The long-awaited interview with the one and only Scott Hanselman is here! This was one of my most fun interviews, with surprising twists and turns, like learning that Scott uses TWO mice (one for each hand), a brief side quest to check on his 3D printing project, a deep deep hatred of YAML (and why), and his experience delivering his TED in the summer of 2025. This episode is best enjoyed in video form on our YouTube channel, but the audio is still fun too!
Key takeaways:
About our guest:
Scott Hanselman is a programmer, teacher, and speaker. He works out of his home office in Portland, Oregon for Microsoft as the Vice President of Developer Community. He works on .NET, Open Source, and the Azure Cloud Developer Experience. He blogs about technology, culture, gadgets, inclusion, code, the web, where we're going and where we've been. He's excited about community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web.
He has a number of fun podcasts and a YouTube channel.
Find our guest on:
Find us on:
Links:
ADRIANA:
Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Scott Hanselman. Welcome, Scott.
SCOTT:
How are you?
ADRIANA:
I'm fine. How are you?
SCOTT:
I'm living the dream.
ADRIANA:
Amazing. And where are you calling from today?
SCOTT:
I'm in Portland, Oregon.
ADRIANA:
Awesome. I've had a number of people from Portland, on the show.
SCOTT:
We're pretty chill group of people. And there's a lot of geeks doing a lot of fun stuff in Portland.
ADRIANA:
Definitely. I've been to Portland once for Monitorama, and I love the vibes. Lots of fun. And also, I'm, I love, indoor rock climbing. So I checked out one of the local gyms as well when I was in Portland. So that was fun.
SCOTT:
Was it the new one on Barnes? The big giant tall one, and on Barnes? Was it a bouldering one? Or was it on, Macadam? The bouldering place on Macadam off of the river?
ADRIANA:
It was a bouldering one that was in like it was near like what looked like a newish condo complex. So it was in kind of a very bougie area.
SCOTT:
Fancy. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities for rock climbing and bouldering in Portland. Yeah.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Very stoked to have to have gone. So yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I always like to, start off with some icebreaker questions, but first I want to give, props to your t-shirt. I'm. I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so I...
SCOTT:
I feel like I like shirts that are obscure because there's, like, there's no gray area. There's no, like, I kind of know what that means. There's either you know, exactly what's going on or you have no idea. And I like it. I like that it separates the wheat from the chaff very quickly. It’s a deep cut. I actually wore a similar shirt on my in my TED talk and when I talk about AI. Because what's great about this particular episode of Star Trek from 1991 is that without context, it means nothing. And that's the whole point of the episode. And the same thing applies when thinking about language models. If there's no context and it means nothing.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, absolutely. And the the Star Trek episode you're referring to is Darmok, correct?
SCOTT:
Yep. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”.
ADRIANA:
Yes. Yes. And it's funny because, I've, I've, I think I've watched Star Trek The Next Generation end-to-end multiple times. But there have been like certain episodes that I've watched a number of times. And this one, oddly enough, I think I've only watched maybe once or twice, but when I watched it most recently, I'm like, oh damn, it really, like stuck with me because you're absolutely right. Like, the whole thing about context is so important. I have many frustrations with regards to AI context., based on some work I've been doing recently. So I feel the pain.
SCOTT:
Yeah. It's, it's, I think it's season five, episode two. And a fun fact is that, this guy here, was actually, Paul Winfield, who was the dad from, Family Matters, Unrecognizable in his, in his makeup there.
ADRIANA:
What a hoot. Okay, so let's, let's start with the icebreaker questions. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?
SCOTT:
Left handed. I'm actually technically ambidextrous, so I write with my left, I bowl right, I bat left, I scissors right, I ax throw right, I golf left. So I think of myself as a lefty. But those are yeah I cannot bowl left handed. I cannot cut my cut scissors left handed. So yeah I'm ambidextrous.
ADRIANA:
Do you mouse left or right handed?
