Update README.md

README.md

@@ -5,6 +5,59 @@ This repository is an archive of Quincy Larson's weekly email newsletter.
 
 A big thanks to Sourabh Joshi for creating this repo and helping maintain it. He's a software engineer from Bengaluru who works at https://vidyo.ai.
 
+### Dec 14, 2024
+1. freeCodeCamp just published a course by computer science professor Dr. Radu. It will teach you how to use math to simplify your code. You can code along at home and build a musical polyrhythm app that procedurally generates sounds and visualizes them using JavaScript. You’ll learn how to structure your code for readability and maintainability – all while seeing how math underpins these concepts. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-math-can-make-your-code-better-by-coding-polyrhythms/
+
+2. Elasticsearch is a powerful open source tool that tons of apps use for their search bars. freeCodeCamp just published a course that will show you how you can deploy your own real-world search engine that you can incorporate into your apps. You'll learn about Index Management, Tokenization, Embedding, Ingest Processors, Data Pipelines, Aggregations, and more. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-elasticsearch-with-a-comprehensive-beginner-friendly-course/
+
+3. On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview Scott Tolinski. He's the host of the world's most popular web developer podcast, Syntax FM. We talk about how 12 years ago he sustained a serious head injury while breakdancing that sidelined him for 9 months. But he made good use of this downtime and slowly built a programming tutorial empire. He shares insights from his career of working for tiny agencies, giant companies, and everything in between. He also shares some productivity tips that have helped keep him from burning out over the decades. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/scott-tolinski-syntax-podcast-interview/
+
+4. freeCodeCamp also published this CI/CD Handbook. CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. It's an important process in software development, and this handbook will teach you how it works. You'll learn about Docker, GitHub Actions, Branch Management, and a ton of cloud deployment concepts. (90 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-continuous-integration-delivery-and-deployment/
+
+5. R is a popular statistical programming language, and it has its own web development framework called Shiny. This tutorial will show you how to build your own weather data dashboard app using R Shiny. You'll start by setting up the project. Then you'll get keys for your data API, and wire them into your dashboard. Along the way, you'll learn about Geocoding, Error Handling, Reactivity, and more. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-weather-app-with-r-shiny/
+
+Quote of the Week: *"People who discover the power and beauty of high-level, abstract ideas often make the mistake of believing that concrete ideas at lower levels are worthless and might as well be forgotten. On the contrary, the best computer scientists are thoroughly grounded in basic concepts of how computers actually work. The essence of computer science is an ability to understand many levels of abstraction simultaneously."* — Donald Knuth, programmer and mathematician
+
+### Dec 7, 2024
+1. freeCodeCamp just published a course that will teach you the fundamentals of React, the most popular front end development JavaScript library. This course will teach you key concepts as you code along at home, building several projects including a meme generator and an AI-powered chef's recipe app. This course teaches emerging best practices, and the newest version of React, React 19. (16 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-2024
+
+2. freeCodeCamp also just published a full-length book on how to design your own Microservices and deploy them to the cloud. Microservice Architecture is a software development approach where you build stand-alone apps that only do one specific thing. Then these Microservices call upon one another to get more complicated things done. This differs from the traditional Monolith approach, where everything's part of the same codebase. This intermediate book will teach you about Synchronous versus Async Communication, RESTful APIs, Protocol Buffers, Container Orchestration, CI/CD Pipelines, and more. It also features case studies from companies that have adopted Microservices, such as Amazon and Netflix. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-microservices-book-build-and-manage-services-in-the-cloud/
+
+3. One of my favorite podcast interviews I've done was with John Washam, a software engineer at Amazon. John's also the creator of one of the most popular open source projects of all time: Coding Interview University. This is John's first-ever appearance on a podcast, so we go really in-depth. We talk about his years working as an interpreter in the US military. Then we dive into how he taught himself software engineering, and what he's learned from climbing the ranks at a big tech company. If you're learning to code later in life, this should be particularly helpful for you. (3 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-john-washam-crammed-for-8-months-got-a-job-at-amazon-then-taught-1000s-of-other-devs-134/
+
+4. Don't be content merely using spreadsheets – excel with them. Pun intended. Last week I shared my podcast interview with Eamonn Cottrell, who runs a coffee shop chain and learned to code so he could automate back office tasks. Well, Eamonn's back with a new course that will teach you how to fully leverage the power of Google Sheets. You'll learn about data validation, slicers, visualizations, and even building custom functions using App Scripts. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-google-sheets-course-for-beginners/
+
+5. Tell your Spanish-speaking friends: freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course on how to build robots using Arduino microcontrollers. It covers electrical engineering concepts like resistance, pin declarations, and analog input/output. You'll learn how to add your own sensors, control motors, LED displays, and more. Note that we have English-language Arduino courses, too. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-arduino-in-spanish-course-for-beginners/
+
+Quote of the Week: *"The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry."* — Henry Petroski, Engineer, Author, and Duke University professor, lamenting the sloppy coding practices he'd seen in industry
+
+### Nov 29, 2024
