Podcasts

Podcasts are a very good means to shorten your commute, to keep you entertained during otherwise boring house-keeping activities, or, if you’re into sports, during your training sessions. Here is a list of some of my favourite shows.

This Developer’s Life

Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman interview developers and other IT professionals who share their stories. Very interesting, very well edited and flavoured with some nice pieces of music.

TechZing

Basically, TechZing are two guys, Jason Roberts and Justin Vincent, who discuss different topics concerning their lives as freelance web developers and startup bootstrappers. They enjoy themselves very much just talking to each other which is very entertaining already. The occasional interview and panel shows are then the icing on the cake.

It’s impossible to give a clear range of  topics since they consist of technical stuff like ‘how to store images in web applications’, SEO, NoSQL, JavaScript and iPhone development, but also non IT stuff like Pioneer One, geological challenges, and the Luck-Surface-Area. Edutainment at its best! Highly recommended!

Software Engineering Radio

This is purely an interview show which addresses all sorts of topics of interest for professional software developers: languages, platforms, technologies, methodologies, etc. Very informative, high profile guests and very competent hosts. Unfortunately, the output rate has gone down a lot in the last year.

Software ArchitekTOUR Podcast

This german (with little bits of swabian) speaking podcast is mostly concerned with topics around software architecture (as the name already suggests). DSLs, NoSQL databases and REST have been some of the latest topics.

FLOSS Weekly

Randal Schwartz (mostly) and other hosts are talking about Free Libre Open Source Software projects, ranging from whole OSes like CentOS to smaller niche projects like Ledger. Great show if you want to know what’s going on in the Open Source world.

Security Now

Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte talk about everything related to IT security. This will keep you informed about the latest browser vulnerabilities, Adobe Flash updates and Windows patches. But you will also learn e.g. how SSL works, the details of Stuxnet and everything about BitCoins. Don’t miss the all-time favourite episode 248: The Portable Dog Killer.

What are your favourite shows?