10 years ago today I sat down in the closet of my San Francisco apartment and coded the first few hundred lines of freeCodeCamp.
I didn’t know it at the time, but fCC would quickly grow into a global community of busy adults learning to code together.
Many of these campers – as we now call ourselves – have gotten jobs as software engineers. And many campers have also contributed code to fCC’s open source codebase.
Over the past 10 years, we’ve built:
An interactive 3,000-hour core curriculum that teaches Math, Programming, and Computer Science
A library of more than 12,000 programming tutorials – and dozens of full-length books – on our publication, freecodecamp.org/news
A YouTube channel with more than 1,000 free full-length courses. We just hit 10 million subscribers a few days ago.
The kindest, most supportive programming forum on the planet. And we have a similarly kind Discord server, too.
The team has grown from just me to a staff of 35 teachers and engineers. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A huge chunk of the work is done by the open source community itself. Every day, volunteers step forward to improve our codebase, create new open learning resources, and help one another on the forum.
And we’re just getting started. So rather than a sentimental write-up about the first 10 years of freeCodeCamp, we’re going to focus instead on our plans for the next 10 years ahead of us.
After all, our charity’s mission is to create free learning resources that help folks learn math, programming, and computer science. And there’s still so much work left to be done.
In this article, I’ll lay out our major initiatives for the next decade. And I’ll show you some big improvements – a few of which are coming in time for Christmas.
One Certification to Rule Them All
The biggest improvement is we’re combining most of our current curriculum into a single comprehensive Certified Full Stack Developer (CFSD) certification. And we’re developing several new similarly comprehensive certifications from scratch.
We’ve sought inspiration from established developer certification nonprofits like CompTIA and (ISC)². We’re overhauling our certifications to more closely resemble established industry certs.
Our new certifications will:
Be even more comprehensive
Involve a final exam
Involve a capstone project
And be valid for 3 years, with a path to renewal
And as with everything freeCodeCamp creates, these certifications will remain completely free.
The Certified Full Stack Developer certification prep curriculum will cover:
Semantic HTML
Accessibility
CSS Fundamentals
CSS Flexbox
Design for Developers
Typography
Code Editors
JavaScript Fundamentals
Functional Programming
Higher Order Functions and Callbacks
DOM Manipulation and events
Web Standards
React Fundamentals
TypeScript Fundamentals
Testing Concepts
Bash Scripting
SQL and Relational Databases
Git & GitHub
Security and Privacy
Node.js
Express.js
Python Fundamentals
Algorithmic Thinking
Data Structures
Object Oriented Programming
Dynamic Programming
Security for Web Developers
Tooling and Deployment
Working with APIs
AI Engineering Fundamentals
How to Get a Developer Job
and more
And by popular request, we’re going to cover a lot more theory – right in the core curriculum.
Previously, our certs were 100% focused on building projects. We’ve received a lot of feedback from campers that we’ve swung too far in the direction of “learning by doing”, and that many campers desire more explanation of theory as well.
That’s right – you’ll no longer have to supplement the core freeCodeCamp curriculum with theory videos from our YouTube or books from our publication. Going forward, we’ll cover all the essential theory along the way.
We’re doing this by adding short video lectures taught by freeCodeCamp’s instructional design team, including Beau Carnes and Ania Kubów. Each of these will also have a full transcript, for campers who prefer reading over watching.
We’re also adding lots of quizzes so you can review theory and double-check your comprehension. These – along with our built-in Spaced Repetition system – should dramatically improve your retention of key concepts and coding techniques.
And we’ll drop you into the “blank canvas” style coding labs much earlier into the curriculum, to minimize hand-holding.
Here’s the full contents of the new Certified Full Stack Developer path. It’s a doozy:
64 Workshops – Interactive step-by-step coding courses on tools ranging from HTML to SQL to Python
513 Lectures – Short videos covering computer science concepts, with multiple choice questions to check your comprehension
83 Labs – Projects where you start with a blank editor and a test suite, and have to build your project so that all the tests pass
62 Review Pages – Comprehensive lists of topics from each module that you can review to help you prepare for quizzes and exams
66 Quizzes and 6 Prep Exams – To affirm your grasp of full stack development concepts and tools
1 Capstone Project – a large, unique project that you’ll build for your portfolio, reviewed by teachers within the freeCodeCamp community
1 Final Exam – a comprehensive proctored 90-question certification exam taken within freeCodeCamp’s exam environment
After you’ve completed all this course work, you’ll qualify to sit for a final exam. We’ve built our own open source Exam Environment where you can take an in-depth exam on everything you’ve learned throughout all our prep work.
If you don’t pass the exam, you’ll be able to retake it once every 24 hours until you manage to pass it. Each time, the exam will be randomly generated from a massive corpus of exam questions.
You may have heard horror stories about people who take online exams who are falsely accused of cheating. We’ve put a ton of thought into how we’re going to enforce our academic code of conduct. There will always be a human in the loop for these decisions.
There will be no automatic “you got up from your chair because your baby started crying” disqualifications. We will take all these things into consideration as we administer these exams.
And once you’ve passed, you’ll earn a free verified, serialized certification that you can add to your Résumé or CV, and embed in your LinkedIn account. It will remain valid for 3 years – at which point you can complete a free continuing education process to re-certify.
Here’s a 3 minute video that will walk you through some of the big updates to freeCodeCamp’s curriculum.
We’re Developing Three Other Certifications as Well
Once the new Certified Full Stack Developer certification is live, our instructional design team will turn our attention to building three additional certifications:
The Certified Machine Learning Engineer Certification (fCC-CMLE)
This certification will involve learning Python and its many libraries. You’ll also learn a tremendous amount of math and theory. Many of the projects will involve creating your own models. Kylie Ying is already working with machine learning engineers to help design this. We’re planning to ship some of this in 2025.
