Programming in the Car

The other day I realized that I waste about two hours a day in the car going to and from my job. Even with vacation, that's easily over 300 hours per year. Typically, I listen to talk radio (I tried learning Spanish and Russian, but the harder the lessons get, the harder it is to pay attention and drive at the same time) but I have come to realize it is doing nothing for me except make me lose faith in humanity. At the end of the day, what have I gained from the experience? Not much.

The world of software is so enormous and there are so many things I want to learn. I am always scheming on how I can learn more with the time allotted to me. I

don't know why I never thought of it before, but there are several really good podcasts available these days.  I have listened to podcasts before, but for some reason I never thought about burning them to disc to listen to them in my car.

Anyway, here's are a few that I have found recently:

OOPSLA 2007 Podcasts
Software Engineering Radio
Agile Toolkit Podcast
Pragmatic Programmers

I am going to be on the hunt for more good podcasts. Hopefully, I can subscribe to enough of them to fill my morning drive.

I think it would be rather cool if computer book publishers would do audio books. Nothing in depth, of course. The idea of someone reading code sounds hilarious and all, but I was thinking more high level. A developer-centric overview of some topic (take your pick), for instance. I have recently discovered that I actually retain more by listening to something rather than reading about it. Plus, there is all kinds of time that you could devote to listening to the stuff...when you are driving to work, working out, buying groceries, etc.

Typing "audio computer books for blind people" into Google accomplished absolutely nothing. So, I think I have discovered what could be a wildly hot new niche market.