Embedded - 188: Twitter Is a Cocktail Party

Episode Date: February 23, 2017

Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) of the Hanselminutes Podcast talks about technology podcasting and philosophy. You can find Scott's blog on Hanselman.com/blog and his other podcasts on Hanselman.com/podcasts. We talked about Hansleminutes' WebVR episode with Ada Rose Edwards and Alcohol and Tech with Victor Yocco. We also mentioned Scott's blog post from 2014 about what technologies he would learn if he had to start over.

Hello, this is Embedded. I am Elysia White, here with Christopher White. We're eyeing the big 200th episode and thinking, wow. But this week, our guest, Scott Hanselman, is posting show number 567 of his Hansel Minutes podcast. It's also known as the Fresh Air for Developers. Hi, Scott. Great to talk to you today. Hey, how's it going, everybody?

Good. So can you give us a little information about yourself as though we'd never heard of you? My name's Scott, and I have been blogging for 15, 16 years. I've been doing my podcast for 11 plus years. I've been a software engineer for 25 years this June. So I'm old, I guess is what the takeaway there is. I'm not sure if that's valuable or not. But I was a professor for a while at a state college. So I'm a teacher who

has been faking it as a software engineer for some years many software engineers feel like they've been faking it but it sounds like you've been blogging and podcasting since like the day after both words were invented um yeah i would say i have been faking it for since since windows hello world was 93 lines of C code. So I want to ask you a lot more about your podcast. Partially on the idea that ours is still growing and I wonder where we're going to go from here. But before we get into that we had been doing this thing lightning round where we try to get to know our guests quickly. It's still on vacation, but I do have a couple

of short random questions for you. First, can you tell us either a terrible joke or an interesting fact? Okay. That is an odd question. Let me absorb that for a second. You were warned. I was warned, but it's still odd. Yes.

That says a lot about our show. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, does this taste funny to you? All right. That definitely fits in. Good. You like that? Yes.

Yeah. And this one from Chris Beck, who suggested we have you on the show. What one person would you like to have dinner with, living or deceased? Guys, the whole list. I don't know. Frederick Douglass, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Obama, Viola Davis. This would be a nice dinner party Yeah, it would be pretty fancy

I mean, a ton of people I don't know I guess living would probably be better I'll say Viola Davis And your bio says you've written code that I've used Well, I've worked on.NET and ASP.NET for a number of years

I also was the chief architect at a large retail online banking system. So if you've checked your balances or deposited a check with your phone, you probably passed through one of my systems. At its peak, 25% of the U.S. retail online banking was running on systems that I helped work on. Does that make you feel nervous? Or did it make you feel nervous? percent of the u.s retail online banking was running on systems that i helped work on does that make you feel nervous or did it make any difference it did when i destroyed all the world's online banking systems and and the in the economy it collapsed that was mostly uh that was a thread not handled kind of exception but no um no i you know everyone's written code that's people don't realize how big their code is.

As embedded systems people, you know that you throw together some code, the next thing you know it's behind a button on a security system that now is everywhere, right? Or if you're the person that records, I saw a This American Life where they talked to the person that recorded the Cisco hold music for the Cisco system. Like, you know, when you dial into their VoIP. Yeah, I know that well.

And it's like, wow, you know, I have, the guy's an unsuccessful music composer. But he has, you know, played music that has been heard by 600 million people. And he wrote it when he was like 15. You know, our stuff goes wider and farther than i think we uh we realized that is definitely can't be worried about it though oh you should be worried about it sometimes especially if you're working on autonomous driving or heart rate monitors not heart rate much yeah yeah i i did a i did a blog post called software

and saving babies where I told everyone to just take a breath because if your software is not saving babies then you should probably just

take a breath but if it is saving babies then yeah you should probably check your tests and run one more pass yeah

yeah so how did you go from developer to podcaster? I think if I recall correctly, someone was telling me, I was complaining about podcasting being a waste of time. I've actually got a whole blog post about how I felt that early podcasts were a waste of time. And they were, in my own opinion, you know, two dudes on Skype, kind of like the morning zoo, you know, and I found it to be a little bit not something that I would listen to myself. And then someone challenged me to make a podcast that was not that. So I went off to do exactly that. And I modeled it after, you know, Diane Rehm and Terry

Gross and Ira Glass and some of the great radio hosts. So if my show sounds or feels like NPR, then I have done my job. And I think NPR is not a waste of time. Okay. That's a pretty high bar to set yourself. Well, if you're not setting a high bar, what are you doing? That's a pretty high bar to set yourself. Well, if you're not setting a high bar, what are you doing? That's true. Otherwise, you're just a couple of randos on Skype, right? And I think that the trick is, and it sounds like you're doing the same thing I'm doing, is you use your podcast as an excuse to talk to cool people.

Right? Yeah, yeah. That's what it feels like. That is not usually the, that's our unstated, but not very well unstated goal usually. Yes, exactly. I don't know. I mean, if I scroll through your 100 and 180, it looks like, it looks to me, maybe I'm giving away your secret, that you're using this as an excuse to talk to cool people. And you have like almost 200 cool people and doing cool stuff.

So, mission accomplished yeah oh it is totally a way for me to talk to cool people and ask them impertinent questions about their career that i couldn't otherwise ask unless we went to a dinner party and i don't really like people that much so we're not going to a dinner party yeah liking people is a requirement though of uh of podcasting. Oh, yeah. And we've had really awesome guests. So have you, though. So how do you choose your guests?

