As a developer, it’s crucial to practice your craft to keep your skills sharp. Just as important as coding is keeping up with trends and industry news so those skills stay fresh. Luckily, there are lots of ways to follow what’s happening in the world of web development and podcasts are an easy way to consume that content from basically anywhere.
Hosted by the DevChat.TV team, their episodes are typically 30 minutes to 1 hour in length. With a focus entirely on AngularJS, Adventures in Angular features overviews of new technologies, tutorials, and interviews with prominent Angular community leaders about their beginnings and how to get more involved with the Angular development community. Host Charles Max Wood curates expert panels for every episode and they’re always an entertaining listen.
While not directly related to JavaScript, Paul Boag curates in-depth discussions with user experience experts to solve what he calls “first world problems.” Although the episodes can sometimes top an hour in length, short summaries and key takeaways are posted alongside the podcast player to make learning on the go a possibility. If the podcast length is a deterrent, Boag also posts audio summaries of his blog posts that are uploaded to YouTube and iTunes to make learning while you work easy.
This podcast records live with hosts Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert and features a listener Q&A session. Each weekly show focuses on web design, development, and UX, and they’re around an hour long — if you miss an episode, they post transcripts on their site as well.
The Big Web Show is hosted by Jeffrey Zeldman and is posted on an irregular schedule (about once a month), but always delivers top-notch content. The Big Web Show has won awards for its excellent curation of prominent designers, developers, and web standards experts. Episodes are a mix of interviews, conversations, and general life advice with industry leaders who talk through the design and development processes for their own websites and apps, typography, and what the future of the web will look like.
Another awesome thing to note is Zeldman has been blogging about design and web standards for over a decade, holding the record for one of the longest running personal blogs ever.
The Changelog is a community-supported podcast and blog. With nearly 160,000 listens each week across all of their podcast episodes, The Changelog is one of the largest podcast communities on the web. Episodes feature updates to open-source software, interesting open-source projects, and things worth checking out in the open-source community. Weekly email newsletters of the week’s news are also sent out to subscribers.
JavaScript Jabber is one of the most comprehensive JavaScript podcasts around. Also hosted by DevChat.TV, JavaScript Jabber covers everything from interviews with developers about their most recent projects using JavaScript to career advice with the web development community’s most prominent developers. The episodes aren’t a quick listen, each topping over an hour in length, but their depth is well worth the time.
Code School’s founder, Gregg Pollack, was recently featured on an episode of JavaScript Jabber where he talks about the start of Code School and his advice for new podcasts and developers trying to make it into producing e-learning content.
Hosted by Rod Vagg and Tim Oxley, this podcast features lengthy discussions about Node.js and a wealth of information. Episode lengths vary from about half an hour to a full hour, but always cover a large variety of Node-related topics.
Led by industry veterans Lea Alcantara and Emily Lewis, each episode features industry leaders and innovators tackling topics from design, code, and content management systems, to culture and business challenges. Each episode lands around an hour long and is always a powerful discussion.
This interview-style podcast is led by Jen Simmons and features the world’s experts on the past, present, and future of the web. While each episode can easily top an hour, the time flies with rich, engaging conversation on changing technologies and where the web is headed. The Web Ahead was the winner of Podcast of the Year at the 2015 Net Awards.
Of course, there are a lot more podcasts out there centered around web development, but these are some of my favorites. So give them a listen and hopefully you’ll find a few you like to add to your own playlist. Have your own favorite podcasts? Let us know in the comments below what you like to listen to.