From hating coding to programming satellites at age 37 – Francesco Ciulla interview [Podcast #165]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Francesco Ciulla. He's a software engineer who has worked with the European Space Agency on code that powers the Copernicus satellite program. More recently he's published courses on learning Docker and the Rust programming language. We talk about: - How Francesco worked as a volleyball coach until we was 32, before getting serious about coding - Francesco's work on coding satellites - How he's given dozens of talks about emerging tools at major tech conferences - How he creates tech tutorials even though he's a proud introvert who has to put himself out there Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during our conversation: - Francesco's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@francescociulla - Francesco's upcoming book on Rust: https://mybook.to/YJI6DI - Francesco's personal website and all his links: https://www.francescociulla.com Chapters 0:00:00 Teaser 0:00:25 Intro & Song: Power of Anger 0:02:29 The Rise of Rust: A Programming Revolution 0:08:43 Francesco's Journey: From Volleyball Coach to Software Engineer 0:14:27 Teaching and Learning: The Importance of Knowledge Sharing 0:20:30 Navigating Social Media: Building a Developer Presence 0:28:26 Finding Your Niche: The Docker Community and Beyond 0:43:16 The Docker Ambassador Program 0:45:12 The Power of Community Engagement 0:47:33 Navigating Introversion in Tech 0:52:45 Building Reputation and Networking 0:59:42 Day-to-Day as a Freelance DevOps Consultant 1:09:23 The Future of DevOps and Auto