#205 How to stay curious as a dev in the AI hype era with Sumit Saha
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today Quincy Larson interviews Sumit Saha, a software engineer and prolific teacher on YouTube. Sumit is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he runs a developer agency building projects for clients throughout Asia.
We talk about:
- How the hunger for learning is dying and people are increasingly drawn to shortcuts over taking the time to truly understand concepts
- Sumit's information diet and his tips for expanding your skills
- 5 key developer concepts explained like you're 5
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Links from our discussion:
- Sumit's many freeCodeCamp handbooks and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sumitsaha/
- Sumit's website: https://www.sumitsaha.me/
- Sumit's Bangla-language YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@LearnwithSumit
- Sumit's English YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@logicBaseLabs
Community news section:
1. I spent three days at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts recording a documentary about the world's largest collegiate hackathon. More than 3,000 student developers participated in this year's UC Berkeley Cal Hacks hackathon. Over the course of 36 hours, they built a broad array of projects, then demo'd them to judges from industry. I now present to you the finished documentary. I hope you find it both enjoyable and inspiring. (80-minute documentary): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/inside-cal-hacks-2025-36-hours-at-the-worlds-largest-collegiate-hackathon/
2. freeCodeCamp also published a new course on building your own custom Kubernetes operators and controllers from scratch. You'll learn everything from the internal architecture of Informers and Caches to advanced concepts like Finalizers and Idempotency. If you're interested in DevOps, this is the course for you. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-your-own-kubernetes-operators-with-go-and-kubebuilder/
3. Learn how to select the best GPU for economically training your models and running inference workloads. This no-nonsense guide will help you understand why certain specs matter more than others. It will also help you navigate around common pitfalls when buying or renting GPUs. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-choose-the-best-gpu-for-your-ai-workloads/
4. Learn how to benchmark embedding models using your own custom data. This course will walk you through leveraging Vision Language Models for precise text extraction. You'll also learn how to use LLMs to generate synthetic evaluation data. Finally, you'll get exposure to the rigorous statistical tests that can help you find the best models for whatever hardware you have on hand. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-benchmark-embedding-models-on-your-own-data/
5. Our song of the week: Supergroup The Power Station's 1985 hit "Some Like it Hot". This entire album features incredible drumming by Chic drummer Tony Thompson. And with Bass and Guitars by Duran Duran's John Taylor and Andy Taylor, the whole song has insane groove. 80s icon Robert Palmer sings and brings the texture. The guy reportedly smoked 60 cigarettes a day and paid the price a few years later, but man is his voice golden on this recording. Fun fact: Duran Duran's official site says they achieved the massive drum sound by putting mics at the top of a nearby elevator shaft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1t7OCESUw
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Free Code Camp podcast. I'm Quincy Larson teacher and founder of Free Code Camp. |
| 0:05.4 | Today, I'm interviewing Schumet Shaha, a software engineer from DACA who runs a developer agency building projects for clients throughout Asia. |
| 0:14.4 | Super interesting guy. Before we get to him, let's do some quick community news. I'm really hyped about this. |
| 0:19.5 | I spent three days in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts recording a documentary about the world's largest collegiate hackathon. |
| 0:29.0 | More than 3,000 student developers participated in this year's UC Berkeley Calhacks hackathon over the course of 36 hours. |
| 0:37.6 | They built a broad array of projects, then demoed them for judges from industry. |
| 0:43.0 | And I now present you with this finished documentary. |
| 0:45.3 | I hope you find it enjoyable and inspiring. |
| 0:47.7 | It's 80 minutes long, totally free on the FreeCodeCamp YouTube channel. |
| 0:50.8 | Link is in the description. |
| 0:52.8 | And be sure to check it out after you finish listening to |
| 0:54.9 | this podcast. |
| 0:56.0 | We also just published a new course on building your own custom Kubernetes operators |
| 1:01.0 | and controllers from scratch. |
| 1:02.9 | If you're interested in DevOps, this is for you. |
| 1:05.7 | You'll learn everything from the internal architecture of informers and caches to advanced |
| 1:10.5 | concepts like finalizers |
| 1:12.2 | and item potency, which is essentially being able to redo a function over and over without |
| 1:17.0 | it like ruining the data underlying. |
| 1:20.4 | If you've heard that term item potent, that's what that means. |
| 1:23.1 | Again, this is a six hour YouTube course free on free on FreeCodeCamp's YouTube channel. |
| 1:28.0 | We also published a tutorial that will walk you through selecting the best GPUs |
... |
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