Sean Smith's story is so inspiring. It teaches us that if you can afford to work unpaid for 7+ hours per day, 50+ hours per week for a whole year and move to one of the most expensive cities in the world without a job, then you can truly achieve anything.
This is currently the wall I find myself staring at. I feel like I'm barely over the theshold, and I can't afford to keep doing it this way, I'll have to get permanent work soon.
I definitely can't afford to move to San Francisco.
You could learn to do coding by working remotely, but I think a key thing is finding someone to help point the way toward what you need to learn. In a cheap town without much going on, you might have more time to focus. But how do you connect with someone to guide you.
Thanks and congrats for your work Quincy. freeCodeCamp is something very very special. I consider it of similar importance of Khan Academy and Stack Overflow.
Unfortunately it does not receive proportional attention from more technical forums like HN. Mostly because it is basically designed for non-developers. That's why I particularly like the marketing strategy of students giving stars to freeCodeCamp Github repository. It brings awareness to developers of all kinds and ways of life about what you are doing.
I believe freeCodeCamp will grow to be an essential tool for improving society and individual people's life by democratizing knowledge.
I hope to learn enough to be able to give back to the platform. It's pretty overwhelming to be in the situation I am right now, but once I am more stabilished I will sure contribute somehow.