+1. If you already know a little JavaScript and want to learn Python, too, this handbook is for you. It will turbo-charge your learning by teaching you the similarities between these two high level scripting languages. You'll learn how each language approaches Syntax, Data Structures, Modules, Error Handling, and more. You'll even get some side-by-side script comparisons so that you can appreciate the nuanced differences in how these languages get things done. My humble advice is to learn both of these languages, and to learn them well. They will only become more and more central to software development over the next 20 years. (full-length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-python-for-javascript-developers-handbook/
+
+2. Learn how to run Large Language Models on your own computer – no cloud servers required. This course will teach you how to use Ollama to run the Llama LLM. You'll be able to access its APIs and Python libraries so you can build AI-powered apps locally. Along the way, you'll apply these new skills to build your own grocery list organizer, Retrieval Augmented Generation system, and recruitment agency app. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/local-ai-development-with-ollama-course/
+
+3. On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, I interview Eamonn Cottrell. He's a software engineer who taught himself how to code while running a local chain of coffee shops in Knoxville. He has largely automated a lot of the back office tasks for his shops, and is helping other people do the same. He's already published 37 freeCodeCamp tutorials on productivity and automation using spreadsheets. We talk about his love of coffee and latte art, ultra-marathoning, and how he balances being a musician with the practical realities of providing for a family of 6. Super inspiring. (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/self-taught-coding-automating-coffee-shop-chain-eamonn-cottrell-interview-151/
+
+4. Learn HTML Canvas by coding your own meme generator website. You can code along at home with this tutorial and build a simple website that creates memes where you can customize the text that appears on top of an image. This is a beginner-level project that will only take a few hours. It will give you hands-on practice with some powerful web development tools. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-meme-generator-using-html-canvas/
+
+5. When you run a popular app, you probably don't want to deploy new features to all of your users at the same time. You instead want to test those features out with a small subset of your users. That's where Feature Flags come in handy. This tutorial will teach you how to add Feature Flags to a Golang app, so that you can more safely roll out new code. (25 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-flexible-api-with-feature-flags-using-open-source-tools/
+
+Quote of the Week: *"Language choice is not as important as all the other choices: if you have the right overall architecture, the right team of programmers, the right development process that allows for rapid development with continuous improvement, then many languages will work for you. If you don't have those things you're in trouble regardless of your language choice."* — Peter Norvig, Software Engineer and AI researcher at Stanford
+
+### Nov 22, 2024
+1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course on Flutter – a popular framework for building Android and iOS apps at the same time. We think Flutter is awesome, and use it to build and maintain freeCodeCamp's own mobile apps. This beginner-level course will teach you Flutter by walking you through step-by-step as you code your own clone of the Spotify app. (10 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-full-stack-spotify-clone-with-flutter/
+
+2. Reverse Engineering is when you want to build your own version of an app, but don't know how it was implemented – you only have the finished product to serve as your guide. This tutorial will give you a methodology for reverse engineering websites so you can get practice implementing features you see in the wild. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-reverse-engineer-a-website/
+
+3. On this week's freeCodeCamp podcast, I talk with Tim Ruscica, software engineer and host of the popular Tech with Tim YouTube channel. We talk about how Tim learned computer architecture as a kid by playing Minecraft, then managed to land a Microsoft internship when he was just 19. He also shares his insights on learning to code, and why he recommends Python as a first programming language: “It's the least overwhelming thing to get your hands dirty.” (2 hour watch or listen in your favorite podcast app): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/tech-with-tim-freecodecamp-podcast-150/
+
+4. Learn how to manage the state of your React apps using Redux and Redux Toolkit. This freeCodeCamp JavaScript course will teach you powerful design patterns you can use to shape the experience of your users. You'll learn about middleware, hooks, async actions, immutable state updates, and more. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-redux-and-redux-toolkit-for-state-management/
+
+5. Whether you're a developer or a semi-technical decision maker on a team, you'll benefit from understanding modern development frameworks and what they bring to the table. This comprehensive guide will break down the many framework categories for you, so that you can choose the right tools for the job. You'll learn about AI frameworks, UI frameworks, testing tools, infrastructure tools, and more. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/understanding-modern-development-frameworks-guide-for-devs/
+
+Quote of the Week: *"If you're 5-10 years old and your main circle isn't frequently discussing: PWA vs Native app, TypeScript vs JavaScript, Flutter vs React Native – and are instead discussing: Playdough, LEGOs, Goldfish... then it's time to elevate your circle."* — Ben Awad, software engineer and freeCodeCamp contributor. And yes, he means this as a joke.
+
+
 ### Nov 15, 2024
 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive full-stack development course that will help you learn modern JavaScript tools by building your own dating app. This course will walk you step-by-step through setting up Next.js, Prisma, and NextAuth. You'll even deploy your app to the web using Vercel. Along the way, you'll add interactive features with Pusher for real-time web socket messaging, and Cloudinary for media uploads. This is an ideal course if you want to expand and solidify your web dev skills. (7 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-deploy-a-full-stack-dating-app/