Why are senior developers learning low-code and AI tools? [Adrian Twarog Interview #129]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Adrian Twarog. He's a Software Engineer who started his career by working as the office IT guy at a school and other offices for 10 years. He's since published YouTube courses that millions of people have watched.

We talk about:
How Adrian built his development skills by volunteering to taking on web design projects at work
How he started making design tutorials on YouTube and published 300 in a single year
How he was early to the AI engineering craze and published GPT tutorials with millions of views
– Adrian's many freeCodeCamp courses, and his gorgeous book on design fundamentals
Being a dev in Perth, Australia – on the other side of the Earth from Silicon Valley – yet still staying at the forefront of the state of the art

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1995 industrial rock anthem.

Links we talk about during our conversation:

Sections:
0:00:00 Adrian Twarog: An Unconventional Approach to Technology
0:03:08 From Perth to Silicon Valley: Adrian's Developer Origin Story
0:05:35 Using Low-Code and No-Code Tools to Get Things Done Faster
0:31:09 Building a Team and Transitioning to Teaching
0:33:16 The Night Owl Content Creator
0:37:29 Continuous Improvement
0:42:18 Striving for Better Content
0:46:39 Sketching Ideas
0:53:13 Visualizing Projects Before Coding
0:56:08 AI Tools for Developers
1:03:39 Enhancing the Development Process
1:05:02 AI Evangelist
1:05:20 The Impact of Copyright Strikes on Creators
1:05:47 AI Tools Solving Problems in Web Development
1:05:17 The Role of AI Evangelist and Freelancing
1:07:16 The Importance of Design Fundamentals
1:08:46 Creating a Design Course for Developers
1:10:27 Building a Community and Offering Design Reviews
1:14:50 Navigating Client Communication and Recommendations
1:26:23 The Rise of Low Code and No Code in Web Development
1:31:08 AI Tools in Web Development
1:35:08 Streamlining the Web Development Process
1:36:53 Value and Pricing in Web Development

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[WeibenfalkMusic]

Wonderful! Great to see you both again! =)

[josephmyalla]

The best podcast ever thank you Quincy and Adrian for the great podcast, with love from Tanzania

[davidalex]

Wow another broadcast by our beloved Quincy

[cbbcbb]

And belmicrocomputer. If I remember correctly, IBM already had a mainframe operating system named DOS. Mainframe DOS had nothing to do with microcomputers.

[kelvinwarui]

That analogy of a root canal is awesome

[Nandro_]

It's hard to relate to someone who says they didn't traditionally study something after being able to do IT from primary, into Computer Science at university.

[AndrewTSq]

low code + ai sounds like we getting away from smart people

[davidalex]

I'm a programmer with 11 months of experience. And I've learnt more than 10 programming languages, with certificates. Also had a good experience with Android and IOS development, react native and more

[nniixx]

*asks chatgpt a random question and waits for an answer while the guest looks on awkwardly. TOP PODCAST CONTENT QUINCE, EFFIN TOP

[UtA]

Well, it's that or be left behind?

[UtA]

There isn't a AI platform as of today, that can manage the law of physics. Lol did he say "DOS"?

[nniixx]

Quincy's interruptions made this difficult to listen to. Gave it an honest go for about an hour and then stopped.

[gugugaga]

This is bs guys. Don't fall for it.

[gopuadks]

Is he the same Adrian from JavaScript Mastery

[Apenschi]

What a b...t! Literally no experienced dev is going for this low-code crap!