Because it is about finding people you want to talk to. Well, it's a little bit different. I think that there are different ways that you can find guests. So people can come looking for you and say, I want to be on your show. And I usually don't have much trouble with those people. They're very nice and they call me and I talk to them if they are interesting. What I think is more interesting is finding people who, for whatever reason, whether it be cultural or stylistic or sometimes it's gender or age-based, are not self-promoting themselves, but their stuff deserves promotion. I will then do the best I can to lend my privilege and raise their voices.

So, the simple—and some people might yell at me for this, but the simplistic way is the straight white guys will call me and say, can I be on your show? And I'll listen to them and it's a great show. And everybody else I will go and invite. And that has turned into a pretty nice mix of people working on all different kinds of technologies from all different walks of life. So the show is very inclusive with lots of different faces from all over the world talking about lots of different technologies. It's just that the one flavor of individual has no problem kind of promoting themselves and saying, hey, what I am doing has value, you should talk to me. And other people are perhaps a little bit more reserved in their style. So then I'll reach out and say, you should come on my show. What you're doing is awesome. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely.

And we have seen that. I hope that's not too controversial. No, I've definitely seen some of that. There are more people that I go out and try to find who are just either doing something that I find mind-blowingly interesting, or they're maybe one of the people who don't get to talk very often, but have good things to say. They just don't know that anybody wants to listen. Yeah, and I would even go so far as to say sometimes it requires a little bit of encouragement. Like, hey, this is really cool.

You really should. Like some of my best guests I've had to chase down two or three times and gently but kindly say, I think that this has a lot of value. I'd love to hear from you. And, oh, no, you know, what I'm doing isn't interesting. So, then I'll give it six months, and then people will start to get a sense that what they're doing is awesome, you know. And then they'll come on the show, and it's almost always the right decision. Yeah, I think that's been our experience, too, and it's, the converse is often true also.

Something sounds really exciting, and somebody's very good at promoting it, and then turns into a very long advertisement. It can be a little challenging, because I think people, the best people I find are ones that have just enough kind of paralyzing imposter syndrome that it causes them to push themselves forward, you know? And if I can get someone on the show who's just a little bit feeling like they're in over their heads, then they're going to be, then they'll be a great guest, but then they'll also realize how good they are at what they're doing. And maybe that buoys them and helps them out a little bit.

Yes, we've had a few guests that afterwards they admitted that they didn't really want to do the show, but they were really happy they'd done it because now they had something to point to. And I always think that helps with imposter syndrome, having something to point to and say, I made that, I did that, and I thought it was impossible, but apparently it wasn't. It came out just fine. Yeah, yeah.

And I honestly don't even spend much time editing or planning the talks. People think that they're going to talk for an hour and a half and I'm going to pull out 23 minutes of nuggets of wisdom uh in fact i don't and the show still turned out pretty nice because people if you let people talk about what they're good at doing and what they're working on and you tell them that what you're working on has value then inevitably it'll be a great show i i am a preparer, but I am a preparer in just about everything. I like to have a plan Q.

Hopefully we don't get beyond plan B, but I want to go all the way to Q because that just makes me feel better. And so I do a fair amount of cyber-stalking and setting up what I think the show will be about in case someone wants something different. And letting people tell me, well, if you ask me about this, you'll get a funny story. And sometimes when those cues work, they're really awesome. Cool.

Other times we just let guests, like last week where he had robotic hands wandering around his lab, and that was really, we could have just sat there and listened to him talk about whatever he wanted, and it would have been fine. Pete Well, sometimes people will get in the news, and by news it could be a blog post or something small, not news news, and I will then reach out and say, hey, you should come on the show, and they'll say, oh gosh, you know, I don't want to talk about that, whatever that thing is that got come on the show. And they'll say, oh gosh, you know, I don't want to talk about that, whatever that thing is that got them in the news.

And I'll say, no, no, but that news thing made me aware of you, therefore, you know, I'd like you to come on the show and talk about whatever you're currently geeked about. You know, whatever you're currently excited about. And then they'll go, oh, well, I'm working on this now, or web VR, or whatever. And then they'll come and talk about that and I want you to love it too and it's okay if you don't, but here let me at least explain why you might want to.

So how do you find those people? I mean, sure, the news is one way to look. And conferences, you go to many conferences, don't you? I go to a decent number. Maybe one every six weeks. I go to maybe three a year or so. It's a different number. Hang on, though.

Three a year versus seven or eight. It's not a multiplier, though, is what I'm saying. Okay. It's a non-trivial number, but it's still a crazy number. What conferences do you attend? I attend all kinds of conferences of all flavors. I've gone to WebStock in New Zealand. I talk at one called Angle Brackets.

That's part of Dev Intersection. I've gone to Codemash. I'm going to go to Codeland, which is Saran Yitbarek's conference, part of CodeNewbie. I am non-denominational in my conference attendance. Do you go for the podcast, for your blog, for work? I mean, you have a job, a normal job. Yeah, I work on.NET at Microsoft. And so, who sends you to the conference?

It depends. If I am speaking at the conference, then they will pay for, you know, hopefully T&E, which is travel and expenses. And if I'm speaking, if I'm not speaking, then I will use, like, my miles from work and take a vacation day.

And then if it's a conference that Microsoft wants me to go to, then they'll pay. And how does Microsoft feel about your podcasting? They haven't really said anything about it. I mean, ultimately, when Microsoft or any big company, when any big co decides to hire you, they tend to know what you're getting into, what they're getting into. And they knew that I had a podcast before and I had a blog post before. So I will continue to blog and podcast before and after. They can't really stop me. So, so this is, you know, this, this is me, right? So if I hire someone and there's something that they're passionate about, like there's a young lady on my team who is passionate about women of color in the tech industry, and she's going to take a day off later this week and go and work on a TV show that helps inspire kids to code. I knew I was, quote unquote, getting into that

because that's what she's excited about, right? And if that's great, then fine. And maybe someone else is excited about their church or they're excited about Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. A little bit of awareness and kindness when you hire somebody allows you to then say, oh, well, this is great. You have passion in these areas.

