in the future there will be a video entitled "from blue collar usps worker to web dev teacher."
i wish good health and more productivity to John,his course was rhe first i bought from udemy for html/css ❤❤
I had similar experience with a computer science college professor. Every time I would ask for help with a subject he would tell me that I need to ask my classmates instead of him and he would tell me that if I can’t accept help from my classmates that I wasn’t gonna make in this industry. I ended up getting kicked out of his class eventually after multiple arguments 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
In my experience a lot of female developers are only comfortable being mentored by other female developers. They avoid the male ones, probably because they fear looking weak. But that attitude is a real handicap in the dev industry.
East or West John is the best coding teacher, whatever I know about Frontend is due to John 🙏.
But John has a pretty strong American accent, no one can guess he is from Central EU.
My best wishes to John & his family. 🙏
I got to say...be very careful with occupation counseling, I'm too was told programing might not be good for me.
My Js Tutor, I love him!
I learned few hard topics by John's tutorials. He is a great tutor. I felt really sad knowing about his vocal chord issue. Yes, I found kinda hard understanding his words... now I know the reason. Not only he is a great teacher, he is also a fighter. Kudos!
I am a civil engineer and learning programming (Python).
Funny thing is we actually need construction workers. There's enough developers. I would have framed this differently.
Takeaway here is: go after what you want to do, not what someone else tells you to.
funny thing is he ain't even a developer, he's just a guy with super annoying voice that reads documentations for you.
what is john smilga bjj belt ?
A construction job is not a prerequisite for a software development.
F**ing Legends !!
Not bad not bad
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
nice
MR SHAKE AND BAKE!
Gems
Until I figured out Code addict, the code was not making sense for me
God
Billie Jean
From Juvenile to Sineal
didnt correct him on the wrong order? what the heck, is he really from latvia even??
Forced dichotomies are dangerous, especially political ones.
What's with these ads every 5 min.... It's unwatchable...
voice does not match the face😲
Please dont use the word "like" all the time. As a non native English speaker this drives me "like" nuts!
Listening to his voice is a torture
Then don't listen, your loss
John Smilga is the best teacher ever 🫶