About Dev Shows

I realize this almost certainly puts me in the minority, but I listen to podcasts in a browser rather than an app. It’s one fewer thing to manage, and I have a browser open all the time anyway. Plus I don’t listen to podcasts while on the go.

Having accumulated a list of tech podcasts I’d frequent, Dev Shows seemed like the perfect excuse to build something fun while learning a bit along the way. And maybe someone else would also find it useful, even if only as a source for discovering a show before listening to it in their preferred app.

Featured shows

Currently, I don’t aim to make Dev Shows a comprehensive source of every software and web development podcast that is—or once was—active. That type of resource does exist for those who are interested, but I personally find they can be hard to weed through.

Instead, I wanted something that:

• regularly has fresh, interesting content (that’s subjective, obviously);
• skews toward, but isn’t solely about, the front end and Jamstack;
• and doesn’t contain a lot of old, discontinued shows.

This may change over time—especially if you all want to see the site expand its breadth—but it’s my current thinking anyway.

Think a good show is missing?

I’ve searched many corners of the web for shows, but I don’t doubt I’ve missed some that would be a good fit.

If one of your favorite shows is missing, please feel free to suggest a show. Before doing so, however, please be sure it has a track record of publishing episodes for at least a recent stretch; in short, that it’s shown it intends to stick around. I greatly respect and appreciate anyone who starts a tech podcast, but I also know it can be hard to keep it going because of other demands on ones time.

I can’t promise I’ll add every suggested show, so please be kind. Also, I have a list of shows I’m considering, so it’s possible your suggestion is already on it. (It takes a bit of time to add one to the site.)

Having trouble with audio playback?

If an episode isn’t playing, it may be due to an extension you have installed in your browser. For instance, I’ve noticed that Privacy Badger blocks MP3s hosted on Simplecast, and that uBlock Origin may block some others. In either case, it could result in an error like this showing in the browser console:

NotSupportedError: The media resource indicated by the src attribute or assigned media provider object was not suitable.

If you run into this, please try disabling your extension for Dev Shows, and if the trouble persists, please check any restrictive browser settings you may have set. If neither does the trick, feel free to get in touch, and I’ll try to figure out the source of the issue.

Analytics

Dev Shows uses Plausible Analytics, an open-source solution that allows me to gather basic usage information (such as browsers, OSes, the amount of traffic, and the like) with a light touch. Specifically, Plausible doesn’t set any cookies and is privacy-conscious. Here’s an explanation of what data they collect and how they handle it.

Tech stack

For those who are interested, here’s a quick rundown of what I used to build Dev Shows:

• GitHub Actions to automatically run the data collection multiple times a day and fire off the build process when at least one new episode comes through;
• Node.js for collecting the RSS data for each show;
• Gatsby (I wavered on this some) for the site itself;
• Plausible Analytics (as explained above);
• and the mighty Netlify for hosting.

Thanks for stopping by

Happy listening!

—Bruce
July 2020

p.s. I also have ideas for features and other things I’m considering adding as time allows. Please stay tuned.