#217 Stanford's youngest instructor on InfoSec, AI, catching cheaters - Rachel Fernandez

About this episode

Quincy Larson interviews Rachel An Fernandez about her experiences in computer science education and the impact of AI tools.

Today Quincy Larson interviews Rachel An Fernandez. She's a computer science student at Stanford and the youngest instructor at the entire university. She recently helped organize TreeHacks, Stanford's annual hackathon, which narrowed 15,000 applicants down to just 1,000 participants. They built projects over a single weekend and competed for a million dollars in prizes. Rachel grew up in Westminster, a small California town with a largely Mexican and Vietnamese population. 70% of students at her high school had family incomes so low that qualified for free school lunches. And Rachel was the first student from there to get into Stanford in years. We talk about: - The state of computer science education in 2026 - Her thoughts on C++, a language she teaches at Stanford, and its continued importance - And her tips for how devs should use AI tools without "deskilling" themselves Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Rachel on…

People in this episode

Host: Quincy Larson

Guest: Rachel An Fernandez

Topics covered

• computer science education
• AI tools
• hackathons
• C++ programming
• information security

Keywords

• computer science
• AI
• C++
• hackathon
• education

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford, TreeHacks

Places: Westminster, California

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