SCOTT:
I literally have two mice, one on the right, one on the left, and I switch between them, depending on where my hand is on the, on the keyboard. I didn't know what you're going to ask that question. And you notice that you have to get an actual, these are the, the vertical mice.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.
SCOTT:
This is a this is a specific left handed vertical mouse. And there's not a lot of those. So you have to go out of your way to get the the left handed vertical mouse.
ADRIANA:
That is so fun.
SCOTT:
I have mice. I have mouse pads on both sides.
ADRIANA:
Oh. Do you, do you have a fun mouse pad? I can't remember the last time I had a mouse pad.
SCOTT:
No, it's a very it's a it's a gamer mouse pad with a very specific optical.
ADRIANA:
Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah, I'm, I'm a lefty as well. But I do mouse with my right because that was what was presented to me.
SCOTT:
Because we've been oppressed.
ADRIANA:
I have been oppressed. But here. So here's something funny. So my my dad's retired from tech, and he's the first person to introduce me to a mouse. And I was talking to him the other day, and he said he first learned how to use a mouse with his left hand, even though he's right handed. And he said that that's because that's how the mouse was presented to him when he first used a mouse,
SCOTT:
Interesting. Was presented as a lefty.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
Well, I mean, they were those mice were were nondenominational. You could use them left or right.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. I think they were like single button. Right. So it didn't really matter. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think the first time I saw a mouse was like, I want to say back in like 1988. So windows what, 3.1?
SCOTT:
No, Windows 3.1 was 91.
ADRIANA:
Oh yeah. Okay. So then even that's before Windows. DOS days.
SCOTT:
Well we'll see. Maybe people will call me out on that. No. Windows 3.1 was April of 92.
ADRIANA:
Oh, damn.
SCOTT:
Yeah, I used a mouse. Single button mouse on an Apple 2 computer in the late 80s, though. Back when mice were on serial ports.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yes, I do remember.
SCOTT:
And actually.
ADRIANA:
I do remember that.
SCOTT:
I’ve got over here. I. This is an old. That's a joy. I don't if you remember that joystick from the Commodore 64.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SCOTT:
That was left handed. I've got this mouse which is like an early mouse, but this is right in the middle of the 90s when the rollie came. Yeah, but I wanted to use it, so I, I made, this is 3D printed. So this is PS/2 to serial port adapter. So that works on a Commodore 64 or a. So that was that's about pre USB mouse.
ADRIANA:
I remember PS/2 ports and I thought well this is the lap of luxury. It's so compact!
SCOTT:
Yeah indeed. But that's actually this has got it. It's it's a 3D printed case that goes from PS/2 to RS-232 serial.
ADRIANA:
That's so cool. Brings back memories.
SCOTT:
People of a certain age.
ADRIANA:
That's right. People of a certain age for sure.
SCOTT:
People of a certain age.
ADRIANA:
Okay. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?
SCOTT:
I know that it's it's not a good thing to like an iPhone, but I very much like my iPhone. It's delightful. I like to... I tease my, my my green bubble friends. And, just I forgot I forgot the name of the comedian. But there's this lovely, Canadian comedian. She is a, black hijabi. She's Muslim, she has a headscarf, and she comes out and she says, I'm a black woman, I'm a muslim, I'm a hijab, you know, hijabi. And I'm an Android user. And that is the least protected. Like, you guys are so mean to us, the Android people. You know, she's just like, I need more protection against the blue bubble people. But fortunately, of course, with, with, RCS, the new rich communication services, at least we get read receipts and thumbs up because nobody wants to be the green person in the group chat who's sending out, Adriana has thumbs up your thing. You know, like, nobody wants that text. But, yeah, I just upgraded to, iOS 26 last night. The whole weird, juicy liquid glass.
ADRIANA:
I, I haven't I haven't tried that yet because I'm getting my new iPhone tomorrow.
SCOTT:
It's weird. It's super weird. It's just, I don't know, it's liquid. You know what I mean? I don't know. It's a little bit excessive. I do have a bunch of Android stuff, but I think it's a little weird.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I I'm definitely curious to play around with it. I have a friend who upgraded recently and he's like, it's so cool. I'm like, I'm waiting till my phone arrives.
