On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews The Primeagean. He's a software engineer who streams himself programming. He recently left his job at Netflix to stream full-time.

We talk about:
- Prime's journey from his teacher telling him he'll never accomplish anything in life to working as an engineer at one of the most prestigious tech companies.
- Prime's love of "Nintendo Hard" video games, and how his love of challenge propelled him to "get good" at coding
- What it's like to live stream coding in front of more than 1,000 people for a dozen hours each week
- Leaving San Francisco to move his family of 6 to a horse ranch in South Dakota
- Prime's thoughts on AI and how he thinks it will actually create more developer jobs than it destroys

I had a blast talking with this guy. Though I don't agree with everything he says, I am right there with him on AI and how it's useful but over-hyped. We'll see what future versions hold and whether a "Moore's Law of AI" is really at work here, or whether it will plateau.

I also agree with Prime that devs need to slow down and improve their foundational skills. There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1996 rock song.

Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.

Also, I want to thank the 9,331 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 the interview:

- Prime's Twitch, from which his YouTube videos are derived: https://www.twitch.tv/theprimeagen

- Prime's Harpoon library on GitHub, which he talks about maintaining: https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/harpoon

- A speedrun of Battletoads by The Mexican Runner, to show you how "Nintendo Hard" this game really is. 36 minutes is an excellent time for a non-pro speedrunner like Prime to achieve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTPGpA0ha9Y

#124 AI is Overrated – Why The Primeagen Ripped Out GitHub Copilot Out From His Code Editor

The freeCodeCamp Podcast