mokacoding

unit and acceptance testing, automation, productivity

Podcasts, grow your brain through soundwaves

Recently I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, actually too many to keep up with. I wanted to try to to learn through soundwaves, in a sort of passive way while doing something in which my brain power -if we want to go as far as calling it power- is wasted, like washing the dishes, or walking somewhere. I found podcasts a great way to get in touch with new things that I can then come back to and look in more deeply. It's also nice to hear all the guests speaking, it's a fraction of the experience you get when going to a conference.

These are my favourite podcasts, in random order:

###Build Phase

At the moment I'm a professional iOS developer. This podcast is a weekly source of thoughts, new things, and inspiration. Gordon and Adam always start like they don't know what they're talking about, but they quickly get back on track and keep up a rich and fun podcast.

One thing I learned: The XVim plug-in for Xcode.

###Developing Perspective

This podcast is about what it's like to be a human being, not a super start. David Smith is a indie iOS developer and shares it's views and experience on this world. I like the simplicity of this podcast, and the sort of comfort I get from discovering that even successful developers have problems similar to mine.

One thing I learned: It's fine to make mistakes, as long as you take responsibilty for them and try to learn a lesson.

###RubyRouges

As I said I'm working as an iOS developer, but at night I like to write readable code. With Ruby and Coffeescript. The RubyRouges crew is too long to be listed. This guys know their Ruby and the usually either have a guest or a book to talk about. But don't get fouled by the name, this podcast is more about good programming techniques and mentality than Ruby as a language itself.

One thing I learned: Getting into the habit of spending 15-20 minutes a day on "tools sharpening".

###Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots

Produced by thoughtbot, the same company behind Build Phase, this weekly podcast has a different guest everytime, covering various topics always realted to the world of development, but without being too techy.

It's worth mentioning that the guys at thoughtbot are also the developers of two gems I can't live without when doing Rails apps: factory_girl and shoulda.

One thing I learned: I can't recall anything tangible I learned form this podcast at the moment. Althought the episodes with Nathan Barry and Jeff Atwood have been really inspirational.

###This Agile Life

Another weekly podcast related to the world of programming, but not too techy. Try to guess what this is about? This agile team of speakers goes deep into an agile topic every week, and it's a great source of information, specially for someone like me how's always been at the boarder line of the agile development without being really able to implement it completely.

One thing I learned: The best estimate is no-estimate. More here.

###Other podcast worth mentioning

###And one more thing...

Aussie Mac Zone. This podcast is simply hilarious. I love these guys! They keep me posted on all the news in the Apple world in the most fun way ever!

If you have any other podcast on the line of these one that you want to share, tweet me @mokagio.

Happy coding!

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