What is Software Engineering Daily?

Updated

Software Engineering Daily (softwareengineeringdaily.com) is an independent media site that has published in-depth technical conversations with engineers and builders since 2015. Its core output is a podcast plus a smaller set of written articles, organized by engineering domain, and the site states that it is 100% independent with 0 paywalled episodes. It's worth following if you want long-form interviews and discussion on how software is actually built, rather than product marketing or beginner tutorials.

What the site actually publishes

The home page presents two main content types:

  • Podcast episodes — the dominant format. Recent listings run roughly 48–60 minutes for news and topic episodes, with some long-form interviews reaching about 2 hours (for example, "Steve Jobs in Exile" at 2:02:15).
  • Articles — shorter written pieces from the SED team, typically 4–6 minutes, described as "updates, stories, and announcements."

Episodes are credited to hosts and guests (names visible in listings include Gregor Vand, Sean, Josh Goldberg, Kevin Ball, and Cory Doctorow as a guest), with dates and runtimes shown alongside each entry.

Topics covered

Content is browsable by engineering domain. The site's topic list spans:

AI, AI Agents, Analytics, APIs, Architecture, Blockchain, Browsers, Careers, Cloud, Data Engineering, Databases, Dev Tools, DevOps, Distributed Systems, Fintech, Frontend, Game Dev, General, Hardware, JavaScript, Kubernetes, Languages, Leadership, ML, Mobile, Networking, Observability, Open Source, Privacy, Reliability, Robotics, Science, Security, Startups, Tech Industry, Testing.

This breadth means you can either follow the feed generally or filter to a specific area like Databases, Security, or Frontend.

Sample of recent episodes

Episode Area Date Length
SED News: Jev, Meta's Muse, and the AI Slowdown Paradox AI / Tech Industry Oct 13, 2026 49:01
Steve Jobs in Exile Leadership / Tech Industry Oct 8, 2026 2:02:15
Security in the Age of Instant Exploits Security Oct 6, 2026 49:56
The State of Browser Testing Dev Tools / Frontend / Testing Oct 1, 2026 52:29
Cory Doctorow on AI, Work, and Power AI / Tech Industry Sep 29, 2026 59:48
Chroma and Agentic Retrieval AI / Databases Sep 24, 2026 52:20
Scaling Time-Series Workloads on Postgres AI / Databases Sep 22, 2026 48:23

The pattern is a mix of current-events discussion (the SED News format), deep dives on specific technologies, and industry/leadership conversations.

Articles

The written section is small and clearly secondary to the podcast. Examples listed on the site:

  • "A Security Engineer's Guide to AI Hallucination Risks" (Sep 29, 2026, 4 min)
  • "How to Modernize an Online Game That Millions Still Play" (Aug 19, 2026, 6 min)
  • "Enhancing OAuth Security Using FAPI" (Nov 21, 2024, 5 min)

These are practical, topic-specific pieces rather than news coverage.

How to follow it

  • Browse episodes directly, or filter by topic from the Topics section.
  • Subscribe to the newsletter — "Software Daily," described as a curated newsletter featuring the best and newest from the software engineering community. Signup requires an email address and agreement to the site's Terms and Conditions.

Is it worth your time?

Choose it if you want:

  • Long-form, technical conversation rather than short news bites.
  • Coverage across a wide range of engineering domains, not just one stack.
  • An independent source — the site explicitly states it is 100% independent with no paywalled episodes.

Look elsewhere if you want written tutorials, documentation-style references, or short-form content; the site's strength is the interview/discussion format, and its article output is limited.