I will support you in those areas. So then you do. And Microsoft does that with me. That's pretty cool. That's the way it's supposed to work, I think. I think so. It doesn't always, though. No, it does not.

But you're blessed when it does. Has podcasting helped your career in any way? That makes me more Google-able. Yeah. But, yeah, that's about it. I mean, I do it for myself. I do it because I think it provides some value. I do it because it seems to make people happy.

But has it helped my career? I think that being a somewhat social developer, being a visible developer, putting yourself out there to the limits of your ability and your patience always has some kind of value, you know, presumably if you're putting good stuff, good positive stuff out there. So, yeah, it hasn't been too much of a problem. How about learning from your guests? Do you think you're a different developer or a different professional based on things you've learned from talking to so many people? I would say that it has increased my enthusiasm for being what I call non-denominational. You know, I don't think, I don't like software people who are religious zealots.

You know, if someone says, hey, you know, I'm building my new system on Rails. And it's like, oh, Rails sucks. You can't possibly be successful on Rails. You know, I'm like, really? Like, that's not cool. That's not kind of the way it's supposed to work. You can very happily be successful on pretty much any technology out there so i would encourage you to go off and

do what you want to do i'm not interested in people um and their in their hyper opinionatedness around those kind of things so uh i like dot net it makes. If you like Node, that's cool too. More power to you. You know what I mean? I totally do. And I do think that the podcast has helped me be more aware of the benefits of lots of different ideas. That diversity of thought. Exactly. Have you gotten opportunities you wouldn't have otherwise gotten with the

podcast? I mean, you do speak, but you were speaking from the blog before. Um, I don't know. I was speaking before on my own, no matter what. You know, I think that does come from a place of some privilege in the sense of i didn't think that it was a problem that i that i speak also that i was not exactly going to take no for an answer uh even though i was working on banking software i found way i had a supportive somewhat supportive manager and i found ways to blog about the technology without it being uh without being secret you know technology uh you know i could i could talk about the things i wanted to talk about in its in its generalized

sense um sure so i just talked i'm sure that there have been and could be people uh who could come along at any time and say, you need to stop talking. We don't blog at this company, you know. And if I absolutely needed the job and I didn't want to fight with them, then that would be a challenge, I would think. But that has not been an issue. And I don't know if that is luck, privilege, or just not taking no for an answer. It could be a little of all of those things. Well, there's also, why do they care if we tell people about general stuff? It's usually much better for the industry and for us.

I have had people get told explicitly from their bosses that you should not blog because people might recruit from our company and then we really want you to work here so don't blog or you'll become famous and people will hire you what's in it for me yeah that doesn't like literally oh that's that's kind of crummy um there's a lot of crummy stuff happening of course yeah you mentioned web v. You did a show recently where you talked to a woman from Samsung who had been working on it. Mm-hmm. Why that? Why that versus all of the other things? I guess this goes back to how do you choose guests, but why that one? Well, I don't know.

Why not? Like, it was an interesting thing. Somehow someone retweeted something she was working on. It was pretty straightforward. I mean, it's internet. One explores and discovers things on the internet, right? You follow a lot of people. Follow liberally and outside of your,

liberally, I mean in the literal definition of that term. You know, I have Catholic tastes. I'm not Catholic. You know, follow have Catholic tastes. I'm not Catholic. You know, follow liberally and catholically, if people understand that. And then when you do that, I think I follow 6,000, 8,000, 7,000 people, then someone retweets something, right?

And then you say, wow, that was super interesting. That was great information. I did not know that. Then you go and look at their Twitter and you look at their photos on their Twitter and you say, wow, this person is like a legit and totally interesting person on multiple levels. I think whatever they have to talk about will be interesting.

Oh, they work on web VR. That's a thing I don't know anything about. Have I ever done a show on web VR? Well, I did show on VR, but that wasn't enough. So, cool. Let's talk about that, too. It's simplistic, but that all happens within three minutes. Yeah. No, I totally get that. You know what I mean? Like, you can't overthink it. Like, I'm just like, okay, let's do a show. Cool. Well, and the problem with that show, and the problem with some of our guests, is that now I want to work on what they're working on. Their enthusiasm was contagious, and now I have another thing on my list to play with. Yeah. It's not a terrible problem.

Thus is our hobbies as engineers. I think that's not a bad problem to have. No, not at all. And she was pretty convincing, so that did make my list. Yeah, I don't necessarily feel like I need to go and work on those things. I feel like hearing that that person is excited about that and then knowing that that thing is being worked on by someone who's passionate about it is comforting enough to me to know that, oh, well, Ada's out there and she's excited about WebVR, so I know WebVR is in good hands. You know, who am I to think I have more to offer? I'll let Ada handle that and I'll check in with her next

year. See, that's a healthier attitude than I often come away with because I have this long list of things and many of them are inspired by people we've talked to and I feel guilty for not having, oh, I should go learn about that. Oh, I should go learn about C++11 or whatever we talked about, or I should go learn more about electronics because I've been so lackluster in that. And we talked to this guy and he does these great things and you get this highlight reel of everybody's great things, and my attitude tends to be, well, damn, everybody's doing such great stuff, and I'm just sitting here doing my day job and doing a podcast once a week. Well, so, as far as, in my opinion, as far as guilt, the simplistic answer is get over it. The correct answer is feel bad, but put a time limit on it say i'm gonna i'm gonna feel bad for uh you know uh three days and then i'm gonna stop feeling bad so yeah oh man i

