#140 Surviving 40 years in the software industry with Jack Herrington the Blue Collar Coder
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2024
⏱️ 125 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel.
We talk about:
- How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s
- Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia
- How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 new-wave song.
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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:
Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr
Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr
1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte
Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want you to be able to build stuff from front to back. |
| 0:03.1 | Like if you run into a wall and you're like, oh, wow, I need a backhand engineer now. |
| 0:07.2 | Like, you could be that engineer. |
| 0:11.2 | Like, there's really nothing standing in the way of that. |
| 0:35.0 | Yeah. Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. |
| 0:40.2 | I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freecodecamp.org. |
| 0:45.3 | Each week, we'll bring you insight from developers, founders, and ambitious people getting into tech. |
| 0:48.8 | And this week, we are talking with Jack Harrington. |
| 0:51.3 | Hey, nice, happy to be here. |
| 0:53.1 | Yeah, we're happy to have you here, man. |
| 0:58.6 | As a kid, Jack had to overcome dyslexia, and he didn't have good enough grades to get into college. |
| 0:59.8 | Despite this, he has worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies |
| 1:06.1 | like Nike, Adobe, Walmart, and he also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel where he teaches |
| 1:15.0 | other people a lot of cool programming concepts and tools. |
| 1:18.8 | Jack, it's such a pleasure to have you on, man. |
| 1:20.5 | I'm like a longtime fan, first time caller. |
| 1:23.6 | Pleasure to be here. |
| 1:25.0 | Happy to be talking to you about all things. |
| 1:27.6 | Tech and careers and how to overcome dyslexia to have a 40-year career in software engineering. |
| 1:34.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:35.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:35.3 | Well, let's talk about dyslexia because I want to make sure everybody understands, like, what a huge hurdle it represents, like an ongoing hurdle. |
... |
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