My Favorite Web Development Podcasts

Podcast Recording

Around the time I graduated from my programming bootcamp in March 2017, I started listening to programming podcasts to scratch the itch of continuous learning and to keep myself engaged with the world of web development.

Although I started with just a handful, almost a third of my Podcast Addict app is now filled with them. Some are more specific to a programming niche, tech stack, languages, or frameworks while others are broad and all-encompassing. Some are purely educational while others are conversational and topical to current tech trends.

Here are my top 5 favorite web developer podcasts plus a list of honorable mentions from my playlist.

Syntax

Wes Bos and Scott Tolinksi’s podcast quickly became my favorite and most listened to web development podcast once it was released. It’s the only one on this list that I have listened to in its entirety and new episodes are always at the top of my playlist.

Syntax is more of a JavaScript and front-end development podcast but covers all sorts of topics from website optimization tips, CSS grid, productivity hacks, JavaScript tooling, static site generators, and freelancing.

Although it’s immediately evident that Scott and Wes are React-centric developers, they do a great job of covering other frameworks, technologies, and broad programming topics. They keep each show interesting and I often find myself pausing to take notes on their development tips and suggestions.

Suggested Episodes

Front End Happy Hour

A podcast that fuses together two web developer hobbies: programming and drinking. Front End Happy Hour is made up of a diverse panel of web developers and UI engineers from companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, Evernote, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Although it’s primarily a front-end developer show, a lot of subjects — such as “freelancing” or “migrating code” — are quite broad and would appeal to the larger programming community.

The format of the show is pretty amusing — each episode is based around a different topic and a keyword related to that topic is announced. Whenever this word is spoken by panelist, everyone takes sip of their beer, whiskey, gin, or other drink of choice. If I didn’t normally listen to the show in the mornings before going to work, I’d probably be tempted to join in.

Suggested Episodes

Shop Talk Show

Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier are the stars in Show Talk Show, a podcast about front-end web development, design, and UX. I like the variety in this show because each week, the hosts present questions from listeners and then answer them. Sometimes, they are joined by guests who give compelling responses of their own.

This show covers a lot of different topics in each episode and they’re not all necessarily related to one another. In each episode, I find that a good handful of questions posed by the developer community are on topics I’m also interested in so this show always keeps my attention. The only qualm I have is that Dace and Chris don’t always have the time to allocate to any one topic fully.

Suggested Episodes

Developer Tea

Developer Tea is a fairly short (~10-20 minutes) podcast with a broad educational scope. Since episodes are so abbreviated, host Jonathan Cutrell doesn’t dive too deeply into any one topic. If he does, it’s spread out among several episodes.

This is a thought-provoking and educational podcast that helps developers understand concepts and to become better programmers and people. Jonathan describes its purpose as: to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work so that they can positively impact the people they influence.

Suggested Episodes

The Hanselminutes Podcast

Hosted by Scott Hanselman, The Hanselminutes Podcast is one of the podcasts I most recently started listening to. Like many programming podcasts, the host interviews many personas from the programming community. Scott brings on many guests that dive into some interesting topics specific to the web but also explores broader though-provoking topics.

Suggested Episodes

Honorable Mentions

Although I can’t listen to all podcasts all the time, I have a pretty extensive playlist. Here’s everything else I’m subscribed to:

If you have podcast recommendations, please reach out and let me know what else I should be subscribed to!

Summary

Cason Lane needed a revamped digital calling card for his business communications consultancy. Main client concerns included site rendering speed, search engine optimization, security, and a new design that maintained the recognizable brand image.

A transition was made from a slow-loading and clunky Wordpress theme to a modern and clean custom site design that was developed with Hugo, a static site generator. Swapping the unnecessarily heavyweight Wordpress CMS along with its slow-loading database and plethora of plugins for a static site greatly helped reduce page load speeds from 20+ seconds to under 1 or 2 seconds. Without a database, the site no longer had to make dynamic requests to load and display content quickly. Removing the database also eliminated the main security vulnerability.

The site was redesigned from scratch by my friend, John Laue, based on client needs. Since the whole site was being built up from scratch, no bloat from unnecessary Wordpress themes or excess plugins was added to create the look and functionality desired. With SEO in mind from the beginning and with site speed being of utmost importance, best practices were applied in sync with content to bring the client’s web presence to the front page of Google.

Tools

Hugo
Foundation
JavaScript
Animate on Scroll
Webpack

Summary

Lincoln Property Company is the second largest property management company in the US with over 184,000 units under management. In late 2018, I developed an interactive infographic that presents the current state of consumer trends and behaviors in an easily digestible manner.

