My favourite development related podcasts (2026 edition)
Three podcasts I’m currently enjoying on development (I listen to more, but these are asap play when they arrive):
Dead Code
Dead code always ends with “and now delete some”, followed by a death metally grunt “DEAD CODE”. But while the show is death metal themed, don’t expect just bearded men with long hair mumbling. Jared Norman discusses a wide range of topics in depth. Often his shows are triggered by someone who wrote a blogpost about some niche programming related topic. From rescript (a typed language that compiles to Javascript), new style version management tools other than git, a discussion around why (the lucky stiff) who influenced the ruby culture to something much more quirkier than others, to discussions about the language we program in (english vs. non-english, ‘css’ vs assembly…).
Maintainable - the art of improving existing software
In this podcast Robby Russel talks to experts in the field about, well maintenance. Most recent episode, at the time of writing, with Brittany Ellich (Github) focusses on how her team uses AI to make the small nagging tedious changes that nobody finds time for. Instead of assigning it to a developer they assign such smaller, well described problems, to agents. To be successful they only use it for these small tasks, and not let it rewrite big chunks. There is still a need for an engineer who reflects on the larger architecture, she notes. Personal point of critique: I do wonder if these tasks aren’t the right tasks for e.g. a junior who is now missing the opportunity to learn the system, but overall from a client’s perspective and technology perspective it seems like a reasonable trade-off, and interesting to hear about.
The before last episode with Kent Beck discussed his new book on Tidying code base. First of all I love that we finally can say something different than clean code, which is much more rigidly defined. Anyway, good guests, recommended listen :)
Rooftop Ruby
Initially a weekly(?) podcast, now doing about 7 a year, and I hope they didn’t stop… But the author Joel Drapper is an inspiring (ruby) developer (author of the Phlex gem, which is probably the best way to write components in ruby apps), and his discussions with Collin Donnell are at a conceptual level I much appreciate. The presenters are a good combination, where Collin can ask Joel the right questions to keep him on track. I also see them as the (much appreciated) alternatives to Rails club, where Joel Drapper is working hard on his own new framework. In the before last episode they interviewed Tim Riley from the Hanami team.