The Changelog
The Changelog is hosted by Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo. They release three weekly episodes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Monday's episode is a short (5-10 minute) software and technology news show with a companion newsletter. Wednesday's show is a deep-dive interview with a guest from the software and technology world. Finally, Friday's episode is a "Changelog and Friends" show where a guest joins Adam and Jerod to chat informally about various (still mostly tech-related) topics.
I've been a long-time subscriber to The Changelog because I enjoy their interview style. Adam and Jerod have a way of interviewing guests that makes the episodes interesting and entertaining. Along with the flagship show, The Changelog has an entire family of podcasts that cover topics ranging from front-end development to AI. We'll be talking about one of them next with JS Party.
JS Party
As you can probably guess from the name JS Party is a show focused on JavaScript (and TypeScript 😏). While JS is in the name, I consider JS Party to be a podcast that covers topics from the front-end software development world. So there may be episodes about frameworks, libraries, tools, and technologies relating to front-end development. JS Party features a rotating panel of hosts and they normally have at least one guest in each episode.
Even though I'm not a front-end engineer by trade, I find it very beneficial to stay up to date on the latest news and trends in the space. Since I maintain this blog and other small apps, I find it useful to have a high-level understanding of what is popular in the front-end development world. I've been subscribed to JS Party for a long time and look forward to a new episode in my Podcasts app each week!
Soft Skills Engineering
Soft Skills Engineering is a recent addition to my podcast lineup that has quickly become one of my favorites. The show is hosted by Dave Smith and Jamison Dance. Each week they provide advice in the way of answers to listener questions. The type of advice that Dave and Jamison provide contains a great mix of reality and humor. I find that they're able to speak honestly about situations that might normally be difficult to discuss in a professional setting.
They cover things like:
- Getting promoted
- How to deal with being laid off
- Resolving workplace conflict
- Asking for a raise
These are all topics that we, as knowledge workers in technology, will have to deal with at some point in our careers. I find the Soft Skills Engineering podcast to be a great way to learn how others think about or handle these normally difficult scenarios.
CoRecursive
CoRecursive is currently my favorite podcast. The show is released about once a month and each episode is an interesting story about a specific person or project in technology. The tagline from the site is:
The stories behind the code
I find each episode of CoRecursive captivating my attention from start to finish. As consumers, we only see the end result of products, but the host, Adam Gordon Bell, does an amazing job shedding light on all of the struggles that took place to reach the end state. My favorite episode to date is the episode detailing the story behind SerenityOS and its creator Andreas Kling. I highly recommend giving it a listen.
Software Unscripted
Software Unscripted might be the most technically deep podcast that I listen to. The host, Richard Feldman, is currently building a functional programming language called Roc. For this reason, many of the guests contain deep knowledge of programming language design and architecture. I'll admit that I don't necessarily understand everything discussed in the episodes, but I do come away from each episode with something new or interesting to explore.
There's my list! In the past few months, I reduced the number of shows that I'm subscribing to while also listening at 1.25X speed. I used to listen at 2X speed but found myself breezing through episodes without really getting much from them. I've definitely shifted from pure quantity to filtering my list for quality. If any of these shows seem interesting, I highly recommend giving them a listen. Podcasts are not my primary mode of learning, but they are definitely a mode that I use to learn passively.