A number of people have asked me what programming podcasts I listen to, and they’ve generally been pretty happy with the breadth and volume of my response. I thought it would be a good idea to share all of these here on my blog in case other programmers are searching for some good podcasts.

I generally dislike blog posts like this one because I’ve discovered so many of them myself over the years, only to find that most of the links are broken, defunct, or link to podcasts that are no longer updated. But on the other hand, I haven’t posted anything in over a year and this post is super easy to write so, you know, yay for low-effort content.

As far as this selection, I tend to like detailed discussions and interviews for my tech podcasts, and I’ve found that I actually like listening to interviews while coding more than I like listening to music. I also tend to work with functional programming languages on the JVM with a focus on backend development, scalability, and architecture, so my selections here will bias towards those topics.

Tech Industry

• Recode Decode - Kara Swisher is an experienced journalist who covers various topics in the tech industry; episodes are typically long interviews with noteworthy tech personalities. Updated every other day. [Feed]
• Techmeme Ride Home - A great replacement for the Crunch Report if you were into that, Techmeme’s Ride Home is a daily summary of the biggest news in tech. It’s a great way to stay up to speed on what’s going in the industry, and episodes are generally pretty short and good for a quick drive. Updated every weekday. [Feed]
• The Hanselminutes Podcast - Scott Hanselman interviews big tech industry players covering various topics in the tech industry. Updated weekly. [Feed]

General Software Development

• O’Reilly Programming Podcast - O’Reilly’s interview series, frequently featuring authors of new O’Reilly books as part of promotion, dealing with a variety of programming and architecture topics. Updated twice a month. [Feed]
• Programming Throwdown - Each episode typically features a thorough discussion of a specific topic or technology, often with book suggestions. Updated monthly. [Feed]
• Software Engineering Daily - Interview series with software engineers covering a variety of topics. Updated daily. [Feed]
• Software Engineering Radio - A bit academically focused, run by people from the IEEE Software technical magazine. Updated a couple times per month. [Feed]
• no dogma podcast - Discussions and sometimes interviews on various topics, casts a very wide net; sometimes extremely technical dives into a technology, sometimes a higher-level industry discussion. Updated twice monthly. [Feed]
• Herding Code - Various development topics covered, usually skews towards .NET. Updated every other month. [Feed]
• The InfoQ Podcast - Complete mishmash of various software development topics, high-level to low-level. Updated 2-4 times per month. [Feed]
• Coder Radio - Wide variety of topics related to software engineering with great hosts. Updated weekly. [Feed]

Java Development

• Java Pub House - Very deep dives into Java topics, tools, and technologies. Updated monthly. [Feed]
• Enterprise Java Newscast - Discussion about the latest news in the Enterprise Java space, focuses largely on the release of various tools and libraries. Updated twice monthly. [Feed]

Functional Programming

• CoRecursive w/ Adam Bell - Interview series talking with various prominent functional programmers, discussing FP techniques and topics [Feed]
• LambdaCast - Educational series on functional programming, each episode covering a different aspect of FP (Monads, Functors, Applicatives, etc). Updated occasionally. [Feed]
• Functional Geekery - Discussion-focused podcast about functional programming topics covering a variety of languages. Updated monthly. [Feed]

Web Development

• Full Stack Radio - Heavy UI/JavaScript/Web development focus. Updated twice a month. [Feed]
• The Bike Shed - Discussions on various topics, mainly dealing with Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript. Updated 2-4 times per month. [Feed]

Computer Science

• IEEE Spectrum Podcast - Focused primarily on academic and computer science topics. Updated rarely. [Feed]
• Computer Science - The University of Oxford’s podcast on computer science research. Updated rarely. [Feed]

Architecture

• Software Architecture Radio - Matt Stine’s interview series with prominent engineers and authors, focused entirely on software architecture. Updated rarely. [Feed]
• Coding Blocks - Discussion series about best practices for engineers, strong focus on architectural concerns. Skews a bit toward .NET discussion but the topics are generally applicable in any language. Updated twice monthly. [Feed]
• No Fluff Just Stuff Podcast - Michael Carducci, a frequent NFJS speaker, interviews various other speakers (usually at NFJS events) about a variety of topics, typically with a focus on software architecture. [Feed]

DevOps

• Devops Mastery - Kind of intended as a newbie educational series, helping DevOps newcomers improve. It hasn’t been updated in years but I’m still including it because it’s a basic tutorial series. [Feed]
• DevOps Radio - Interview series covering various topics related to software delivery. Updated twice monthly. [Feed]
• Arrested DevOps - Discussion series on good DevOps practices and patterns for effectiveness. Updated twice monthly. [Feed]

Soft Skills

• Soft Skills Engineering - Meant for programmers but dealing with non-programming topics relevant to work. How to deal with co-workers, promotions, giving talks, interviewing, and all sorts of other soft skills are covered. It’s kind of a “Dear Abby” but for programmers. Updated weekly. [Feed]
• Agile for Humans with Ryan Ripley - Focused on the software development process with an obvious slant towards Agile and Scrum. Updated weekly. [Feed]
• Mentoring Developers - Focused on career development for Software Engineers, focused on more junior or newcomers to the field. Updated monthly. [Feed]
• Healthy Software Developer - A little “self-help seminar” at times but generally good soft skill advice for engineers. Updated weekly. [Feed]
• Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots - A bit focused on management and business but still a good listen about soft skills in the tech industry. Updated weekly. [Feed]

There are lots of other great podcasts out there but even as I went over my OPML export to write this post I realized a few of my favorites hadn’t been updated in ages. It doesn’t give me a lot of hope that this very post will stay relevant for long, but it is what it is.

Did I miss your favorite podcast? Please leave a comment, I’d love to add some more feeds to my reader.

I also left out a lot of common programming podcast categories, such as the various podcasts meant for newcomers to the field or people learning to program. I’ve been programming for nearly two decades so these types of podcasts don’t personally interest me and thus I can’t vouch for any of them, but if there are any you like please leave a comment for anyone who might stumble across this post.