really i really don't know enough about this but i i made a conscious decision uh that i'm never going to be an electrical engineer like i took it in school i get ee you know uh 101 but i can't be both a successful dot net and asp.net programmer and also be a really amazing um you know electrical engineer slash soldering person slash blah blah blah blah blah. I just can't do it. It's just, I can't do it. So I'm going to feel bad for a couple hours, a couple days, and then I'm going to go and I'm going to let it go. The number one thing that we need to learn as humans and as tech people is to let stuff go. And once you do, it's water off a duck's back. Ignorance is bliss. You cannot know everything, so simply accept that and

move on and you will be a much happier and healthier person. And yet, you do encourage people into lifelong learning. This isn't a don't learn things, this is a don't feel guilty about not learning that over there. Don't feel guilty about not being able to go as deep as you want. Like, you can be a specialized tool, or you can be a Swiss Army knife. Right? But they'll be feel-bad.

Like, it's the Swiss Army knife. That's why the Swiss Army has the power they are today. Let's give the Swiss Army some credit. Hey, they've got magnifying glasses in their knives. You know? I love my Swiss Army knife. I'm fine with that. Like, I draw a line.

There's things you need to know. There's things that would be nice to know. There's things you should know. There's things that are trivia and there are edge cases. I know what I need to know about Python, but I would not necessarily call myself a Python developer. But I feel like I've got it handled, so if I needed to get a job i could go and get a job

get the basics of python down and then you know that'd be and i'll learn the rest but it's not my job right now so it's silly to go and think that you can create a character for dungeons and dragons with like maximum stats in all locations and go like max charisma and max intelligence. Don't feel bad. Just don't, I'm a three in Python and it's okay to be a three. Yeah, well, I mean, that's something we often get questions from listeners. You know, oh, how do I learn something?

Like, how do I learn Python? I've been trying and trying and I can't learn it. Or how do I learn C? I'm trying and trying, I can't learn it. I have all these books and I read all these books. And the answer is, okay, why do you need't learn it? Or how do I learn C? I'm trying and trying, I can't learn it. I have all these books and I've read all these books. And the answer is, okay, why do you need to learn it? Do you have a project that you really need to learn it for? And that's, you know, it's much easier to learn something

if you have a reason to use it rather than this is exciting. So if you desperately want to learn something though, then give yourself a project. Like going back to my examples of the different things that the people on my team are excited about. If you're excited about kids' sports, write a kids' sports scheduler. If you're excited about getting young women of color to code, write an app that does that. And then pick a language you're unfamiliar with to do it in. That way you have a forcing function that aligns exactly with what you're interested in. But if you're like,

I'm going to write a blog in Python, come on. No one's going to care about that, right? And that totally makes sense. With the web VR, I had been noodling with this idea of using Unity, which I sort of know a little bit, and VR to do math visualizations because I like to talk to my math prof sister-in-law. And it was a good excuse to ask her to check things out with me. But if I use WebVR, it's so much easier. And it was an enabling technology that will let me do that project so much faster.

And so I don't do the guilt that Chris does. I'm okay wandering enthusiastically from project to project and finishing one in six there you go uh and i i don't yeah well i was catholic so yeah catholic like like sanguine is one of those words that doesn't quite mean what it sounds like people are like fr frantically Googling Catholic now to make sure that they understand the context and like one has Catholic tastes, what that means. That means you like lots of different things. Right.

If one has liberal and Catholic tastes, it does not mean that you are a left-wing Catholic. It means that you like lots of stuff and that's also okay. And sanguine, by the way, either means cheerfully optimistic or covered in blood one of the two yeah or both depending on your style exactly so which shows should people listen to first what what which shows do you suggest to people who've never heard the show hansel minutes starter pack yeah what's the starter pack i don't you can't do 500 episodes right and then say yeah you know episode 396 uh what i'd suggest people do is they go to this hanselminutes.com click on archives and then just start slowly scrolling and just drink in the kind of the holy crap this is a body of work of it all it's a ton of content i could it's 270 hours you know of of of technical content um so what is hours in days.

11.25 solid days of technical content. Scroll down and look for either people you recognize or people who look interesting. You'll find the CTO of JPL and NASA. You'll find the creator of the Ruby language. You'll find the guy that wrote Avatar, The Last Airbender. You'll find the co-founder of TransHack. You'll find the lady that wrote Hillary Clinton's UI pattern library. And on and on and on.

And I'm only in the last hundred shows. There's a woman who worked on Halo 4. Here's a woman who's the first black female PhD in computer science out of the University of Michigan. You know, and again, and on, and I'm still only in the low 400s. And then just pick one that makes you happy and listen to it.

It's a good show. I say that now after 500 plus episodes, I feel like I have, I can put my imposter syndrome aside and I can tell you it's a good show. I say that now after 500 plus episodes, I feel like I have, I can put my imposter syndrome aside and I can tell you it's a good show with a feeling of confidence in that. is sort of new and in our field that the creator does not promote it himself. And I wish he would because it's a good show, but unless he has confidence in it, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it for him. He has to go there himself before I,

I will, I will retweet, but I will not tweet for him. Um, and, uh, so yes, I I will not tweet for him. And so, yes, I think it is a good show. And I think that being able to say that is really empowering. It's funny that it took so long.

