#183 From drop-out to backpacker to self-taught developer with Dominick Monaco
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dominick Monaco. He dropped out college to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile backpacking route across the US. After working in nature conservation for 3 years, he taught himself how to program and now works as a developer.
We talk about:
- Life working as a Yogi Bear-style forest ranger in training
- Close brushes with death in the wilderness and how it affects you
- Learning programming for a grand total of $15
- How surrounding yourself with other ambitious learners can help you learn programming faster
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.
Support also comes from the 11,189 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to https://donate.freecodecamp.org
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Dominick's blog article on how he got here: https://dominickjmona.co/blog/how-i-got-here
- Dominick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominick-j-monaco/
- Americorps conservation core: https://www.americorps.gov/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Freecode Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of |
| 0:04.9 | Freecodecamp.org. And this week, we are talking with Dominic Monaco. He dropped out of college |
| 0:11.7 | to hike the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile backpacking route across the U.S. And after working |
| 0:19.6 | in nature conservation for about three years, he taught himself how to |
| 0:23.2 | program and he now works as a developer. |
| 0:26.2 | Dominic, welcome to the show. |
| 0:27.9 | So glad to be here. |
| 0:28.9 | It's an honor. |
| 0:30.1 | Yeah. |
| 0:30.6 | And I'm hyped to talk with you. |
| 0:32.9 | We have a lot to talk about it because you have had a pretty interesting life, including |
| 0:36.8 | many brushes with death, which are exciting to talk about it because you have had a pretty interesting life, including many brushes |
| 0:37.5 | with death, which are exciting to talk about, right? |
| 0:41.1 | Yes. |
| 0:41.6 | So first, we're going to start by hearing about how you worked as kind of a Yogi Bear-style |
| 0:49.7 | Forest Ranger, if anybody's familiar with the old cartoon, Yogi Bear and the Forest |
| 0:54.0 | Ranger, always trying to steal with the old cartoon, Yogi Bear and the Forest Ranger, |
| 0:54.4 | always trying to steal his picnic basket. |
| 0:57.2 | And then how you trained to become that. |
| 1:00.3 | The close brushes with death you had in the wilderness and how it affects you mentally and how it |
| 1:04.6 | affects your outlook on life and your ambitions. |
| 1:07.8 | How you learned a program for a grand total of $15 and how surrounding yourself with other ambitious learners can help you learn programming faster. |
... |
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