Jul 4, 2025
On this week's episode of the
podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Hill.
He's a software engineer who works on a data platform for NASA.
Joe taught himself programming for 4 years while working as a
janitor. As the single father of two Autistic boys, he first used
his programming skills to build an iPad app to help them learn how
to talk.
We talk about:
- Data Engineering and wrangling Department of Defense data into a
central platform
- The role of soft skills in getting things done in big
organizations
- The need for patience and practice in self-teaching
- How to stop jumping from one tool to another and to instead go
deep
- Tips for parents raising kids with Autism
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 11,384 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:
- The trailer of the 1992 classic hacking heist movie Sneakers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEhgUxQ322A
- Joe on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-hill-4a138123/