Yeah, how long did it take? Somewhere around 511. I'm like, good show. This show does not suck at all. Yeah, somewhere around there. It took a while really that late yeah really seriously but if if i scroll back now i don't get into the you know i find out that shows that i go yeah that was fine Those don't happen until the mid-200s. So the first 200 shows were fine,

but the last 350 were pretty damn good. And now, I think I can put together a good, solid show every week and people will enjoy it. Do you find that shows, there are some shows

where at the end of it you're like, well, that was not so great and then you get tons of positive feedback. Chris has a list of our shows that that's happened to. I guess so. I usually spend a little time prepping people. We all have different prep styles, right?

Like to y'all's credit, but also juxtaposing it with how I do things, you sent me like a five or six page script slash agenda that I am currently ignoring. Which is what we instruct people to do after we give it to them. But it's so much prep that it's almost, you know, it's just too much emotionally. Sorry. It's just too much emotionally for me. Like, conversations don't require prep in my experience. The way i look at it is it's a 30 minute show so uh if we had six five minute conversations then we need six bullet

points and that fits into 30 minutes right so if i gave you seven bullet points we now have way more stuff to talk about than we can fit in a half an hour then we organize those six bullet points into a story arc with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And then we sort them within the story arc in the context of what are you most geeked about? And then we have our chat. And I remind them that I'm a geek who has visited your desk and we're going to geek out together. And then we do it. And as long as they understand that I'm not a reporter, no one's trying to catch you in anything, there's no scoop here that we're looking for, and nor is there any

subtext or subcontext or anything other than, this is cool, you should go and learn about it. Then we go and we have fun together. And in 500 shows, I have had one that I was not able to publish because the person either panicked or couldn't handle it or had trouble dealing with that or couldn't think on their feet. Most people who are excited about their technology can geek out about it. So just as you have those great conversations in the hallway at the conference or on the bus with a random stranger who's excited about whatever they're excited about, I try to capture that on the show. And so far, it seems to work.

Yeah, I see that. When I try to do it, it's more about if we're having lunch at a conference. I've had some really fantastic conference lunches. Exactly. And I do over-prepare. I'm happy to say I over-prepare. I cyber-stalk people. No disrespect.

No, no disrespect. Well, of course, public and permissive cyber-stalking in a completely appropriate way. Let's make sure that we have all the caveat on that. Yes, no, that's true. That's true. And a non-threatening and kind way. We haven't had your email.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you want to capture that kind of moment of excitement. And the NPR term is called driveway moments. Yes. When you're listening to something and then you get to your location and you're stuck in the driveway because you can't stop listening. If I can make driveway moments every week, then I have done my job. So you've only had one you haven't posted have you had ones that people hated i had a show that people or one that was bimodal we've we've had

one that was loved and hated and by the way listeners april fools is saturday this year you are totally safe i have had shows that people disagreed with, but I am very measured in my speech and my style as such that I am non-confrontational in how I do things. So, I had a show recently on alcohol. Oh, I liked that one. Yeah, we'll see. There you go, right? Some people didn't. But it's important to point out that in that show, Victor Yako, the guest, and I actually went around and around on email about the angle at which to take that show and

how to come at the problem. And he was with me for probably seven months of emails to get that right. So, just as I said, I don't over-prepare. I would say that is one where we, I wouldn't say prepared as we strategized. You know, it was an orchestrated directional thing. It wasn't quite scripted, but I know my audience and I know people and I do not drink and he is a recovering alcoholic. So we knew those things about each other. So we came at it a certain direction and that made it a better show. So I would say for sensitive topics, I would prepare and come at it correctly.

But I would do that no differently if I were like the host of Good Morning America. You do your research. Yeah. And even if you don't have a long outline script, you think about it. I mean, mine ends up being pretty external because our guests are often very nervous. And if I'm nervous and you give me a lot of things

to think about, it helps me and so I treat my guests the way I want to be treated which is sometimes insane I totally admit that but um but I did like the Victor Yaco one you I listened to it just as I was preparing for a party for our listeners. And I had this idea that I didn't want to have it at our local wine bar, which I love. And I didn't really want to have it at a winery. But I couldn't articulate why that was important to me. Because I knew that we probably would serve alcohol.

I just didn't want that to be the focus. And listening to your show, it made me realize that not having it be the focus was exactly why I didn't want to have it there. Because I don't care if there's alcohol, but I don't want that to be what it's about. Right. And people then, and this is where the contention occurs, people argue, well, you know, suck it up, right? Get over it. You know, it should be fine. Who cares, right? That's fine. Yes, we are all adults. Yes, we can ignore, we can consciously choose to ignore stuff. But at the same time, by its definition, that is not inclusive behavior. You know what I mean?

Oh, absolutely. its definition that is not inclusive behavior you know what i mean oh absolutely basically having a having a uh you know an all bacon bar yeah that's fine you know i guess it's not quite the same but it's it's definitely having zero options for vegans is is by definition not inclusive now then people go and say oh well you know you can go to the to the ridiculous levels and say well what have you what about vegans then what about whatever the step is bullet more than vegan you know octo ovo whatever you know this you can you can always go to ridiculous but that's not the point the The point is to draw a wide enough net that with minimal effort, you make everyone or 99% of everyone feel welcome. Yes.

That's all it is. It's not that complicated. People love to overcomplicate stuff and say, well, yeah, but what about this? What about that? Relax. You know, it's not that complicated. Would you take your whole family there is a very reasonable place to start.

