How to Become a Street Smart Developer – From Dropout to Selling his Company w/ Dennis Ivy [Podcast #144]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dennis Ivy, a software engineer and prolific freelancer.

Dennis dropped out of college at 18 and taught himself how to build websites. He started his first agency, built and sold products, and eventually started teaching his skills on YouTube.

We talk about:

• Growing up in an immigrant family of 13 kids

• Dropping out of school and working construction before learning to code

• Figuring out how to get web development clients through trial and error

• Selling his codebase to his employer $61,000 and using it to fund his journey into teaching Python

Can you guess what song I'm playing during the intro?

Also, I want to thank the 10,943 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

You can watch the interview on YouTube:

Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.

Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.

Links we talk about during our conversation:

• The Bussard Ramjet theoretical spacecraft Quincy mentions as an analogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

• Dennis Ivy's React + Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-sticky-notes-app-with-react-and-appwrite/

• Dennis Ivy's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/dennisivy

• Dennis Ivy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dennisivy11