The Certified Software Systems Engineer Certification (fCC-CSSE)
This certification will involve lower-level programming and high performance computing. You’ll learn how to program in C and C++, and build a number of projects – such as your own compiler and your own search engine. We’re planning to ship some of this in 2026.
The Certified Data Scientist Certification (fCC-CDS)
We’ve been working on a comprehensive Data Science curriculum for several years. As you may know, freeCodeCamp already has many popular courses on Data Science tools like Python, R, and statistical suites on the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel.
The challenge with teaching Data Science is teaching the vast amount of math involved in the field. We also need to assemble project-oriented learning that we can grade programmatically.
Our goal is to offer the best Data Science education available outside of a PhD program. This is going to be the biggest challenge of all. But we’re up for it.
We’re planning to ship some of this in 2027.
When will we have more information about these certifications and their coursework?
We’re working on comprehensive curriculum outlines for these, and we plan to make some of them public in 2025.
What will happen to the current freeCodeCamp certifications?
freeCodeCamp has a long tradition of preserving old coursework from legacy certs. This time is no different.
We encourage you to switch over to the new Certified Full Stack Developer cert curriculum once it goes live this Christmas. You may have already completed some of the projects, since many of them come from our old certs.
This said, if you’re half way through an old cert and want to continue your progress there, you can.
Will legacy certifications expire?
Yes. All of these legacy certs will expire on December 31, 2027. This also includes all freeCodeCamp certs people have earned in the past.
We wanted to give everyone plenty of time to use their current certs before they needed to earn the new Certified Full Stack Developer Certification. And we think 3 years is enough.
We’ve added this expiration date to all freeCodeCamp certifications.
Going forward, whenever you earn the Certified Full Stack Developer cert or the other 3 upcoming certs, it will remain valid for 3 years from the date you earned it.
Again, we’re developing a continuing education program that you’ll be able to use three years later to renew your certification. And again, all of this will be completely free.
Why is freeCodeCamp requiring exams and adding expiration dates to certifications?
We’re doing this to bring these certifications more in line with other tech industry certifications. All of these major certifications require passing a certification exam, and expire after 3 years.
Our goal is for freeCodeCamp’s certifications to be as conventional as possible, to make it easier for employers to understand them.
Will freeCodeCamp branch out into recruiting or job placement?
We have no plans of doing this. Our charity’s mission is simple: to create free learning resources. We plan to keep our team of teachers small and focused, rather than bringing in a bunch of non-teachers.
How much of the coursework will overlap from one certification to another?
Some of the certifications will share a few common projects and lectures. For example, if you’ve already completed the intro to Python coursework during the Certified Full Stack Developer cert, you won’t need to recomplete all this for the Certified Machine Learning Engineer cert.
Will my old certs remain online? Will the verification links continue to work?
Expired certs will still show up on your profile, and direct links to them will still continue to function. They’ll be clearly marked as “Expired [date]” until you renew them. Again, this will not happen to any fCC certs until December 31, 2027 at the earliest.
What will happen to the 11 certifications currently listed on freecodecamp.org/learn?
They will continue to be available there for at least a few more years – listed as legacy certifications. Most of the coursework inside them will be repurposed and improved to serve as part of these new certifications.
Will I have to re-do projects that I’ve already done?
Some of the coursework in the old certifications will remain in these new certifications. And in most cases, you shouldn’t have to redo projects you’ve already done. If you’ve already built some projects, there’s a good chance that some of sections of the new certifications will already be marked as complete for you when you browse them.
What about teaching programming languages like Rust and Java, or NoSQL database tools?
We’re keeping our core curriculum focused on the most popular tools to help put campers in the best place to work as developers. This means Python, JavaScript, SQL, and tools like Git and Linux.
We have tons of video courses on other popular tools on the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel, as well as tutorials on the freeCodeCamp publication. We’ll continue to teach these as extra-curricular topics for anyone who wants to learn them.
How is the English Curriculum coming along?
We’ve been working hard to create an interactive English curriculum to help campers improve their English.
We teach through a combination of videos and interactive exercises, followed by a formal certification exam.
We’re currently finishing Level A2, and starting work on level B1.
How is the free University Degree Program coming along?
We’re making steady progress toward offering an Associate of Mathematics degree and a Bachelor of Computer Science degree. We have already developed 2 of the math courses, and are hard at work on the remaining 38 university-level courses and their lectures, labs, and exams.
freeCodeCamp has a small team of instructional designers, and right now we’re mostly focused on the Certified Full Stack Developer cert coursework and the English cert program. Once we finish these, we’ll allocate more resources toward the degree programs to further accelerate their development.
10 Years is Nothing.
It’s amazing how much we’ve accomplished as a community in just 10 years.
A free curriculum of 3,000 hours of interactive learning resources
1,000s of extra-curricular video courses, books, and tutorials
10,000s of campers who’ve gotten jobs as developers
10,000s of contributors who are getting experience by volunteering their time and talents through open source and through helping fellow campers
And we’re just getting started.
I encourage you to get involved in the global freeCodeCamp community. You can browse our 2024 Top Open Source Contributors. Here’s our contributor guide if you want to dive in.
I also encourage you to become a supporter. And if you’re already supporting us each month, and want to make a year-end gift to our charity, by all means. Here are some tax-deductible ways you can support our mission.
And if you have any questions about ways you can support our charity’s mission, or just need a donation receipt for your taxes, please email me directly: quincy@freecodecamp.org
Here’s to the next 10 years.
– Quincy
Source: freeCodeCamp Programming Tutorials: Python, JavaScript, Git & MoreÂ
