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![How to learn programming and CS in the AI hype era – interview with prof Mark Mahoney [Podcast #215]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Tb6oaEkxtp8/sddefault.jpg)
Today Quincy Larson interviews Mark Mahoney. He worked as a dev before becoming a computer science professor. He's taught computer science for 23 years at Carthage College, a 180-year-old US university. He's also taught thousands of developers through his free programming courses built on top of his own open source course platform, Playback Press.
We talk about:
- Why learning programming the hard way is still the right way
- How to not deskill yourself when programming with LLM tools
- And why now is a great time to study computer science
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Links from our discussion:
- Playback Press, Mark's free interactive courses:
- Mark's personal website:
- One of the many vibe-coded projects Mark mentions:
- Mark's tutorials on freeCodeCamp:
Community news section:
1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course on AI-assisted software development. You'll learn common terminal workflows and tips for “pair programming” alongside LLM tools. You'll also get exposure to tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw. At the end of the day, the entire goal of using these tools is to build more features without compromising the maintainability of your codebase. (90 minute YouTube course):
2. freeCodeCamp also published a beginner level course on AI literacy for e
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2026/04/10
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