Yeah, sure. That will keep you out of strip clubs and probably out of places that your three-month-old niece can't go. So, it just seems like a reasonable starting place. Yep. PG. Yeah. That's pretty straightforward. Everybody likes Indiana Jones. Yep. PG. Yeah. That's pretty straightforward. Everybody likes Indiana Jones. It's PG. Any other contentious

shows that, not with the guest. I mean, we don't usually argue with our guests. But sometimes our listeners will. It's a technology show. Like, what could be contentious? Sometimes I want to argue with our guests. I know. I hold myself back. I'm scrolling through here. i'm not a contentious

person i don't believe in unnecessary conflict if if someone likes something who am i to say that they shouldn't but what if they're wrong scott what if they're really really wrong it's pretty difficult to be wrong about technology unless it's like it doesn't compile or it is a this as a computer science concept has been largely debunked but that doesn't happen if you invite someone on your podcast the presumption is that they're doing something that doesn't suck so it would be me that was wrong for inviting them on that's a good point yes Yes. Yes, okay. I thought that about some of those people anyway. It makes sense, though, doesn't it?

You see my point, right? Oh, yeah, because our job is to have somebody on who we want to expose, and we want to encourage them to do that, and we want to make them look good. So, why would we have them come on and argue with them? Yeah, I don't want to make them look bad, why would we have them come on and argue with them yeah i don't want to make them look bad and so i want to talk i do think there are some technical issues that are interesting to explore both sides of them whether autonomous vehicles are a good idea or or under tested and scary and i think that's a great sure let's go there people can be passionate about things sorry but those those kinds of things are like arguing both sides of technical issues that's totally reasonable but it can done it can

be done in a non-contentious and kind you know kind way i had someone on recently uh nolan lawson we were talking about is it okay to build websites that require JavaScript? Everyone wants to build websites, and then they always ask, does this work without JavaScript? Or it's similar to the does it work without cookies question. And some people believe, well, no, you have to make it so it doesn't work. You have to make it so it works without JavaScript, otherwise you're excluding people who have cheap Android phones or you're excluding poor people

or people in third world countries with feature phones. That's one perspective. Another perspective is, who is your audience? Is that your audience? If your audience is only people with iPhones, then it's certainly reasonable to build a build web apps without uh you know with javascript required yeah and i think i think that's true of our industry as well and embedded is there's ethical questions but there's

also things that seem like ethical questions that are just choosing your audience well and that's that's where you can get into a uh a pretty contentious area like someone could some people could could argue and i'm putting on my uh my high school debate hat that um it is arguable that the building of a web application is itself a moral statement. And it is a statement of either inclusivity or exclusivity. And, you know, that I'm making a political statement that I will only support iPhones. You know, I am excluding Android developers through, you know, and I mean it. Yeah, yeah, you could argue that, you know, I think that that absolute or extreme views in almost any instance are usually wrong. It's one of those thou shalt not kill type things.

Thou shalt not kill unless the Mad Max attackers have entered your house and are currently trying to take all your food or whatever. Yeah, at some point you do have to do that. Unless you're on that side where you believe that, yes, thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt always use JavaScript, you know. Those are kind of extreme statements. Always compile before commit. Yeah, I just, I always commit at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I think that's usually the best time. Just drive home after off turn off all your all your contact

methods pretty much but there there are things we all agree on that seem wrong although like like this that we're joking about with the 4 p.m thing that you can make a case that, no, that's okay. It depends on your audience. If you're working alone, you can totally do that. If you have a culture of hating your other developers, that's fine, too. As long as you know who your audience is. You lost me at hating other developers. Oh, sorry. The committing at 4 p. 4pm without compiling seems like a way of telling your colleagues that you don't really like them very much. I think another way of thinking about

it is, if you are doing something, it should be done consciously. Yes. With thought. And if you do something and you put zero thought into it or something happens as an indirect result of your actions where something happens implicitly and you weren't even thinking or you weren't you didn't put any any uh you didn't put any thought into why you did it you just did it why'd you do that i don't know because i didn't didn't just did it, then that's problematic. If you did it to be cruel or to be whatever, then fine. Okay, you did it to be cruel. But as long as you know you did it to be cruel, like you have to own that, accept that you did it that way.

Don't pretend or fool anyone into thinking that you were not doing that explicitly to be a jerk. We need... Does that make sense? Oh, yes, yes. This is turning into philosophy talk. I just want to throw that out there. that explicitly to be a jerk we need something does that make sense yes yes and that this is turning into philosophy talk i just want to throw that out there the consciousness being being i guess this oh we really are going to go philosophy being present for these things the being conscious

of what you're doing that's one of those things that i don't know how to explain as well as i want to and it is a technical thing. It's not just getting lost in tabs versus spaces. It's thinking about what you're doing. Well, I think it goes back to something we've talked about a couple of times in the past with empathy, right?

It's have some empathy for the people you work with, your customers, for yourself, and then filter your decision-making through that. Or understand post facto why a decision you made was maybe not empathetic um and that's i feel like that's an easier filter to look through than than you know mindfulness necessarily yes we should ask scott about his

other podcasts sure scott i believe you have some other podcasts. I've got one show. Well, my other two shows are kind of on hiatus right now, I'm afraid. So, Ratchet and the Geek is a show I did with my friend Lovey. And she has become famous, more famous than she was already. And she has become a New york times best-selling author and is now off taking over the world so she doesn't have time to do ratchet and the geek with me anymore uh which kind of sucks because it was a lot of fun it was kind of a pop culture show

and we would talk about scandal and and uh kimmy schmidt and all that kind of stuff. And then This Developer's Life is a show that I do with Rob Connery, but now Rob is off writing a book, and the amount of work required to do an episode of This Developer's Life is around 40 hours of editing for an hour of audio. So that is non-trivial, to say the least. Wow. Because of the amount of work. That is a very, very highly edited show.

