Developer life around the code, one question at a time.
DevDiscuss pairs Ben Halpern, sometimes alongside a Forem colleague, with guests on one question at a time: how to get a conference talk accepted, how to work with other departments, why SQL has lasted. The range runs past code into cybersecurity careers, kids' coding and technology used for abuse.
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DevDiscuss is a conversation podcast from DEV. Its subject is less any one programming language than the working life that grows up around code. Ben Halpern, a co-founder of Forem, hosts. In some episodes a Forem colleague joins him, either Abby Phoenix, the company's special projects manager, or Suzanne Aitchison, a senior software engineer there. Guests often come in pairs from different organizations. The questions are concrete. One episode asks how a conference talk proposal gets accepted, framed around Codeland, with two developer advocates, one of whom has served on a program committee. The advice is specific: answer what the call for proposals actually asks, make sure a talk billed as basic does not turn deeply technical, and do not count on popularity to carry a weak submission. Another episode looks at the everyday friction of working across departments. A GitHub software engineer and a TinySeed program director talk about remote communication channels that managers can mistake for lost productivity, and about how doing customer interviews can make someone a better engineer. Some conversations take a longer view. The SQL episode asks how many times an ordinary day touches Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server. It then follows Google's internal systems into Kubernetes, document stores and a database inspired by Spanner, and names two Google engineers, Jeff Dean among them, as people every engineer should know. Cybersecurity careers get a conversation with Alyssa Miller, a business information security officer at S&P Global Ratings and author of Cyber Defender's Career Guide. She talks about the noise around a supposed skills gap, and the episode argues that security people have to learn to speak to developers and users rather than blame them. The show also goes well beyond the job itself. In the episode on introducing kids to coding, leaders of two organizations that teach children describe putting logic ahead of syntax, starting from if-this-then-that reasoning everyone already understands. The heaviest material comes in an episode on how technology is used as a tool for abuse and coercive control. The conversation covers systems that were never designed to be nefarious but get used that way, and makes the case that information and dialogue, not fear-driven bans, keep children safer online. What a listener gets is less a tutorial than experienced people thinking out loud about problems developers actually run into. The closing credits invite listeners to start their own discussion on DEV with a post tagged 'discuss'. For a first listen, 'Getting Your Conference Talk Proposal Accepted' and 'Getting Along with Your Co-workers... All of Them' show the practical side most directly. The abuse episode shows how far the show's idea of a developer's concerns can stretch.
Made for: Suits a developer who wants practical conversation about the job around the code, from pitching a conference talk and working across departments to breaking into cybersecurity. It also fits a parent or educator curious about how children are introduced to programming logic.
What sets it apart: Rather than tutorials or framework news, DevDiscuss puts one question at a time to guests from different organizations. Its range runs from the history of SQL to technology-enabled abuse, so a developer's concerns extend well past the codebase.
DevDiscuss is the first original podcast from DEV, a global community of software developers of all backgrounds and experience levels. The show covers burning topics that impact the daily lives of programmers and beyond, hosted by Forem Co-Founder, Ben Halpern, as well as a rotating cast of Forem developers.
A marketing colleague taps an engineer's shoulder; your org chart suddenly has sound effects.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear case for teaching children coding through logic before syntax.
DevDiscuss makes a practical case for introducing children to coding through logical thinking before syntax. John Mattingly, co-founder and CEO at Codable, grounds that idea in familiar cause-and-effect patterns like "if this, then that," with games helping young learners…
A grounded discussion of online trust, privacy, and safety when technology becomes part of coercive control.
DevDiscuss treats a hard question with care: how familiar digital spaces can become tools for abuse and coercive control. Bindu Fernandez of Freedom Forward and Sonia Mittal of Narica tie that risk to exploited and trafficked young people, online trust, and the limits of making…
A brisk, useful look at SQL's staying power through the distributed systems built around it.
SQL sits at the center of this Dev Discuss conversation as the durable, often invisible machinery behind everyday digital habits. Ben Halpern and Jeremy Friesen frame the episode around a simple idea: how often a keystroke or click may eventually touch Oracle, DB2, or SQL…
A grounded guide to how conference committees judge fit, audience, and the speaker behind a talk proposal.
Conference talk proposals live or die on fit, and DevDiscuss gives that process a useful frame through Codeland. Ben Halpern and Abby Phoenix talk with Patsy Parra, developer advocate at GitHub, and Tracy P.
A grounded discussion of cross-department work, remote communication, and the shared language that helps teams collaborate.
DevDiscuss considers how developers can work more coherently across departments when remote routines, deadlines, team size, and reporting lines make casual contact harder.
Power Platform news with practical static.
John Mattingly says Codable started with his own path: he coded at 6, graduated with marketing on a Friday, started software work on Monday, and quit six months later to build the company.
Dev Discuss brings together Bindu Fernandez of Freedom Forward and Sonia Mittal of NARICA to talk about technology-facilitated abuse, defined as controlling behavior that uses technology to coerce, stalk, or harass.
Dev Discuss S9:E6 centers on Jim Walker from Cockroach Labs explaining why SQL still powers “Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server” workloads and why CockroachDB stays wire-compatible with Postgres.
DevDiscuss S9:E5 focuses on how Patsy Parra and Tracy P.
Kate Travers, a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub, and Tracy Osborne, Principal Program Director at TinySeed, compare how engineers, designers, and other departments communicate inside companies of different sizes.
Paula Giron turned a joke about Clojure keywords into a Morse code library that encoded almost all of its source files.
DevDiscuss host Ben Halpern asks Forum engineers Art and Jeremy Friesen how they replaced dozens of resource-specific liquid tags with one `embed` keyword and a URL.
Adi Usmani and Lydia Hallie describe their book Learning Patterns as a modern guide to JavaScript design, performance, and rendering patterns.
Ben Halpern interviews cybersecurity expert Alyssa Miller about her book and the skills gap in cybersecurity.
A discussion about imposter syndrome in the tech industry, featuring a clinical psychologist and a software engineer.
An interview with creators of the Tech Workers Handbook about tools and strategies for whistleblowing in the tech industry.
Interview with Vue.js creator Evan You about the framework's origin and features.
The hosts of DevDiscuss interview the hosts of the Changelog podcast about their backgrounds and the deeply human stories in software.
An interview with Cassidy Williams and Jonathan Carter about Visual Studio Code and developer experience.
Developers discuss the intersection of music and code with guests who create music through programming.
An interview with Scott Hanselman about the new normal for developers, covering remote work, community management, and career longevity.