Listen: programming and software development

The queue

The shading behind each date shows whether an episode is still current. It empties after two years for coding with AI; five years for systems that keep running; fifteen years for everything else.

1. 1 The Science of Learning to Code CoRecursive 51 min Starts where a learner is: whether 'natural born programmers' exist, and what research says actually helps people get over the early wall. Useful framing before you pick a first project.
   Aug 2023 Fundamentals Mark as heard
2. 2 Story: Video Game Programming From Scratch CoRecursive 41 min Casey Muratori argues for building one thing from scratch in a bare language so you see what the machine actually does. The clearest statement of stage 1's point.
   Mar 2021 Fundamentals Mark as heard
3. 3 Tech Talk: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs with Hal Abelson CoRecursive 56 min Hal Abelson explains why SICP opens with abstraction and procedures rather than data types, and why that still matters. A good way to learn what 'understanding a program' means.
   Oct 2019 Fundamentals Mark as heard
4. 4 Tech Talk: Crafting Interpreters With Bob Nystrom CoRecursive 56 min Writing an interpreter is the classic 'badly, to completion' project that removes the magic from languages. Bob Nystrom makes it sound doable, because it is.
   May 2019 Fundamentals Mark as heard
5. 5 Story: Godbolt's Rule - When Abstractions Fail CoRecursive 44 min Stories from the creator of Compiler Explorer about bugs only solvable by going beneath the abstraction. Gives you a rule for how deep your mental model needs to go.
   Nov 2025 Fundamentals Mark as heard
6. 6 Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratori The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 53 min The 2026 companion to the Casey episode above: why performance is a design concern, and why knowing how the CPU works still pays off even if a model writes the code.
   Aug 2026 Fundamentals Mark as heard
7. 7 Simple Made Easy Strange Loop Conference 1 h 2 min Video only The most cited talk on why code gets hard to read: people choose what is easy instead of what is simple. It gives you words for what feels wrong in a diff.
   Oct 2011 Craft Mark as heard
8. 8 Chat: Loving Legacy Code with Jonathan Boccara CoRecursive 25 min A short episode on the mindset for code you did not write, which is most code, and now includes what a model wrote. Practical rather than whiny.
   Apr 2020 Reading code Mark as heard
9. 9 SE Radio 295: Michael Feathers on Legacy Code Software Engineering Radio 58 min The author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code on how to get an unfamiliar system under test before you change it. This is also how you take ownership of generated code.
   Jun 2017 Reading code Mark as heard
10. 10 On Code Review Oxide and Friends 1 h 31 min Experienced systems engineers talk about what code review is actually for, with war stories. It sets expectations for the reviewing you'll do all day with AI output.
    Nov 2021 Reading code Mark as heard
11. 11 Code review anxiety (Interview) The Changelog 1 h 12 min Being reviewed, and reviewing, is a skill with an emotional side that stops people learning. Carol Lee brings research rather than anecdotes.
    Jul 2024 Reading code Mark as heard
12. 12 The Philosophy of Software Design – with John Ousterhout The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 21 min Ousterhout argues design matters more, not less, as AI generates more code. His 'deep modules' idea gives you a concrete test when reading someone else's structure.
    Apr 2025 Craft Mark as heard
13. 13 SE Radio 615: Kent Beck on "Tidy First?" Software Engineering Radio 1 h 2 min Small tidyings before a change are how you make unfamiliar code readable enough to modify. Kent Beck explains when that is worth the cost.
    May 2024 Craft Mark as heard
14. 14 Episode 367: Diomidis Spinellis on Debugging Software Engineering Radio 53 min A tour of the debugging toolbox from someone who wrote a book on it. Good for widening your options past 'add a print and hope'.
    May 2019 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
15. 15 Debugging Methodologies Oxide and Friends 1 h 30 min Two real bug hunts told in detail: an NVMe hang that stopped reboots, and a Rust compiler segfault. You hear how people avoid getting stuck and narrow a problem down.
    May 2022 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
16. 16 SE Radio 589: Zac Hatfield-Dodds on Property-Based Testing in Python Software Engineering Radio 57 min Property-based testing makes the machine search for inputs that break your code. That habit matters more when you did not write the code yourself.
    Nov 2023 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
