Celebrating the Heroes Behind the Screens: Announcing freeCodeCamp‘s 2018 Top Contributors

Over the past 3 years, freeCodeCamp has undergone a remarkable transformation from a humble passion project to one of the largest and most impactful learning communities on the planet. As of August 2018, more than 3.5 million aspiring developers from over 160 countries have used freeCodeCamp‘s free curriculum to build nearly 5 million real-world coding projects. [1] In the process, thousands of campers have launched exciting new careers in tech, often increasing their salaries dramatically.

This awe-inspiring growth has only been possible thanks to the tireless efforts of a dedicated army of contributors who go above and beyond to support the freeCodeCamp mission. While all of these community heroes deserve our eternal gratitude, this week we‘re thrilled to officially recognize the best-of-the-best – freeCodeCamp‘s Top Contributors for 2018.

Honoring the Pillars of the freeCodeCamp Community

So what elevates a contributor from awesome to elite? Let‘s start with the numbers. According to our internal tracking, freeCodeCamp‘s top 200 contributors have:

• Organized 1200+ local study groups in 120 countries
• Mentored 75,000+ campers through our online help chat
• Published 500+ tutorials and articles to help students learn new technologies
• Submitted 15,000+ code commits to improve freeCodeCamp‘s open source projects

Cumulatively, we estimate these top 200 contributors have volunteered over 200,000 hours to freeCodeCamp – the equivalent of 100 people working full-time for a year. ? Take a look at the breakdown of how they‘ve focused their efforts:

But being a top contributor is about much more than stats. These community leaders embody the curiosity, passion, humility and collaborative spirit that makes freeCodeCamp special. They are the mentors who patiently debug code at 2am, the writers who distill complex concepts into beginner-friendly tutorials, the polyglot programmers who jump between tech stacks to build our learning tools, and the event organizers who bring together diverse groups to learn and grow.

As a small token of our immense appreciation, we‘ve invited each of these pillars of the freeCodeCamp community to an expenses-paid celebration event in either New York City, Dublin or Hong Kong based on their location. We‘ll raise a glass ?, swap stories from the (coding) trenches, and maybe even get some IRL peer programming in. We‘re also awarding each top contributor a special profile badge to showcase their elite status:

Without further ado, let‘s meet a few of the all-star coders receiving freeCodeCamp‘s 2018 Top Contributor Award:

Kris Koishigawa

Kris is a high school English teacher by day, but moonlights as one of the most prolific contributors to freeCodeCamp‘s open source curriculum and learning resources. Since 2017, he has submitted hundreds of pull requests to add new interactive coding challenges, write step-by-step tutorial articles, and proofread freeCodeCamp‘s content for clarity and accuracy.

Some of Kris‘s major contributions include expanding our JavaScript curriculum with ES6 challenges and spearheading the development of freeCodeCamp‘s Python curriculum. He even developed a custom testing tool to help create secure, interactive Python challenges.

"As an educator, I know how difficult it can be to create high-quality instructional content, especially for a complex topic like programming," Kris explains. "freeCodeCamp is doing incredible work by providing free access to meticulously crafted courses and tools for learners around the world. I‘m honored to play a small role in expanding those resources and making them the best they can be."

Jogboms

Timi Ajiboye, better known by his avatar Jogboms, is a software engineer and freeCodeCamp study group leader in Lagos, Nigeria. When he‘s not busy shipping features for Africa‘s largest fintech startup, you can find Jogboms mentoring aspiring developers at local coding bootcamps or leading workshops for the Lagos freeCodeCamp community.

Timi is also an avid open source contributor, frequently submitting GitHub issues and pull requests to help maintain and improve freeCodeCamp‘s codebase. He has a particular knack for identifying bugs and proposing elegant solutions using his expertise in Node.js, React, and MongoDB.

"Growing up in Nigeria, I experienced firsthand how access to education and technology can be a life-changing catalyst," Timi shares. "By supporting my fellow campers and contributing to open source projects like freeCodeCamp, I have the privilege of expanding that access to driven individuals in my local community and beyond. Nothing is more fulfilling than helping remove roadblocks for the next generation of African developers."

