Sunday, November 16, 2008

Podcasts for Developers

I'm now struggling to find good developer focused podcasts to listen to. When I first discovered Hansel Minutes there were already 109 archived episodes so that kept me busy for several months. Thank you Scott Hanselman. At about the time that I ran out of Hansel Minute podcasts, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky started their Stack Overflow Podcasts. At first I was not that impressed (the first couple of episodes) but I have subsequently become a big fan and it has now pushed Hansel Minutes into second place on my favorites list. This is probably because of Spolsky's arrogant and confrontational personality (this is a good thing) along with his sense of humor. He doesn't hold punches when verbally sparring with Atwood. Although Carl Franklin now makes rare appearances on Hansel Minutes when the two of them were on the air they were too polite to each other to make the conversation as engaging as the Spolsky/Atwood combo. This is a relative comparison though - don't misunderstand me because I still think that their conversations are A-grade and would listen to them anytime.

I've been working my way through the "My developer podcast" (link removed because broker) list on Code de Mora but haven't heard anything on that list that really engages me like the other two do. I've also found a number of podcasts on IT Conversations which I've downloaded but not listened to yet.

So here is my current list of podcasts in favorite order (to be edited when I find more or my preference changes):

Scott Hanselman created a List of Podcasts for .NET Programmers on 9 Feb 2009. He also said "If you've created a list of YOUR favorite .NET Podcasts, send me a link to your blog and I'll add it here" - however, if I did that then you'd end up in an infinite loop.

2 comments:

  1. Thus far, I've found programming-oriented podcasts to be boring and tedious. There's only one podcast (aside from Lost's) that I listen to regularly:
    EconTalk: http://www.econtalk.org/
    It's interviews with economists by an economist but the wide range of subjects is fascinating. The guests are all over the map and very few are dull.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the link Bill. I've just downloaded a few of those and will be listening to them over the next few weeks. I'll give you my opinion. If you haven't tried the Stack Overflow podcasts then I urge you to do so. Give it at least 3 episodes. I can't work out if they've improved over time or just grown on me. I think that they're great.

    ReplyDelete