The infographic displays digital marketing statistics about sourced from a variety of sources. The information is displayed with eye-catching animations that are initiated by a user’s scroll behavior.

Tools

Foundation
jQuery
Ruby on Rails
Animate on Scroll
ScrollMagic
GreenSock

Summary

One of my largest projects came in the fall of 2018 with AMP Residential, a property management company whose goal was to launch an entire suite of websites for a portfolio of 30+ multifamily properties. A theme requiring extensive customization capabilities to fit the different needs of all properties and their websites was needed.

The design was challenging because of several offset elements that needed repositioning and resizing for different viewports and many sections demanded conditionality to fit the content of each site, but it was a fun puzzle to solve. It’s become a favorite build of mine.

Some of the sites built with this theme include RiverFront Towers, Stone Ridge Apartments, and Woodland Creek Apartments.

Tools

Foundation
jQuery
Ruby on Rails

Summary

Morada Plano is a luxury apartment complex located in the Plano Arts District and Historic Downtown Plano. In the summer of 2018, I developed another custom property site for Southern Land Company.

For this build, I implemented new UX features requested by the client and designer like parallax scrolling, SVG animations, counter animations, and an Instagram feed.

Tools

Foundation
jQuery
Ruby on Rails
ScrollMagic

Summary

Avenue5 Residential is a multifamily property management company with 40,000 units and 200 properties across the United States. Although they sustained a large online presence, a number of their properties websites were in need of fresh, updated design and functionality. In early 2018, I developed a custom site theme that was applied to a number of websites under their portfolio of properties that was moved to a Ruby on Rails platform.

Two of the property sites undergoing transformation included Boulder Canyon and Canyon View.

Tools

Foundation
jQuery
Ruby on Rails

Summary

Vertis Green Hills is a Southern Land Company residential community made up of luxury apartments with onsite dining and shopping in Nashville, TN. I developed the site in late 2017 while the property was finishing construction and anticipated for opening in 2018.

Tools

Foundation
jQuery
Ruby on Rails

Summary

Miniflix is an experiment in building a React app with Create React App and Auth0. I built a single-page app with a user login system that serves videos through Cloudinary.

Tools

Auth0
Bootstrap
Cloudinary
Create React App
React

Summary

Osprey is an open source Hugo theme that I designed and developed to use for my own portfolio site. I have been maintaining and improving it with the support of the Hugo community on GitHub since 2017.

Tools

Summary

Rhino Linings Spray Foam Insulation, newly formed division of Rhino Linings Corporation, required a corporate website that could reach both consumers and clients. Using Wordpress, I built a site that served as a valuable marking asset.

Tools

Wordpress

Summary

Rugged Fellows Guide is a lifestyle blog created as a personal project to experiment with the Wordpress platform, web design, digital marketing, and SEO fundamentals. Within the first 6 months, the site generated as many as 30,000 sessions per day.

Tools

Wordpress

Summary

LEARN academy is a full-stack web development bootcamp in San Diego, CA. The website required optimization in terms of speed and organic search engine rankings. Assets were optimized, page loading speed improved, and pages were restructured according to modern SEO standards so that content could be properly crawled by search engines.

Tools

Google PageSpeed Insights
Google Search Console
Ruby on Rails

Summary

VolunteerUp is a Ruby on Rails app that connects volunteers with non-profit organizations. It was built in a 2-week sprint on a team of 7 developers as a final project during the LEARN Academy full-stack Ruby on Rails course. My primary involvement was developing the component for searching and filtering organizations and events within the application as well as some UI/UX guidance.

Tools

Kaminari
Filteriffic
Ruby on Rails

About

Work

Blog

Contact

Syntax

Suggested Episodes

Front End Happy Hour

Suggested Episodes

Shop Talk Show

Suggested Episodes

Developer Tea

Suggested Episodes

The Hanselminutes Podcast

Suggested Episodes

Honorable Mentions

My Favorite Web Development Podcasts

Syntax

Suggested Episodes

Front End Happy Hour

Suggested Episodes

Shop Talk Show

Suggested Episodes

Developer Tea

Suggested Episodes

The Hanselminutes Podcast

Suggested Episodes

Honorable Mentions

Cason Lane Communications

Summary

Tools

Lincoln Property Company

Summary

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Amp Residential

Summary

Tools

Morada Plano

Summary

Tools

Avenue5 Residential

Summary

Tools

Vertis Green Hills

Summary

Tools

Miniflix

Summary

Tools

My Resume

Osprey

Summary

Tools

Rhino Linings Corporation SPF

Summary

Tools

Rugged Fellows Guide

Summary

Tools

LEARN academy

Summary

Tools

VolunteerUp

Summary

Tools