Surviving 40 years in the software industry [Interview with Jack Herrington Podcast #140]

On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart.

He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel.

We talk about:

• How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s

• Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia

• How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books

Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 New Wave song.

Also, I want to thank the 10,443 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.

Links we talk about during our conversation:

The Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr

Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr

1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en