#140 Surviving 40 years in the software industry with Jack Herrington the Blue Collar Coder

freeCodeCamp Podcast

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel.

We talk about:

- How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s

- Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia

- How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 new-wave song.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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 our conversation:

Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr

Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr

1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en