SCOTT:
What I want. I mean, this is the thing Android's got innovation and iPhone's got like reliability. I want that z fold. Android. I feel like what we need and I'll take my case off. I want an a super thin iPhone. This is my this is my, 16 Pro. Yeah. That unfolds into an iPad.
ADRIANA:
Oh yeah.
SCOTT:
And I want to plug a usb-C, like one usb-C into it and have a keyboard and a mouse and have it be a mac.
ADRIANA:
That would be awesome. Apple people...
SCOTT:
That would be a product. That would be a product right there.
ADRIANA:
You know what I miss, is my flip phone.
SCOTT:
I've got a flip phone here somewhere.
ADRIANA:
I had, what was that? It was like a my first flip phone was like this color or color LCD. Sanyo. The battery life was absolute shit. Yeah, I was lucky if it lasted, like, five hours. I had to carry a spare battery to survive the day, but I loved it. And my subsequent, you know, flip phones, I adored them. I miss, you know, having, you know, like, you know, slamming slamming it shut to, to to to end a call.
SCOTT:
My, my 17 year old, I had a, I had actually a viral TikTok because my 17 year old, and his buddies decided that they should all get flip phones because TikTok was rotting their brains. So he went online and he found a, $54 Amazon flip phone. And the trick was, what's the best way to move your SIM back and forth? So he still has a physical SIM, because he has an old he has an old iPhone. So we got a $54 flip phone. It's got Bluetooth, it's got MP3s, and it's got Google Maps. I was like, as long as it’s got Google Maps... but it's a flip phone. And so he would when he, when, when he's feeling like, I need to unplug, he pulls the SIM out of his iPhone, puts it in the flip phone.
ADRIANA:
I love that. And so this is like a newer model flip phone that is being manufactured?
SCOTT:
Yeah it's called an Alcatel - A-L-C-A-L... Al-ca-tel - A-L-C-A-T-E-L. It's a it's a flip phone. It works great. We put a bunch of MP3s on it. That I had from, you know, back in the day.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
And went nuts. Had fun. He enjoys it. So. Yeah. And the battery life on that one is like two weeks thing that lasts forever.
ADRIANA:
Damn.
SCOTT:
But then then what he did, now that he's got the new... oops, now that he's got the new iPhone, is he's he's changed his icons to be black and white. And like really chilled it out and then he's like deleted a bunch of icons. So I'm seeing people make “calm” phones.
ADRIANA:
Oh yeah.
SCOTT:
Calming, calming their phones. So he he's gone and done that and he like tinted everything and went like made it like black and white like that.
ADRIANA:
Oh, wow. I, I've heard that as a, as a technique for it being less distracting.
SCOTT:
Yeah. Trying to chill out.
ADRIANA:
Calming.
SCOTT:
I think it's great. I think it's great that he's thinking about that stuff. There's another one. This is clear. You can't really see. But like, you can make them entirely clear. So, finally, and this is the thing, right. People on the Android are and your Android viewers will be like, welcome to ten years ago, bro. It's probably true.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. Probably. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. No it it's no, it's great that he's, already thinking about these things at this age.
SCOTT:
And I think so. People were like being haters online. They're like things that didn't happen for 200, Alex. And, like, literally happened, like, he's right there. Like you could talk to him. The people are like, no, no, no teenager would turn off their, their phone. Consciously and like, no, he just was like, yeah, this is not fun anymore. I want to try something else.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I've even, like, in the evenings, I just leave my phone, like, as far away from me as possible, like, so that I'm more present with my family. And even last week we went out to dinner and I forgot my phone at home, and I was like, okay, that's fine. And it was so freeing.
SCOTT:
I cannot do that. I, I'm a type one diabetic, so I have, a pancreas that runs on my phone. It's an open source artificial pancreas. So again, you can't really see.... There's no way to show you this. But basically, I have a, a system on my phone. Actually, let me try something. I will switch over to here. Is it gonna let me see it?
