Three Tech Podcasts

Nov 8, 01:28 PM

There’s three tech podcasts I listen to regularly and the difference between them is fascinating.

First, there’s Software Engineering Radio, “intended as a lasting resource for professional software developers. It is not a newscast. It is also not specific to certain technologies. To get the maximum of it, you should listen to the regular episodes in sequence.” This is a bunch of Germans (very smart guys). They are precise in their speech, very academic, don’t joke around much (unless it’s something like, “Vonce, I yoost the vurt ‘Obchekt’ vhen I meant ‘Komponent’! Ha ha ha!”) and zey are very por-lite, asking each other kvestions und waiting for the uzzer to feenish before starting again to speak. You might hear something like this:

“Maybe here is where we start to define the difference between an Object and a Component. Markus, what is the difference and why is it important?”

“Yes, this is one of the key concepts of object-oriented design and it is very important to make a distinction between these two ideas.”

Next there’s The Java Posse, “a group of four veteran Java software architects that know each other well, love to talk about Java technology (and technology in general), and happen to have a bad habit of recording audio stuff and publishing it on the web.” This is three Americans and one Brit who lives in the US; these guys are quite relaxed. They generally let each other speak but sometimes butt in if they get a bit excited. They joke around quite a lot. One of the guys once recorded his bits while on holiday in Mexico and it sounded like he had a few margaritas before and during the ‘cast, which lent a certain colour to his comments. They might have an exchange like this:

“OK, so, the big news this week is that NetBeans 5.5 is released.”

“You know, I’ve been watching their website and load of new people are trying it out. It’s becoming pretty popular.”

“I still miss JBuilder. When I was working on that we had a feature that would delete whitespace at the end of lines.”

“Joe, you’re not still on about that are you? Check out my NetBeans plugin to highlight tabs in the source code. Tabs are evil.”

“OK, so, shall we move on to the next news item?”

And then there’s LugRadio, “a fortnightly British radio show that takes a relaxed, humorous look at Linux and open source. Note: language may offend some.” Relaxed and humorous doesn’t quite cover it—hilariously anarchic and very likely alcohol-fuelled is closer to the mark. This is four British lads who are passionately Linux and open-source and very vigorously opinionated. They talk a lot about tech and open-source but I’ve heard an exchange like this:

“OK, who has the stupidest beard in open source?”
“That’d be you Jono.”
“Well thanks very much, perhaps I should shave it off.”
“No, then you’d look a fucking twat.”
“There’s gotta be someone else…”
“maybe Eric Raymond?”
“No he has no beard”

Of the three I’ve been listening longest to The Java Posse and they’re still my favourite, but the LugRadio lads are very funny when they get going. Software Engineering Radio is more a resource than a diversion—something I feel I should be listening to, like reading a software design book or something.

All of which probably says more about me than about the podcasts.

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