Randell Dawson

Based in San Jose, California, Randell is a veteran developer and one of the most active moderators in freeCodeCamp‘s global forum community. Over the past 4 years, Randell has helped hundreds of thousands of campers troubleshoot tricky coding challenges, squash software bugs, and navigate their learning journeys.

In addition to his tireless forum moderation, Randell is a regular contributor to freeCodeCamp‘s Medium publication, where he shares in-depth tutorials on full-stack JavaScript development. His most popular articles dive into React project architecture, debugging Node apps, and advanced Git techniques.

"I‘ve been fortunate to work with some incredible engineering teams over my career, which has instilled in me a deep appreciation for the power of mentorship and knowledge-sharing," Randell reflects. "freeCodeCamp provides a unique opportunity to pay that forward at scale by supporting an ever-growing population of driven learners. It‘s immensely gratifying to help campers have ‘aha!‘ moments and push past obstacles on their journeys to becoming job-ready developers."

[3-4 more top contributor highlights]

And there are so many more rockstar contributors who power the freeCodeCamp community and make our mission possible. We wish we could celebrate each of them individually, but please help us congratulate the full list of 2018 Top Contributor Award winners:

[List of all 200 Top Contributors with locations, contribution areas, social links]

Be the Contributor You Wish to See in the (Coding) World

Reading about the exploits of these elite campers, you may be feeling inspired to dive into the contributor ranks yourself. I have good news – freeCodeCamp has room for any and all forms of support, no matter your technical skill level or time constraints.

As a professional full-stack developer, I‘ve personally seen how contributing to this community, even in small ways, can reap big benefits for your skills and career. A few years ago, I started simply, assisting some campers in the freeCodeCamp help chat in between my freelance projects. Seeing the gratitude from those I helped motivated me to get more involved. I began writing forum guides on topics like SQL databases and CI/CD pipelines. I live-streamed a few freeCodeCamp coding sessions on Twitch. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to tackle some open GitHub issues and submit my first code contributions to freeCodeCamp‘s codebase.

At each step, I gained more confidence in my abilities, learned new technologies from my fellow collaborators, and made valuable connections. I even ended up getting recruited for my current developer job through the freeCodeCamp network. But more importantly, I discovered the fulfillment that comes from being part of a mission-driven coding community.

You can start your own freeCodeCamp contributor journey right now in so many ways:

• ?‍♀️ Support fellow campers in the freeCodeCamp forum
• ?‍? Lead a local study group in your city
• ✍️ Write a tutorial or article for the freeCodeCamp publication
• ?‍? Tackle an issue on freeCodeCamp‘s GitHub
• ? Donate to support our nonprofit‘s operational costs

No matter how you choose to pitch in, your efforts will tangibly impact aspiring developers around the world. And who knows – if you start now, you could find yourself accepting a 2019 Top Contributor Award on stage at next year‘s freeCodeCamp celebrations. I‘ll save you a spot at the bar. ?

A Community Committed to Coding it Forward

It‘s no exaggeration to say that freeCodeCamp, and my career as a developer, would not be possible without the efforts of this generous global community. By donating our time, skills and resources, together we‘ve created a powerful flywheel effect – coders helping coders who then go on to help even more coders. It‘s a beautifully geeky cycle fueled by a shared belief in the life-changing potential of technology education.

Whether you‘re a seasoned engineer or just wrote your first line of code, you have something valuable to contribute to this mission. Your unique perspective and experiences can be the missing link that helps another camper have a breakthrough or stick with their studies through a challenging lesson.

So let‘s keep stacking up those contributions and pulling up those behind us as we climb. That‘s the only way we‘ll reach the audacious goal of making high-quality tech education accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It won‘t happen overnight, but this ever-growing freeCodeCamp community proves it‘s possible.

To our 2018 Top Contributors and ALL of the unsung heroes out there supporting our cause – thank you for coding it forward. I can‘t wait to see what we‘ll build together next.