Stack Overflow Podcast #2

The next podcast is up. Today we talked about why we're doing a podcast in the first place, took some questions/suggestions from listeners, and got into a fight over whether programmers should learn C. Guess which side I took.

There are some improvements, already.

First, there's an RSS feed, so you can subscribe and get each weekly podcast pushed to you. Here's how you would subscribe using Apple iTunes, for example:

1. Run iTunes
2. Choose Advanced | Subscribe to Podcast
3. Paste in this URL: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/index.php?feed=podcast
4. There is no step 4.

Now, depending on your settings (under Podcasts in Preferences), iTunes will download the latest podcasts and put them on your iPod when you dock it. You don't have to do anything special. I'm not going to post here every time there's a new podcast; you'll have to subscribe.

A couple of people volunteered to help by typing up transcripts for the hearing-impaired, the pressed-for-time, and search engines. That's a great idea! I opened up a wiki where anyone can contribute to the weekly transcript. If you can spare a few minutes to transcribe even a part of the podcast, that would be greatly appreciated by the many readers for whom an audio podcast is inaccessible.

Jeff has a new blog for the podcast at http://blog.stackoverflow.com/ where the podcasts are posted. You can subscribe to that using a normal RSS reader and see the show notes, links to things we mentioned during the podcast, and there will be comments links for discussion.

If you have any comments, ideas, or suggestions record a short MP3 and email it to podcast@stackoverflow.com. If you don't have the equipment to record an MP3, check out blogtalkradio to find a shockingly easy way to do it with a phone.

I've been working on a way to improve the audio quality. I don't want to make any promises, but next week we'll try to do the show using Skype to get better-than-POTS voice quality.

Students: Fog Creek Software has awesome summer internships in New York City. You get free housing, free lunches, lots of free New York activities, and a chance to write great code with great developers. And a competitive salary. Apply today: we only have four open positions and usually get hundreds of applications, which will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.

About the Author: I'm your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz - the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot - the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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