Quincy Larson
Born 1980 · Age 45
Founder and teacher who started freeCodeCamp.org — a free, donor-supported nonprofit that provides an interactive curriculum, publications, podcasts and videos to help people learn to code and transition into software careers.
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Life & Career Timeline
Estimated birth
Estimated birth year based on timeline references (age estimates mentioned in interviews).
Dropped out of high school and lived in his car
After ongoing family conflicts and other pressures he left home as a high-school sophomore and spent about a year living in his car, sleeping in Walmart parking lots.
Experienced Oklahoma City bombing in class
Says April 19, 1995 was 'the day my childhood ended' while he was in science class and felt the building shake; the event deeply affected him and his worldview.
Worked at Taco Bell and earned GED
Got a Taco Bell job to make ends meet while studying at libraries and preparing for the GED; later took the GED and enrolled in the cheapest state university.
Enrolled in state university (liberal arts / English major)
After earning GED he enrolled at a low-cost state university, studied liberal arts/English and worked for local newspapers while attending.
Worked as reporter for local newspapers
Worked multiple reporting jobs—interviewing hospital administrators, city officials and others—gaining exposure to organizational structures and interviewing skills.
Invited to liberal-arts seminar; broadened international perspective
Learned from an invite-only weekly seminar with international students; this opened his eyes about global opportunity and influenced future move to China.
Accepted to international graduate program in Tianjin, China
Joined an international program in Tianjin to study alongside Chinese and other international students; began learning Chinese and immersed in China's rapid economic changes.
Lived and taught in China (4 years)
Studied and worked as a teacher in China for about four years, teaching English to international and local students; met his future wife who was a classmate.
Returned to the U.S.; became youngest school director
After his wife received a US visa they moved back to Oklahoma City. He became the youngest school director in the school system and managed ~25 employees.
Worked at convenience store while job-hunting
Worked at a convenience store immediately after returning to the US while trying to find roles in international education; later aggressively pursued an intensive English program director role.
Hired as intensive English program administrator and school director
Secured the intensive English program role after multiple long interviews, which required managing teachers, homestays, immigration paperwork and agencies.
Started learning to code to automate school tasks
As a school director he began Googling solutions, learned Excel macros, AutoHotKey and small automations to remove administrative burden from teachers—this sparked interest in programming.
Left teaching to pursue coding and tech
Transitioned out of school administration to learn programming seriously, attended hackathons, meetups and completed coursework and textbooks to gain practical software skills.
Got first software engineering roles and freelanced
Worked as a software engineer at several places and did freelance projects, using on-the-job experience to solidify his skills and prepare to teach others.
Invested personal savings to keep freeCodeCamp running
Used personal savings (about $150,000 he had earmarked for a house down payment) to pay for servers and operational costs in freeCodeCamp's first few years to keep it afloat.
Promoted freeCodeCamp online (Hacker News, Twitter) and gained early traction
Shared the project on Hacker News and social networks; volunteers and early learners began joining and contributing, validating the curriculum approach.
Founded freeCodeCamp (first commits)
Bashed out the first commits from his closet and published the open-source project freeCodeCamp.org — an interactive, linear curriculum and community for learning web development for free.
Iterated curriculum into interactive in-browser coding challenges
Moved beyond listing resources to building thousands of client-side interactive coding challenges and a progressive, linear curriculum focused initially on JavaScript.
Applied for and obtained 501(c)(3) status (tax-exempt nonprofit)
Converted freeCodeCamp into a donor-supported 501(c)(3) public charity so the project could remain free and sustained by donations and grants (date approximate based on interviews).
Large volunteer base and publishing expansion
Community of volunteer contributors expanded: thousands of volunteers began contributing to code, curriculum, articles and YouTube content; freeCodeCamp.org/news and freeCodeCamp Press grew.
Long-form interview on Software Engineering Daily
Spoke with Jeff Meyerson about his background, the founding of freeCodeCamp and its mission — detailed life story and the trajectory of the charity were revealed in a long interview and transcript.
1.3 billion minutes of usage in a single year (2020)
freeCodeCamp logged roughly 1.3 billion minutes of usage across its properties in 2020 — equivalent to thousands of years of collective study time.
~40,000 alumni known to have landed developer jobs
LinkedIn alumni tracking and surveys indicated tens of thousands of freeCodeCamp alumni transitioned into developer roles (figure cited publicly by Quincy).
Sustained community donations and grants
freeCodeCamp secured thousands of small monthly donors and grants from corporations (e.g., Google, MongoDB and others) to sustain operations after initial personal funding.
YouTube consumption metrics (early-2021)
Reported about 1.2 million hours per month of freeCodeCamp YouTube course watch time (separate from site visits).
Profile interview: 'Half a million people per day use his website'
CrazyGoodTurns interview states approximately 500,000 daily users and highlights freeCodeCamp's mission to keep education free and accessible worldwide.
YouTube channel scale (~5.2M subscribers reported in interviews)
freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel became one of the largest programming-focused channels (interview statements cite multi-million subscriber counts).
Organization size and structure (approx)
Reported core staff ≈35 people across ~21 countries; emphasized that the bulk of work is volunteer-driven and that the org remains fully remote and office-free.
Published book 'How to Learn to Code and Get a Developer Job' (free)
Released a full-length book for free on freeCodeCamp.org (and an audiobook via the freeCodeCamp Podcast episode #100) giving practical advice for career-switchers.
10 years of freeCodeCamp — Changelog interview & project metrics announced
Recorded (Oct 22) and published (Oct 25) a Changelog interview celebrating 10 years; shared metrics: ~36,472 commits, ~56,000 issues/pull requests in the repo and noted project is built by thousands of contributors.
Aggregate usage and impact metrics continue to scale
Quincy publicly referenced huge cumulative usage metrics (hundreds of millions of minutes per year; millions of daily visitors across properties) and tens of thousands of alumni who transitioned careers.
Ongoing content & curriculum expansion
Under Quincy’s leadership freeCodeCamp continued to publish full courses, handbooks and interactive curricula across modern stacks (React, Rust, ML Ops, cloud, etc.) and ramp localization efforts.
Maintains public stance to keep freeCodeCamp free and donation-supported
Repeated commitment to keeping the platform free and donor-supported; emphasized nonprofit structure prevents equity monetization and prioritizes long-term mission over growth-for-exit.
Interview on 'Backend Banter' podcast (season 2)
Appeared on the Backend Banter podcast to discuss his journey from high-school dropout to building freeCodeCamp, learning strategies, and running a charity-scale open source education org.
Key Achievement Ages
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