#124 AI is Overrated – Why ThePrimeagen Ripped Out GitHub Copilot Out From His Code Editor

The freeCodeCamp Podcast

Quincy Larson

Education, Technology

5.0 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2024

⏱️ 126 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews ThePrimeagean. He's a software engineer who streams himself programming. He recently left his job at Netflix to stream full-time.

We talk about:
- Prime's journey from his teacher telling him he'll never accomplish anything in life to working as an engineer at one of the most prestigious tech companies.
- Prime's love of "Nintendo Hard" video games, and how his love of challenge propelled him to "get good" at coding
- What it's like to live stream coding in front of more than 1,000 people for a dozen hours each week
- Leaving San Francisco to move his family of 6 to a horse ranch in South Dakota
- Prime's thoughts on AI and how he thinks it will actually create more developer jobs than it destroys

I had a blast talking with this guy. Though I don't agree with everything he says, I am right there with him on AI and how it's useful but over-hyped. We'll see what future versions hold and whether a "Moore's Law of AI" is really at work here, or whether it will plateau.

I also agree with Prime that devs need to slow down and improve their foundational skills. There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1996 rock song.

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 9,331 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 the interview:

- Prime's Twitch, from which his YouTube videos are derived: https://www.twitch.tv/theprimeagen

- Prime's Harpoon library on GitHub, which he talks about maintaining: https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/harpoon

- A speedrun of Battletoads by The Mexican Runner, to show you how "Nintendo Hard" this game really is. 36 minutes is an excellent time for a non-pro speedrunner like Prime to achieve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTPGpA0ha9Y

Transcript

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0:00.0	I mean, how much do you feel like you're just like falling back on your instincts that are honed over the years?
0:04.6	I rarely, rarely, really think.
0:29.3	Welcome. Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of Freecodecamp.org. Each week, we're bringing you insight from developers, founders,
0:34.6	and ambitious people in tech. This week, we are talking with the Primogen.
0:40.2	He is a software engineer.
0:41.8	He worked at Netflix up until recently for quite a while.
0:44.7	And now he's focused full time on streaming,
0:48.2	live streaming coding on Twitch and on other places and just,
0:52.4	you know,
0:52.8	talking about coding,
0:55.6	showcasing his skills.
0:57.0	Welcome, man.
0:57.6	How's it going?
0:59.7	It's going well.
1:00.2	How are you?
1:01.6	I'm doing fantastic, man.
1:02.5	It's great to talk to you.
1:07.5	I am a longtime viewer of your YouTube videos. I don't watch Twitch because I like to do everything at double speed, but I've enjoyed
1:11.8	some of your takes over the years, especially on some of the AI-related things.
1:16.4	Yeah.
1:17.9	Okay.
1:18.5	Okay.
	...

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