#166 From broke musician to working dev. How college drop-out Ryan Furrer taught himself to program
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2025
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ryan Furrer. He's a Front End Engineer working on tools that help companies monitor their buildings for energy usage, water leaks, and other environmental factors.
Ryan dropped out of college and worked as a musician and violin instructor. He spent 5 years teaching himself how to program before getting freelance gigs, and ultimately landing developer jobs.
We talk about:
- Life as a broke musician
- Teaching yourself to code while working full-time
- How Ryan had to move back in with his parents after a divorce
- His 5-year journey to his first developer job
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 https://wixstudio.com.
Also, I want to thank the 11,384 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
Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Ryan's podcast, Web Dev Dialogues: https://www.webdevdialogues.com/episodes
Ryan's website: https://www.ryanfurrer.com
A freeCodeCamp course on the Astro front end development framework taught by freeCodeCamp podcast guest James Q Quick: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-the-astro-web-framework/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're not comparing yourself to yourself, then you're doing it wrong, in my opinion. Like compare yourself to who you were yesterday, a week ago, last month, a year ago. And that's going to be your best metric for how you're progressing. Are you always going to progress in a linear fashion? No, I haven't. And I'm no expert. Like, I, that's my biggest thing is I want to come off and I hope no one thinks like, oh, here's Ryan. and he's this great big guy. |
| 0:22.4 | It's like, dude, no, I struggled. |
| 0:24.3 | And I want to come off and I hope no one thinks like, oh, here's Ryan. |
| 0:21.4 | He's this great big guy. |
| 0:22.4 | It's like, dude, no, I struggled. |
| 0:24.2 | And I struggled to learn and I'm somehow making it. |
| 0:26.6 | Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast, your source for raw, unedited interviews with developers. |
| 0:32.9 | This week we're talking with Ryan Furrer. |
| 0:35.6 | He's a front end engineer working on tools that help |
| 0:39.1 | companies monitor their buildings for energy usage. Ryan dropped out of college and worked |
| 0:44.7 | as a musician and a violin instructor before spending five years teaching himself how to code, |
| 0:51.2 | working freelance, and ultimately landing developer jobs. |
| 0:54.9 | Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. |
| 0:59.0 | Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out of the box, |
| 1:04.0 | then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. |
| 1:08.0 | Learn more at Wix Studio.com. |
| 1:10.5 | Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support Freecode Camp through a monthly |
| 1:17.7 | donation. |
| 1:18.1 | You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate. |
| 1:23.7 | org for this week's musical intro with yours truly |
| 1:27.7 | on the drums, guitar, bass, |
| 1:29.1 | and keys. |
... |
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