Languages & Craft Podcasts

Partway through OWASP Top 10 (2025 List) for Python Devs on Talk Python To Me, the conversation turns to an experiment: ask an AI for secure code, then have multiple AIs check it. They found critical vulnerabilities. The conclusion is unglamorous: "You have to say, and this is what secure means." Programming podcasts are at their best in moments like this, when someone who has been burned lets the scar tissue do the teaching.

That moment belongs to a wider argument about what happens to craft when software writes more of the software. Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats put the question in a title: 986: Does Code Quality Matter Anymore? In Writing a shell in Go, a panelist on Go Time: Golang, Software Engineering asks AI marketing for harder demos: "Take an existing app with a lot of assumptions baked in, like refactor that, because that's my job." There is an older argument underneath it. In a May 2026 r/learnprogramming thread, one commenter recommended a Python podcast and another told the beginner to spend the time writing code. The shows below work best on the second commenter's terms, as company for people who also practise.

Software Unscripted, Richard Feldman's conversational show, goes further into design philosophy. In HTMX Creator Carson Gross on Comp Sci's Evolution, Gross explains why HTMX 4 will stop attributes from inheriting implicitly by default. An inherited target saves typing, but a change in some distant file can alter behaviour, so he says inheritance will have to be declared by default. It is a small API decision explained as a trade-off between locality and normalisation, which is the craft in miniature. devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development covers neighbouring ground in Evan You - Vue, Vite, VoidZero and the Future of JavaScript Tooling. There, You says his new company does not plan to ship open source and then change the license later.

Roundups give up depth in exchange for orientation. On Python Bytes, Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken spend #474: Astral to join OpenAI weighing what the move could mean for tools like ty, and one host labels the guesswork plainly: "This is my speculation." Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats, with Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski, does similar work for the web. In 989: State of JS 2025, the hosts read survey charts aloud and promise audio listeners they will describe everything. RWpod - подкаст про Ruby та Web технології works through Ruby and web releases. Near the end of its season-14 opener, the host asks listeners to help Ukraine's Armed Forces.

The maintenance shows move more slowly and pay more attention to people. In Rein Henrichs: The Real Work of Maintenance Happens Before You Touch the Code on Maintainable, Henrichs draws on resilience engineering. He argues that the idea Kent Beck called optionality is better named adaptive capacity, and adds: "Humans are the unit of adaptive capacity." Host Robby then brings the theory back to listeners who have maintenance work waiting.

Code. Deploy. Go Live., from Microsoft MVPs Andrew Connell and Julie Turner, shows that pressure from inside an open-source library. In 029 | Inside PnPjs: Open Source at Enterprise Scale with the Library Maintainers, one maintainer recalls shipping code twice, getting more issues each time, and finally pulling the feature: "We can't have another failed release." Listeners drawn to the team side of this will find more on the Engineering Leadership page.

Virtual Domain-driven design publishes community sessions in which talks open up to attendees' questions. In Patterns of BDD Automation - a Fireside chat with Seb Rose and Gáspár Nagy, one guest describes a patterns workshop where authors sit silently while others critique their work. The guest admits to gratitude and something less gracious: "I also hate them viscerally because we've got so much work to do." Functional Design in Clojure works closer to the code. In Ep 068: Static on the Line, a 24-minute episode, hosts Nate and Christoph recount searching Ring's source for the place where response bodies are handled and finding it in protocols.clj.

CoRecursive: Coding Stories, from Adam Gordon Bell, turns programming history into narrative. Story: JSON vs XML follows Doug's campaign to get JSON accepted, down to his irritation at being given application/json instead of text/json. Story: Serenity OS is more personal. Andreas, who worked on WebKit at Apple, talks about addiction, recovery meetings, and building an operating system from scratch to fill his days. The episode discusses drinking and drug use directly.