So it's more like Radiolab, where you clip together things to make them make sense and to make them snappier and all of that? At the risk of sounding snarky, it's more like This American Life. Okay. Hence the name. Sure. But like, for example, the last episode we did on Faith with a young woman named Samus, who is simultaneously getting a PhD from Cornell,

while also being an aspiring and taking off nerdcore rapper. I went through all of her albums, picked the songs and the lyrics from each of her albums that best met what she was talking about at the time. And we talked for a couple of hours, and I extracted about 40 minutes of audio out of several hours that we spoke, then overlaid it with her own lyrics that then juxtaposed what she was talking about. That level of care, that kind of like love story or love letter

to the person who is on the show requires an extraordinary amount of effort and work. Yes. My episode 301 on my wife's cancer was uh literally a year worth of audio diaries that she'd kept from the year that she had cancer and that required 56 or something hours of of uh of editing so then when people when people like will randomly tweet you like why don't you do any more episodes of this film you're like well because well, because, gosh, all that free content. Sorry that, you know, it's a problem.

But yeah, it turns out that required a non-trivial amount of work. So, no, I don't have time to do that show. I love that people listen to it, but I'm a little tired of them asking why I don't do it. Because it's, I have a job. That's why. And Rob has things to do. Yeah. Do you find that you enjoyed that process of putting so much care into it?

If you had the time and that, and you know, would that be your preference for doing shows if you had infinite time? If I could do it, yes. If I had infinite time, if I had, if I had a way to take a week off and focus on that, that would be cool. But at the same time, though,

that's the closest thing to a piece of art that we've ever done. And the amount of work required to do a nice blog post or an episode of Hansel Minutes is at least 10x less effort than it is to do this developer's life. So it's challenging to kind of make that decision, but I can't do both. Yeah. So I don't know. If I get a week off, I'm going to miss all Yeah. So I don't know. If I get a week off, I'm going to miss all these other technologies I could work on.

I'm going to, you know, it's lock yourself in a room type stuff. You know? I don't think I could do that. There are too many other things I want to do that I feel I'm better qualified for or just more interested in. Yeah. But I, yes, I remember talking to an NPR host who said that it was 60 hours per minute. Something like that. Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad.

That seems excessive, but I think it's... There's a lot of field recording. Yeah. Well, that was, NPR started a show called Embedded, and they let me interview Kelly McEvers, which was very exciting for me. Probably less so for her. And she was telling us that so much more goes into these NPR shows than we might expect, especially ones that are in-depth like that. Oh, yeah. Especially ones where there is an expectation of journalistic integrity. Yes.

Everything that gets said needs to be vetted and triple vetted, and there's a host of interns that goes off and do that kind of stuff. Well, my show isn't like that, so I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Exactly. So I could definitely imagine some number of hours per minute of audio. And you mentioned free content, but you do have sponsors. I do have sponsors, but I'm not getting rich on this thing. I mean, it lets me buy, you know, Xbox games and webcams.

But I don't know about you all, but I'm not quitting my job anytime soon to podcast. Nope, doesn't seem like it. Although we ended up with Patreon and... And we said it correctly. Sorry. Listeners. And the Patreon pays for us to send mics to people who don't have them. So that's been really nice.

Oh, that's cool. I just have two and then I rotate. That's what I was doing. Everybody was like, well, why don't you just send them? I don't know. It's fine. Yeah. Like give them a free mic?

What do you send them? Samson Go. It's a $40 USB mic? What do you send them? A Samson Go. It's a $40 USB mic that we've had pretty good luck with. That's interesting. I should do that. It's a nice mic. I mean, most people, we tried a couple others, and some of them were more difficult to use, that one. I send them a Logitech GN2000, and then I have two of them, and then we just rotate.

It's a headset, USB headset. That way it just works. Otherwise, they're still going to need headphones. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, these are clearly the most interesting things people want to know about. But I wanted to ask you just a couple more questions about identity.

You were a developer. You were a professor and a developer and a podcaster and a blogger. And how do you, if you have to talk to somebody who's not technical, what one word do you use to describe yourself? I mean, I say engineer. I don't understand. I don't have one word. Teacher is fine. Sure. yourself i mean i say engineer i don't have one word teacher teacher um sure it's just as one of those how do you did your identity change when you your podcast became more popular

uh i think that people who know me know that i haven't changed in any way other than the positive. My goal is always moving forward. I have not changed my editorial style. I have not changed the stuff that I podcast about. Microsoft has not changed my blog or my content in any way. I talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about. And you don't feel differently about yourself? Ah, no. heck i want to talk about and you don't feel differently about yourself uh no i think that people there's this whole nonsense around the the myth of the rock star developer and people think

just because you're loud your code better than everyone else uh or because they know you that they can stop you at safeway and ask you how your kids are doing, which is always creepy. So, other than the weird stuff like that, I think that I'm just the same guy. We're all amateurs. There's no such thing as a professional developer. I always love it when someone tries to tell me how their PhD from MIT in 1985, you know, matters to their Angular web development that they're doing today. It doesn't. You may have a strong base of computer science,

but 40 years ago was a long time in computers. Five was, too. Yeah. And, I mean, the podcast does give me more insight into lots of different things so that I'm not stuck in my world. Although I do mostly the same stuff I did five years ago on new sensors and faster processors and more connectivity. What technologies do you think will be interesting in the future? I know your kids are sort of small.

If your kids were in college and they came to you and said, well, what should I study? I want to do computer science, but what specifically? I wrote a blog post about this, and I talked about people should learn JavaScript and some systems language. So a systems language is something on the back end that inevitably can make JavaScript.

