I like listening to podcast while running. During marathon preparation I run around 50-60km per week, so there is plenty of time to learn exciting stuff about latest technologies. Here are my favorite podcasts for software developers:
Software Engineering Radio
Software Engineering Radio is an awesome Podcast if you are a professional software developer and want to hear about tech in-depth. This is probably my favorite Podcast of them all: Excellent choice of topics, great guests and high quality production.
Some recommended episodes I really enjoyed:
- Apache Kafka with Jun Rao
- Micheal Stonebraker on Current Developments in Databases
- Nathan Marz on Real-Time Processing with Apache Storm
- Eric Brewer: The CAP Theorem, Then and Now
- Adrian Cockcroft on the Modern Cloud-based Platform
- James Lewis on Microservices
- Stefan Tilkov on Architecture and Micro Services
- Eric Evans on Domain-Driven Design at 10 Years
Cognicast
http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast/
The Cognicast podcast was formerly known as the ThinkRelevance Podcast. But since the company ThinkRelevance became Cognitect, it’s the Cognicast. If those names don’t ring a bell: Those companies are pretty much at the core of the Clojure and Datomic ecosystem. Their team includes among other outstanding developers Rich Hickey, David Nolen and Michael Fogues. In the early days of the Podcast there was some focus on Clojure and related technologies I would say. However, the podcast now really covers a wider range of topics, including non-technical episodes for example about depression and dyslexia.
Being the Clojure-hipster I am, I really enjoy the Clojure and Datomic episodes the most to be honest. Nevertheless, there is a great variety of topics, mostly about tech, developing software, maintaining projects and stuff like that.
My recommendations:
- Brandon Bloom on Garbage Collectors and Data Structures - a bit hardcore in the first part, but super interesting episode
- Bozhidar Batsov on Cider - maybe you want to skip this one, if you are not using Emacs
- Mike Drogalis on Onyx - Big Data Processing with Clojure
- David Nolen on Om - Rendering immutable data with Clojurescript and Facebook React
The Changelog
https://changelog.com/podcast/
The Changelog is a quite established developer Podcast, in the same league as the Software Engineering Radio. I tend to like the latter one more but my recommendation for Podcast interested software engineers can only be to subscribe to both of these Podcasts. Great topics going in-depth on technologies.
Great episodes:
- Ilya Grigorik on HTTP/2 - almost a must have for web developers, great to get started on HTTP/2
- Rust with Steve Klabnik and Yehuda Katz - Mozilla’s Rust is great and so is this episode
FLOSS Weekly
https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly
A Podcast about free software (as you like free like the speech, not necessarily like the beer) and its developers. I certainly don’t listen to every episode they produce, sometimes the software covered can be very specific a certain domains. So not everything on this Podcast might be of interest for everyone, however every few episodes there usually is something cool and relevant for me. So I recommend subscribing and just pick what sounds appealing to you. We all use free software everyday and it’s great to have a Podcast as a media platform for these great and free technologies.
Episodes I enjoyed:
This Developer’s Life
http://thisdeveloperslife.com/
This Podcast is a bit different. As the name suggests, this is less about technology and more about how to live as a developer. Topics covered are struggles every developer has to deal with like technical depth or how to keep up to date in such a fast paced industry. Then there are episodes for example about what it means to go from engineering to management and what other options there are for career development.
It’s a great Podcast and it’s always nice to put one or two episodes in the mix, not always listening to pure tech stuff. If you do not only care about tech, but also your life and wellbeing, check this Podcast out! There was quite an hiatus in the publications, but recently a new episode came out.
Hanselminutes
Hanselminutes is another Podcast by Scott Hanselman (This Developer’s Life is always with Scott Hanselman). It’s a weekly show about tech, covering a wide array of technologies. It’s usually not as in-depth as The Changelog or the Software Engineering Radio. I think it’s worth, having it on your radar.
The Thingcast
The Thingcast is a very new Podcast. Two colleagues from Futurice started this, bringing a Designer and an Engineer together with a guest and talking about The Internet of Thing (IoT) and closely related topics. They are just getting started and have put out three episodes so far. Best to subscribe on Soundcloud, as their is no official website yet (if that’s your thing, you can find them on Facebook though).
https://soundcloud.com/thethingcast
What’s missing?
Hey, I would really like to know, what you are listening to. Does not need to be a technical Podcast, but I would expect it to be somehow related to tech and digital life at least peripherally. What Podcast is missing on this list? What do I need to check out? Please drop a comment!
Cheers
Nils