Soapbox Rants and Raves

During my time off, I decided to start listening to some technical podcasts. I assume this makes me a complete geek, but since I increased my running distance to three miles per day, it turned out to be a very good use of my time. I believe podcasts can be an excellent source of information and even entertainment. The best strategy is to listen to different topics, topics that you don’t encounter everyday. A person can only read so many blogs! If you are like me, you probably only read blogs which are related to your personal interests. Seems completely normal, but how do you ever get exposed to different technologies or techniques? Unless you change companies or completely refresh your team every 6 to 12 months, your learning environment can become very stale. Listening to different topics is an great way to re-energize your brain and kick start your creative thought processing; at least it does for me!

Several months ago, I discovered Scott Hanselman. He happens to work for Microsoft, but don’t hold that against him. He records several podcasts each week or so; I subscribe to two of them and they are both excellent. Scott focuses on a variety of software development issues and technologies. Hanselminutes is more technology oriented, while This Developers Life covers a variety of personal issue, from motivation, drive, to the Egyptian Revolution. I highly recommend going back and listening to all of the old This Developer’s Life episodes; I can’t tell you how insightful and reflective they are. As an added bonus, you get to hear some rather interesting musical choices! The people that he interviews are so interesting and have some really funny commentary. You will hear stories from different types of developers, both famous and infamous. You will learn how they navigated through their careers, sometimes successfully and other times, not so well. All I can say, is they are definitely worth the time! I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.