Aug 15, 2025
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/