Free Education with No Extra Time

Every developer has the need to constantly improve his or her skills. But where do you find the time? I have a wife and kids, am a member of seven different organizations, and have a demanding job. But I have found a method that’s both free and costs me no extra time: Podcasts. Let’s talk about the who, what, when where, and why of podcasts (although not necessarily in that order).

For those of you who don’t know what a podcast is, it’s similar to a talk radio show only placed on the internet. Some shows stream their feeds live, but virtually all place their files on a webpage so that you can download it later. Most are MP3, but there are a few other formats as well, such as WAV.

These shows are target to a specific audience, and there is a nice selection out there for the developer. So how do you listen to a podcast? Well, you can download and listen on your computer. As you might expect, the term “Podcast” takes it’s name from the Apple iPod, and you can listen on an iPod or any MP3 player. I personally have an HP iPaq, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). In addition to keeping up with my appointments, it will also play MP3’s. I like it because I don’t have to carry an extra device around, and because it has a tiny speaker built in, so I don’t have to use earphones if it’s not convenient.

That covers the what and how, now the when. I listen when I am doing manual tasks. Driving back and forth to work I use a car charger and stereo adapter to hook my iPaq to my car stereo. When I cut the grass I use ear buds under a set of hearing protectors. I also use my ear buds when doing chores around the house, even when shopping! Nothing helps take the drudgery out of picking up milk after work like listening to some new ASP.Net techniques while you do it.

Now we come to the who. Who to listen to? A simple search will turn up hundreds, if not thousands of podcasts. Where do you go for the best? Well, here are my top pics:

DotNetRocks – http://www.dotnetrocks.com/ – Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell put on a weekly show, interviewing a big name in the Microsoft Development world. With an archive of over 180 shows, there’s plenty of good material to keep you busy for quite some time. The earliest shows run about 2 hours, and cover a bit of news in addition to the interview, the more recent episodes run approximately an hour, and concentrate mostly on the interview.

Hanselminutes – http://www.hanselminutes.com/ – Hosts Scott Hanselman and Carl Franklin spend half an hour each week discussing technology related topics. The majority of the shows focus on ASP.Net development, but on occasion Scott will divert into other topics like cool development tools, or nifty gadgets.

TWiT (This Week in Tech) – http://www.twit.tv/ – Many of us remember TechTV. Leo Laporte went on to found the TWiT.TV group. Leo’s weekly show, TWiT discusses the latest in the tech world in general. The latest trends in hardware, software, plus corporate news are discussed. Leo has a weekly rotating roundtable, with names like John C Dvorak and Patrick Norton dropping in.

Security Now – http://www.twit.tv/SN – From the TWiT family of shows, Leo teams up with long time guru Steve Gibson to discuss security on the world wide web. You can also download the show from Gibson’s site, http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm.

Well there you go, there’s a few shows I listen to on a regular basis. Should be enough to get you started. Oh, almost forgot the why. Well, you’ll have to answer that for yourself, but if you’re like me, you want to be the best developer you can be.

Free Education? With no extra investment in time? Sounds like a winner to me!