17. 17 Why Testing is Hard and How to Fix it with Will Wilson Signals and Threads 1 h 48 min A broad and honest map of testing techniques and what each actually catches, from the founder of Antithesis. It's long, but it is the best overview in this list.
    Mar 2026 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
18. 18 Story: The Untold Story of SQLite CoRecursive 39 min How the most deployed database got so reliable. The answer is mostly a test suite held to aviation standards.
    Jul 2021 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
19. 19 Formal methods with Hillel Wayne The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 24 min If machines write most code, specifying what 'correct' means becomes the human job. Hillel Wayne shows where formal methods help and where they don't.
    Jul 2026 Testing and debugging Mark as heard
20. 20 Observability: the present and future, with Charity Majors The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 14 min Once software runs for real users, you debug it through what it tells you. Charity Majors explains observability and why it should come before adding AI-written code.
    Jan 2025 Systems that keep running Mark as heard
21. 21 Designing Data-intensive Applications with Martin Kleppmann The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 25 min The author of the standard book on data systems covers the tradeoffs behind storage, scaling and distributed failure. Useful context before you pick a database for something that has to keep running.
    Apr 2026 Systems that keep running Mark as heard
22. 22 How AWS S3 is built The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 18 min A look at designing for failure at the largest scale there is. It shows how 'keep running' changes every design decision.
    Jan 2026 Systems that keep running Mark as heard
23. 23 Story: Risk Rolls Downhill - The Software Bug That Sent People to Prison CoRecursive 55 min The UK Post Office Horizon scandal, told by a sub-postmaster it harmed. A reminder that software bugs land on real people, and that a system's owners insisting 'the numbers are right' is a failure too.
    Oct 2025 Systems that keep running Mark as heard
24. 24 TDD, AI agents and coding with Kent Beck The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 16 min The inventor of TDD on coding with AI agents after five decades of programming. Tests are how he keeps an unpredictable tool honest.
    Jun 2025 Coding with AI Mark as heard
25. 25 Beyond Vibe Coding with Addy Osmani The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 8 min Addy Osmani describes where AI output stops being good enough and who can finish the job. It is the site's thesis, from someone who ships tooling at Google.
    Oct 2025 Coding with AI Mark as heard
26. 26 How AI will change software engineering – with Martin Fowler The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 49 min Martin Fowler, calm and specific, on what changes when code generation is non-deterministic. He's clear about what stays the same.
    Nov 2025 Coding with AI Mark as heard
27. 27 Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age Oxide and Friends 1 h 33 min Systems engineers at Oxide describe using LLMs rigorously on real bugs and tools, not demos. It's the counterweight to 'AI slop is inevitable'.
    Jan 2026 Coding with AI Mark as heard
28. 28 Coding in the Red-Queen Era CoRecursive 42 min A working programmer's honest account of letting an agent refactor his code, and what that costs in thinking. It answers the learner's question: how do I keep learning if the agent does the work?
    Aug 2025 Coding with AI Mark as heard
29. 29 SE Radio 693: Mark Williamson on AI-Assisted Debugging Software Engineering Radio 54 min Debugging is where AI help is most tempting and most dangerous. This one is concrete about which parts it does well and which it can't do alone.
    Nov 2025 Coding with AI Mark as heard
30. 30 Context engineering with Dex Horthy The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 32 min How to give an agent the right information and keep its work reviewable. The person who coined 'context engineering' explains what works and what doesn't.
    Jul 2026 Coding with AI Mark as heard
31. 31 Building Claude Code with Boris Cherny The Pragmatic Engineer 1 h 37 min The creator of Claude Code on working when engineers no longer write most of the code themselves. Listen for how review and structure change, not for the product pitch.
    Mar 2026 Coding with AI Mark as heard

30 of 31 episodes have a podcast version, which keeps playing with the screen locked. Video plays through YouTube and stops when the screen does. Nothing is hosted here: audio streams from each publisher. What you have heard is kept in this browser only.