From Failing Programming Class to Senior Software Engineer with Tadas Petra [Podcast #146]
539On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tadas Petra. He's a software engineer and a Senior Developer Advocate at Agora.io. After learning embedded development in university, he switched to building mobile apps. He's gone on to build dozens of mobile apps and create tutorials to help other devs learn Flutter and other mobile dev tools.
We talk about:
Immigrating to Chicago from Lithuania
The Computer Engineering he studied in school, and how it's different from building consumer mobile apps
His transition from Senior Dev to YouTube creator to Developer Advocacy
The overlap between mobile dev and web dev, and what he's learned from each
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,943 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 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:
Tadas's History of freeCodeCamp video (20 minute watch): • The Story of FreeCodeCamp
Tadas's video about how to control the lights in your house with Flutter: • Control Lights with Flutter
Tadas's course platform for learning cross platform app development with Flutter: https://www.hungrimind.com/
0:00:00 Introduction to Tadas Petra's Journey
0:03:42 Early Life and Immigrant Experience
0:06:51 Academic Path and Transition to Tech
0:09:53 Internships and Early Career
0:12:47 Working at Navistar and Software Development
0:15:49 Transitioning to Mobile Development with Flutter
0:18:50 The Advantages of Mobile Apps
0:21:45 Distribution Challenges in Mobile vs Web Apps
0:24:37 Developer Advocacy and Community Engagement
1:05:36 The Journey into Web Development
1:13:42 Building the Best Flutter Course
1:22:09 Navigating Developer Tools and Curiosity
1:25:49 Insights from Engineering Experience