#181 How to turn Open Source into a Job with Nick Taylor
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2025
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Nick Taylor. He's a software engineer from Montreal and a prolific open source contributor.
We talk about:
- Why trying to build your own tooling will ultimately limit your app development
- Tips for getting started contributing to open source
- AI and the changing nature of working in tech
- Tips for leveraging libraries and tools as a dev
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Links we talk about during our conversation:
- https://www.nickyt.co/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the FreeCodeCamp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freecodecamp.org. |
| 0:05.2 | And today we're talking with Nick Taylor. He's a software engineer in Montreal, and he's a prolific open source contributor. Nick, how's everything going with you? |
| 0:16.1 | Doing pretty good, Quincy. Thanks so much for having me on. |
| 0:18.7 | Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you because you've got so much knowledge of open source, |
| 0:22.8 | and I understand that you've gotten like four different jobs through just contributing to open source |
| 0:27.0 | projects over the years. |
| 0:28.6 | Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild. |
| 0:31.2 | Yeah, well, we'll get into that and tons of tips around leveraging libraries, |
| 0:36.2 | around getting started in open source |
| 0:37.6 | but I really want to go to your spicy take |
| 0:40.3 | there has been a movement in software development |
| 0:42.7 | to kind of like go back to basics |
| 0:44.7 | to roll your own XYZ |
| 0:46.4 | to not make heavy use of libraries |
| 0:49.6 | that are outside of your direct control |
| 0:51.7 | and essentially just go back |
| 0:53.6 | and build a lot of stuff |
| 0:54.6 | yourself. I think, uh, like lots of prominent developer influence people, I've been talking. |
| 1:02.1 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 1:02.5 | I've been encouraging people to like, oh, why are you still using a library for XYZ? |
| 1:06.3 | Just write your own XYZ. And you don't agree with that yeah yeah generally like even stuff like |
| 1:14.4 | i've done a lot of web development and like i understand the get back to basics but i think |
... |
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