So that might mean JavaScript in C Sharp or JavaScript in Java or JavaScript and also JavaScript. It's JavaScript and then something that you can write large cloud-based systems with. Cool. I think that is a pretty straightforward, It's JavaScript and then something that you can write large cloud-based systems with. Cool. I think that is a pretty straightforward, reasonable answer. Yes.

As long as you want to go into web development. Or backend development. Pardon me. Yes, not embedded or whatever. But even if you wanted to do embedded, let's say, right? You have to learn C and JavaScript. Because inevitably you're going to be making JSON. You know, at some point, your embedded system is going to plug into something

that's going to put something on a hub that's going to spit out some JSON somewhere. So you should at least have a passing familiarity with these things. Yeah, and JavaScript is, okay, I'm not going to use that word. I was going to say infecting everything, but it's... I guess I did just use that word I was going to say infecting everything but it's I guess I did just use that but it has its fingers in a lot of

things and it's getting more so and it's definitely entering the embedded world so yeah cool well I think we are about out of time Chris do you have any questions left that I missed

one thing we were going to ask was how he stays current We are about out of time. Chris, do you have any questions left that I missed? One thing we were going to ask was how he stays current in technology. Do you do a lot of reading? Just read a lot. Play around with stuff. Again, if you can accept that you can't be an expert and that you ignore any pressure perceived or otherwise that you should be an expert. And I preface all of my blog posts with stuff like, I'm just goofing around. I got no idea what I'm doing. It's a way of not sweating, that kind of stuff.

So you mentioned you do follow a great many people in Twitter are there blogs or books or twitter people you would suggest as good people to follow it depends it all depends on what you want i don't i don't have like one i follow 6812 people i don't know how you do that. I have no idea. So, it's very easy. You don't worry about it. The point is that Twitter is a cocktail party where you're wandering around and you're hoping that you're going to pick up cool things that people say. And then you can respectfully butt in on their conversations. Right? And if you were going to have a really cool party, you don't want to fill it with a bunch

of people who think and look like you. You want to fill it with a bunch of cool people from all over the place. So, do that. Follow lots of people with lots of different perspectives. And, you know, podcast guests will fall out of it because they're interesting and cool people. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

But don't feel like you have to keep up on Twitter. It's a river of crap. Twitter completionist. Yeah, exactly. That's silly. I follow 83 or 84 people, and I can't even... You've got to up that. In all seriousness, nothing interesting happens until 1,000.

Follow actors that you are a fan of. Follow politicians that you are a fan of follow politicians that you enjoy follow obscure actors and politicians that you enjoy I was watching a show called Timeless which is a great time travel show and the actors on it are not super well known and the show is not super well known so I can interact with them on Twitter.

They'll actually be watching the show and live-tweeting it. And then I can go and say, oh, I saw you on this show, and you were great. And these are real humans on their real Android phones or their real iPhones that are out there. And they appreciate that you're watching their show, and you can talk to them about it. Yeah, that is one of the amazing things about Twitter is for all of its faults, you can't talk to anybody and often they'll respond. Yep. All right. Clearly I use Twitter improperly. I may go try some stuff. I think that you is not one to say it's improper, but it could be more effective. It's not for me to say that you're using it improperly.

Well, I... You will get more out of it if you mix it up. And I do. I actually, with the embedded account, follows all of our past guests. And as we have more guests, I end up with a much broader and more Catholic view. And I do enjoy that. with a much broader and more Catholic view, and I do enjoy that. For my personal one,

I tend to only follow the people who probably will ask me questions about their tweets later. Like, if I miss one, they'll know. So, maybe I need a third account that's just like everything. All right, cool. See, this is why we do this, so that I get information and new thoughts to think of. Scott, do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Christopher's laughing because we got an email recently asking me not to ask people for their final thoughts because they were worried that we were killing our guests afterwards and that final thoughts sounded so final.

Like killing their... I think that that is a little bit of an open-ended kind of way to end. I think that it's almost like opening up a great... Like if you have a great talk that you gave at a conference and then you open it up for Q&A, you just took what could have been an amazing mic drop moment and now you're asking for random people to inject themselves into the conversation, potentially then ruining your momentum. Scott is not a fan of Q&A. I am no longer a fan of Q&A after talks, so it's good to hear that. You know what I mean? It's just like, wow, that was a great, solid ending. Now let's open it up to the randos. No, you go into the hallway and you have those conversations.

But the point is, the chances are that the person who is most likely to jump up and say, I want to talk to you about my random, obscure thing, the chances of that applying to the person, to all the other people, the chances of that being interesting to them is, you're rolling the dice. There's no chance that those people are going to care.

But for you, this is the part where you get to say, check out HanselMinutes.com, or check out my book, or follow my blog, or I'm hiring at Microsoft if you'd like to apply i will so do you want to try again it's clearly an opportunity it's clearly an opportunity for me to turn my radio voice on i would encourage everyone to listen to my show hansel minutes dot com at hansel minutes dot com dot com is that better thank you dot com yeah

yeah we should sing the jingle our guest has been Scott Hanselman principal program manager at Microsoft

host and producer of Hansel Minutes he's also written a number of books and has a few other podcasts there will be links to everything

in the show notes you know the notes that are in your podcast app but also on embedded.fm, along with our blog and contact link and all sorts of other ephemeral and not touchable goodies. What? That didn't come out right. Scott, thank you so much for being with us. Also, thank you to Christopher

for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Christopher Speck for suggesting Scott as a guest. And of course, thank you for listening. Now a final thought for you this week. Quite relevant from Ralph Waldo Emerson. For every minute

you're angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.