#152 How a breakdancing injury launched a coding empire with Scott Tolinski
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2024
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Scott Tolinski. He's a developer who 14 years ago - after injuring himself breakdancing – decided to create a programming tutorial YouTube channel called LevelUpTuts. He is also co-host of Syntax, the most popular web dev podcast on the planet.
Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at wixstudio.com.
Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org
We talk about:
- Scott's perspective on the state of web dev
- His journey from video editing into full blown software development for agencies
- What he's learned from recording 2,000 tutorials and 800 web dev podcasts
- Productivity tips and how he's kept up this pace for 12 years without burning out
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 11,036 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:
- The Syntax podcast: https://syntax.fm/
- Scott's archive of more than 1,000 programming tutorials he taught on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@syntaxfm/videos
- The Honeypot documentary about Scott (8 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9eh2iJsjxE
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The schedule for me was I prep and write code for two weeks. I record straight through on one week, whatever, all 24 videos in one week. |
| 0:11.6 | The last week I edit like crazy and then release and then I go to the next one. |
| 0:16.1 | And I better have that next one idea at least planted in my brain or else I'm in trouble. |
| 0:21.4 | And I did that for about, like, what, like two, three years before I was like, like, through |
| 0:25.7 | COVID. |
| 0:26.4 | And I'm just like, I am like burning out so hard. |
| 0:30.8 | I'm like, I have no idea what I'm going to do next month. |
| 1:11.8 | Yeah. month. Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of FreecodeCamp.org. Each week, we're interviewing developers, founders, and ambitious people in tech. And this week, we're talking with Scott Talinsky. He's a developer who 14 years ago, after injuring himself while breakdancing, |
| 1:18.3 | decided to create a programming tutorial YouTube channel called Level Up Tuts. |
| 1:23.8 | He's also co-host of Syntax, the most popular web dev podcast on the planet. |
| 1:30.5 | Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. |
| 1:33.7 | Wick Studio provides developer tools to rapidly build websites with everything out of the box, |
| 1:38.9 | then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. |
| 1:41.2 | Learn more at wickstudio.com. |
| 1:43.3 | Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support Freecode Camp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to donate.freycodecamp.org. Scott, it's thrilled to have you here, man. |
| 1:59.3 | Yeah. Stoke to be here. |
| 2:01.5 | Yeah. |
| 2:02.1 | I think the only time you and I have hung out in the flesh was at JamstackConf in San Francisco |
| 2:08.3 | before the pandemic, in the before times. |
| 2:10.8 | Oh, yeah. |
| 2:11.8 | And that was actually the first time I'd ever met Wes, my co-host in person, by the way. Wes Boss. So if you heard the name Wes Boss, that is Scott's partner in crime on syntax. Yeah. Yeah. And we had never met in person we'd been doing the podcast for several years. So that was a fun trip. I met a lot of people for the first time at that conference. It was a lot of fun. That was a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're going to hear |
| 2:35.4 | all about like your adventures and the many conferences and stuff you're doing of the world |
... |
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