10 Podcasts for Software Engineers and DevOps in 2019
Utilize your time by listening to these podcasts and stay productive
Podcasts are one of the best media to keep you updated on your interest because when you listening, you can work on other tasks as well, e.g driving, shower or working, etc.
My commute to the office involves driving for 1 hour in each direction on a regular day. Finding parking is another 15-minute add-on in the process. Every week, 2/3 days will have an unusual traffic situation in Kuala Lumpur and that will add a minimum of more 30 minutes.
In summary, each week I lose around 11.25+ hours by dring or sitting on traffic. In a month its 45+ hours.
It’s a lot of time I am doing nothing :( I had to find something productive to utilize the time.
And that's how I started to listen to Podcasts from earlier this year.
And slowly I found, these are a very good resource for Programmers, Software Engineers to stay up to date on the industry, even if you don’t have enough time to interact socially or read blogs regularly.
So, I decided to share some of my findings with the community, which might help someone else as well.
What to expect from these Podcasts?
Podcasts are certainly not tutorials. If you are planning to learn a new skill, you must take a course or proper tutorials. Podcasts can’t help you directly on this.
These are a few areas where podcasts can help you
- Decide which new tech, tool or skill to learn.
- What’s going on the industry
- Keep you aware about the changes in industry.
- Interview of peoples from industry top organizations
Some of the Podcasts organize interviews with engineers from world top companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. It's a great opportunity to learn about their culture, practices, and whats they are doing.
For example, I just recently learned that in Google, they use just one Git repository for all of their products :O and my jaw dropped.
Well, they keep Chrome and Android projects separate.
Enough talk! Now let's see 10 popular Podcasts that you can listen to on Spotify.
The sequence of the list is randomly ordered. It's not ranked on any matric or sorted with the name or anything else.
10 Podcasts that can help developers
1. Full Stack Radio
Full Stack Radio is hosted by Adam Wathan. The focus of this podcast is on product building and its journey. In most of the episodes, Adam invites a guest (most cases they are developers too) who have developed a product of his/her own or for a company, and then they discuss the journey of the development, tech used, challenges they faced and how they overcome it.
Some episodes are focused on specific tech and Adam interview someone who used the tech.
- Average length: 50 minutes
- Frequency: 2 weeks
- Since: October 2014
2. Laravel News Podcast
Laravel News Podcast is part of the Laravel News Newsletter. Hosted by Jac Bennett and Michael Dyrynda. From the name you know they are focused on Laravel based discussion.
Mostly discuss updates of Laravel version, Interesting and useful packages, Laravel based services available and anything else related to Laravel.
This is the first podcast I started to listen to and hooked me into the Podcast ecosystem. If you are a Laravel developer, you must listen to this weekly.
- Average length: 46 minutes
- Frequency: 1 week
- Since: October 2015
3. Coding Blocks
CodingBlocks.net is Allen Underwood, Joe Jack, and Michael Outlaw. All of them have a great career in the Software development industry.
Their focus in this podcast is mainly Software Engineering Practices, like OOP, Design Patterns, SOLID principals and other principals, Software Architecture, Database Architecture, Design, and all related tips and tricks. Language and tech are a bit abstract in this podcast.
This is a recommended podcast when you are planning to know more about Software Engineering practices.
- Average length: 2 hours
- Frequency: 2 weeks
- Since: September 2013
4. The Rabbit Hole: An Inside Look into Software Development
The Rabbit Hole is a definitive developers podcast, hosted by Michael Rosa and co-hosted by Dave. This is a product of Stride Consulting, a software development service provider.
The focus of the Rabbit hole is various topics and practices in Software Development. The category is the same as the Coding Block, but this covers more topics. For example, they have episodes on Remote working, Books, Work practices, Open source, Conferences, etc. You get the idea.
This is a recommended podcast to make your knowledge wide about the industry. The episodes are short, which helps them to be focused on the main topic and as listener, it helps to keep concentration also.
- Average length: 28minutes
- Frequency: 1 week
- Since: March 2017
5. Software Engineering Daily
Software Engineering Daily is hosted by Jeff Meyerson. It’s mainly technical interview sessions with developers, solution architects or anyone involved with software development. The topics are a very wide range some times related to business aspect of software and services as well.
- Average length: 1hour
- Frequency: Every day
- Since: June 2019
6. TechStuff
TechStuff is a product of iHeartRadio. TechStuff is not directly related to software development or software engineering. Tech is from Technology and its a big scope. It's hard to limit the boundary. For example, they have episodes on the Huawei ban in the USA. Now think how wide the range is.
It is assumed, most of the developers are tech-savvy and would love to know more about tech in detail. Based on this assumption, I included this popular podcast on the list.
- Average length: 50minutes
- Frequency: 3/4 day
- Since: Jun 2008
7. AWS Podcast
AWS Podcast is a product of AWS. Mostly inform you about AWS products, Cloud and DevOps best practices.
Are you interested in DevOps and Cloud computing? You gotta check this podcast.
- Average length: 35minutes
- Frequency: 7 day
- Since: June 2016
8. Programming Throwdown
Programming Throwdown is hosted by Patrick Wheeler and co-hosted by Jason Gauci.
In each episode, they focus on a programming language or a tech topic to give in-out of the discussed topic. The goal is to educate the listener, so they can discuss the topic intellectually.
- Average length: 1hour 5minutes
- Frequency: 2 weeks /1 month, sometimes more. Kind of irregular.
- Since: March 2011
9. Programming Leadership
Programming Leadership is hosted by Marcus Blankenship.
The focus of the Programming leadership podcast is on Team management, Leadership, Agile practices, communication and other soft skills that are required in development to build a happy and high-performance software team.
- Average length: 45minutes
- Frequency: 7 days
- Since: April 2019
10. CoRecursive — Software Engineering Interviews
CoRecursive is hosted by Adam Gordon Bell and its an interview-based podcast. The scope and style of this podcast are similar to Software Engineering Daily.
Though its all are interview episodes, they are focused on functional programming and programming languages like Scala, Haskell, Kotlin, Erlang, etc. They do discuss other software engineering topics also.
- Average length: 55 minutes
- Frequency: 2 weeks
- Since: January 2018
Verdict
I haven't listened to all episodes of each podcast here, but at-least few episodes from each of them. Each of them has a unique style in presentation, topic depth, discussing other topics in the episode, etc.
If you haven’t listened to any of them or not a podcast listener, I would recommend you try the first 5 from this list to try and I believe you won't regrate your decision.
There are other good quality podcasts also that I haven’t found yet.
If you know other great podcasts that lives in this category, please share in the comment.
Also, I would appreciate it if you clap and share the article. That will be my inspiration and your contribution in this effort.
Happy Coding \o/
