Quincy Interviews Dev & Prolific Programming Teacher Cobly Fayock [Podcast #128]

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​ On this week’s episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Colby Fayock. He’s a Software Engineer and prolific teacher who has created 68 tutorials for freeCodeCamp, and more than 100 videos on his YouTube – all freely available.

We talk about:
Colby’s early days doing design work for local bands
How Colby went to art school, then pivoted that into a software development
His early career at ThinkGeek where he not only did web dev but also worked as a male model for their products.
Colby’s day-to-day work as a developer experience engineer, building demo applications and SDKs
How Colby uses AI tools in his day-to-day work, and what he thinks its current limits are.

Can you guess what song I’m playing on my bass during the intro? It’s from a 1995 punk song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,771 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Links we talk about during our conversation:
– Colby’s freeCodeCamp course on building a clone of Google Photos using AI tools and Next.js: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-google-photos-clone-with-nextjs-and-cloudinary/
– Colby’s Trailer and web design work: https://photowall-colbyfayock.vercel.app/wall/design
– Colby’s ThinkGeek Modeling. He’s legit a male model: https://photowall-colbyfayock.vercel.app/wall/thinkgeek
– Colby’s music from his band years: https://soundcloud.com/colby-fayock/sets/day-late-hero
– The XKCD comic I mention about how the scope of developer work can be non-intuitive: https://xkcd.com/1425/

Chapters
0:00:00 Introduction and Background
0:03:38 Early Interest in Technology and Web Design
0:06:32 Design School and Graphic Design Jobs
0:12:33 Working at ThinkGeek
0:17:07 Designing Truck Wraps and Other Graphic Design Jobs
0:24:37 The Role of a Developer Experience Engineer
0:39:24 Balancing Explanation and Learner Discovery in Tutorials
0:45:15 The Impact of Teaching and Learning with Family
0:50:36 The Importance of Serious Thumbnails for Tutorial Videos
0:55:13 Colby’s Workflow for Video Creation
0:58:07 Being a Family Man and the Localization Journey
1:01:58 The Changing Perception of Geek Culture
1:09:04 Children’s Interests and Engagement with Technology
1:14:46 The Evolution of Gaming and the Rise of Speedrunning
1:22:48 Transitioning to a Developer Experience Engineer Role
1:26:52 The Role of AI in Design: Enhancing Workflows
1:32:10 Building Things and Continuous Learning in the Tech Industry

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