Rad tech podcasts you should be subscribing to!

Your code is compiling and you’ve got some time to kill. You know you should do something worthy with this gift of time, but 30 minutes later you end up 23 tabs deep reading about otters and their favourite rock pouches.

And while you’re on your random quest to search every disturbing fact about otters on the internet, there’s a little voice telling you that you _probably _shouldn’t be wasting this time and should be doing something productive. Not that learning about the fact that otters have a rock pouch on their bodies, let alone that it is for their favourite rock, isn’t productive – but your boss or conscience might disagree.

My way around this feeling of gnawing guilt is getting started on a good podcast while I wait for the thing I’m working on to finish doing the thing it needs to do. I usually clear my inbox/desktop/intercom messages simultaneously for maximum feel-awesome effect. There’s so many podcasts that I love, and here’s a subset of some kickass tech ones to get you inspired.

Pretty much anything with Derick Bailey

Derick is a great guy and a talented programmer, and he’s hosted and interviewed on more podcasts than you can fathom. His current podcast, Entreprogrammer, is a project with fellow programmers turned entrepreneurs @josh_earl, @jsonmez and @cmaxw – and is a fly on the wall look into what life is like for devs who cross over to the business side. With a lot of humour – I can totally recommend this one.

Gone Mobile by Greg Shackles (Xamarin MVP)

Gone Mobile is a podcast discussing the latest in mobile development, particularly using Xamarin technologies and .NET / C#. The host, Greg Shackles  finds the time to not only publish a Gone Mobile episode every other week, but to work as an engineer, author for @OReillyMedia, organize @NYCMobileDev meetup and create apps like @myEchoApp. You know what they say – the busiest people get the most done!

The MattKremer.com Podcast

Matt Kremer is the author of one of my favourite tech blogs, so naturally I subscribe to his podcast. He talks about how to build a product from scratch, then launch it and market it (sometimes all in one weekend). He’s also written a book called ‘Building Software Products in a Weekend’ – so you know he’s for real.

The great and powerful Scott Hanselman

Is there anything Scott Hanselman can’t do!? He’s the host of several amazing podcasts – and I subscribe to both Hanselminutes and This Developers Life – as well as being an author of several books, an established speaker, a teacher and a comedian. In addition to these achievements, Scott is a long time Microsoft employee and advocate for Diabetes research.

JavaScript Jabber

A weekly podcast about JavaScript, including Node.js. Interested in all things Javascript? This is the podcast for you my friend. I’m totally new to learning JS and I still enjoy this podcast – which is saying something – because most very technical articles and talks tend to send me into a frustrated rage! Created by DevChat.TV – who also make a bunch of relevant tech podcasts like Ruby Rogues.

So this is certainly not a definitive list of great tech podcasts, but these are my top recommendations based on what I enjoy in an audio episode – which is easy listening and a bit of witty banter. Any suggestions? I’d love to hear them 🙂