The Stack Overflow Podcast is Back!
Before there was a Stack Overflow, there was a Stack Overflow podcast. The founders of this community and company started spitballing ideas for how to build it on weekly calls while the site was still in private beta.
As Stack Overflow grew and changed over the last decade, the Podcast was a constant. That is, until May of last year, when it went on hiatus. Stack Overflow gives employees a sabbatical after five years of service, so I’m going to assume the podcast was just calling in a much needed vacation.
Since I joined as Director of Content earlier this year, community members and colleagues kept asking me if it would ever be possible to bring the podcast back. Even though a new episode hasn’t been published in over a year, over a thousand people were still listening to our SoundCloud each week. It seemed clear the audience and the appetite for this ongoing conversation was still strong.
So today, with a renewed energy, we’ve decided to bring it back. We’ve got three new hosts:
Ben Popper, the director of content here at Stack (that’s me)
Sara Chipps, the director of Public Q&A at Stack, a veteran developer, and Stack user number #4140
Paul Ford: a writer and technologist who serves as CEO of Postlight, a digital product studio
We’ll be chatting about what it’s like to work in software development, how folks can learn to code, and the way in which computer programming is influencing business, culture, and society.
You can find and subscribe to the show on all the big audio platforms out there and we’ll be publishing a new episode each week. It went live early this morning, but it may take a little while to populate across various platforms. For now, you can find it on Spotify and Overcast. It should be everywhere soon. You can find the RSS feed here.
We plan to bring on lots of interesting guests. This week, for example, we got the chance to sit down with Prashanth Chandrasekar, Stack Overflow’s new CEO, to hear about how he got into computer science and his vision for this community and company.
Each week we’ll publish show notes here on the blog with links to topics we discuss. If we’re picking up where things left off, this would be episode #124. Hope you enjoy!
SHOW NOTES
Is it legal for source code containing undefined behavior to crash the compiler?
True, you’re the boss, and the compiler works for you. But that doesn’t mean it always behaves just as you instructed. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Understanding the “as if” rule.
What is Logo, you ask?
And what about NetLogo? More wolves vs zombies please.
William Chipps’ golden years – so close, and yet so far – the website.
Shoutout to all the fine folks who came before us – Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, Jay Hanlon, David Fullerton, Alex Miller, and Ilana Yitzhaki.
16 Comments
I’m still subscribed to the original SO podcast, will i receive the new episodes there? So far I haven’t.
RSS? why should I wait for the podcast to appear in whatever platform I’m using when I could just paste the URL.
What platform are you subscribed on? It’s slowly getting picked up by different platforms as they cache new info. So far I see it on everything but Apple, and we’re working with them to address that and get it updated.
To save other’s from hunting for it, the RSS feed can be found here: https://feeds.simplecast.com/XA_851k3
Thanks!
What is the feed URL? The old one does not have this episode: https://stackoverflow.blog/podcast/?feed=podcast
I tried adding both the category and tag of “podcast” so it would sync to the old feed. Will have to look into this issue and try to resolve. Thanks for bringing to my attention.
Not sure what you changed, but now the old feed is completely empty. (This morning it still had the old podcasts.) If you can make the old feed still work, that will help people who don’t follow the blog, but still subscribe to the podcast, know that there are new episodes out there.
You’re talking about – https://stackoverflow.blog/podcast/?feed=podcast
?
Please be aware that Spotify in not available in some countries, including Russia, and visitors from those countries see huge black banned with “This content is not available in your country” right on the top of the page. Here how it looks for me, for example: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a4DAk.png. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335542/ for more details.
@Ben Spotify is not available in many places, e.g. Russia. Lots of visitors here see an ugly black banner on top of this blog post, see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335542. Can you please at least remove that onebox for their sake? Thanks.
I was surprised to hear the concept of a compiler being defined at all, let alone with a scrambled egg analogy.
Please assume your audience are programmers and take it from there.
There are millions of people who visit Stack Overflow every month who are just starting to learn how to code or want to find a place where they can learn. We’re not going to assume everyone is an experienced programmer, and our Dev Survey results make clear that our audience has a wide range of experience, from beginner to advanced and everything in between.
I’m so excited to listen in. Thanks for bringing it back!
In overcast, every episode from 61 forward appeared unplayed. Instead of deleting them one by one I just unsubscribed. But then I thought “hey maybe they actually published a new episode” and resubscribed. And there it was. And here you are. It’s good to have you back.
Thanks for the podcast! I would like to see transcribe with timestamps on podcast themes if it’s possible.
The feed (RSS at least) is very uneven. Most serious is the incorrect dates for the older episodes (they seem to have been replaced by an import date, 2011-04-20).
If each episode had a unique (correct date) it would be easier to refer to them (the resetting of the numbering back to 1 creates ambiguity).
The prefix varies:
“Stack Overflow Podcast”
“Podcast”
“Stack Exchange Podcast”
<Empty>
The episode number is missing for some episodes.
Episode 35 appears first in the list (perhaps because it has the correct date?).
“Stack Exchange Podcast #73” – “Stack Exchange Podcast #87” appears to be missing.
Did the name really change back to “Stack Overflow Podcast” at #88? Prompted by the move to SoundCloud?