Podcasts are great. They’re entertaining. They’re informative. They’re perfect for when you need help staying awake during your commute to work or when you want a little background noise while you’re tidying up.
They’re also a great way to stay informed of recent developments in the programming industry. When we asked our learners about their favorite programming resources, they offered several podcasts that help them stay up to date. Here’s what they shared.
The Stack Overflow Podcast
Stack Overflow recently featured in our list of our learners’ favorite resources, as their platform is a great place to get tips and insights from other developers. Now, they’re back with The Stack Overflow Podcast, where their hosts explore “what it means to work in software and how code is reshaping our world.”
“The Stack Overflow Podcast is a really nice general podcast on the world of programming. It’s a good place to go to keep up to date with the wider world of software engineering, and not just the area you work on most.” — Ben, member of the Codecademy community
The Stack Overflow Podcast provides listeners with real-life insights into the industry as professional developers and executives of tech companies share their opinions on various technologies. In a recent episode, the podcast’s hosts interview the CEO of Bold Penguin, who discusses the advantages of Ruby and explains how the company’s developers used the language to build a flexible yet stable infrastructure.
The podcast can also help you learn about new tools and software. In another episode, they interview the head of Anvil — a platform that allows you to create web applications with Python.
Soft Skills Engineering
Soft Skills Engineering is hosted by two professional developers who give their listeners advice about the field and respond to their submitted questions. You’ll definitely want to check out this podcast if you’re considering a career in programming, as it sheds light on the expectations around common roles.
Take Junior expectations and manager flakiness as an example. In this episode, the hosts address a team leader who’s dissatisfied with a new hire’s performance. Then, they examine a similar situation from the employee’s point of view after a listener asks for advice about dealing with unreliable managers.
In a different episode, the hosts respond to a new product manager who became disillusioned with their new role after realizing it’s not quite what they expected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman is a self-described “AI researcher working on autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning at MIT and beyond.” While many episodes of his podcast focus on programming, you’ll also find conversations about machine learning, interstellar travel, physics, and more — often with celebrities and notable figures like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Noam Chomsky.
The Lex Fridman Podcast is a great way to get a glimpse into the minds of celebrities and notable public figures like Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and Noam Chomsky. Earlier this year, Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, guest-starred in the podcast’s 160th episode. In this episode, Lex and Brendan discuss the history of programming languages, JavaScript’s origins and development, TypeScript, and more.
Command Line Heroes
Command Line Heroes is a podcast created by Red Hat — an open-source technology company and subsidiary of IBM. This podcast covers the latest developments in open-source technology, but they also branch into data science, machine learning, and more. In 2019, the podcast won the Shorty Award for Best in Technology.
In the first episode of their fifth season, Becoming a Coder, the hosts discuss the many different ways people get into programming. After comparing traditional degree programs to coding boot camps, they contemplate people who switch to development from other careers.
In another episode, The Data Explosion, the hosts explore data science’s potential to improve our quality of life by revolutionizing healthcare and other industries.
Talk Python To Me
Talk Python To Me is a podcast about (you guessed it) the Python programming language and its associated libraries and frameworks. Recently, the podcast featured a group of panelists who discussed the latest developments to the Flask framework and their implications for its utility.
A different episode, Deploying and running Django web apps in 2021, examines the recent updates to Django, a framework used for web development.
Each episode of Talk Python To Me is around 45 minutes — the perfect length for you to listen to during your commute. For those with shorter attention spans, they also offer 15-minute long Python Bytes.
Hopefully, these podcasts will keep you entertained and informed during your upcoming commutes. Let us know what you think, or recommend your own favorite podcasts in a comment below.