ADRIANA:
It looks black. Oh, there we go. Yep. Oh, yeah, I see it. Yep yep yep.
SCOTT:
So got my blood sugar. And my insulin. So if I forget my phone I will be very sad.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. No I yeah. In that case you definitely need to bring that with you.
SCOTT:
Oh, my 3D print just finished. Hang on.
ADRIANA:
Ooh. Fun.
SCOTT:
I'm playing Hollow Knight. Have you played Hollow Knight?
ADRIANA:
No.
SCOTT:
This is the base. I'm making a Hollow Knight figurine. This is this is the base that she's going to sit on. So this is like, rock or whatever. Like her little her little base and then her little weapon, and then her skirt.
ADRIANA:
All 3D printed.
SCOTT:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ADRIANA:
That's amazing.
SCOTT:
It’s a really... Speaking of Star Trek, you know, Picard always gets to go, “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”, and then just tea appears.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
It feels like that with 3D printing. Now we've got it so dialed in that you just say, yeah, I want this, and it pops out. Make stuff. I got the cap. This stuff is 3D printed.
ADRIANA:
That's awesome. How much does a 3D printer go for these days? Because I, I'm seriously like, wanting to get one now.
SCOTT:
It is. It is shockingly, reasonable. Let me actually share my screen and I'll give you a little preview because we'll I'll run this printer while we're going. So I'm here in the tool and I'm searching for, the game is called Silksong, and I'm printing out this lady here. Oh, she's a little. She's a little bug.
ADRIANA:
Oh, so cute.
SCOTT:
Okay, so I've printed the base. Oh, shoot. Oh, my base came out white. I thought it was going to be gray. No, I have to figure that... I might have to redo that. So I need to do her head now so I can do it in one color. But you see, if you look right here, she is... You can do it like this. But that's not very fun. Like that doesn't look nice and it's not cool. It's not cool. So this this person here has broken it up. Oh, for crying out loud. Three images. What am I supposed to do? I don't know why they're asking me if I'm a human. Here we go.
ADRIANA:
Oh, nice.
SCOTT:
So there's the base.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
And there's her head. And there's the skirt. So I'll print out her head. You can get a 3D printer now for $299, maybe, $399?
ADRIANA:
Wow, really?
SCOTT:
Oh, yeah. It's not like a whole thousand dollar thing anymore. So you had asked, What... whether I like the Android or, or iPhone. I would say that that the Bambu Lab printers are basically the iPhones of printing.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've heard of the, the Bambu printers.
SCOTT:
So if you get the mini, it's 249 bucks.
ADRIANA:
Oh, wow.
SCOTT:
Now, if you want multiple colors, it's more.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
And if you're serious, I get the I got the middle. The middle of the road one. And it was $549.
ADRIANA:
Right.
SCOTT:
But I would argue that if you're going to buy a PlayStation, you're going to spend 500 bucks. Why not, you know, buy something that can make stuff.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. True.
SCOTT:
So here I picked my, these are the four colors that I have loaded. I thought my base was going to be gray. I'm looking at this base.
ADRIANA:
It does not look grey.
SCOTT:
A little disappointed. And then we'll hit send. It's literally that easy. It's sending it over to the printer. And then we're going to hit on device here. Yeah. And there's a camera inside that comes with the device. And we should be able to like see the camera. So now it's downloading the print start. I can hear it starting. It's going to take 45 minutes, 386 layers. There we go. So that's going to that's going to print and that'll do her her head. And then I'll, I'll put them all together when I'm done. I'll probably redo that piece there to make sure that it looks nice. This is geeking out, right? Is that okay?
ADRIANA:
We are definitely geeking out on all the things I love it.
SCOTT:
We’re Geeking out. Out loud.
ADRIANA:
Yeah totally totally I love it. Okay. The next one I'm going to ask you may be controversial, because of where you work: Mac, Linux, or Windows?
SCOTT:
I'm nondenominational. So, I've got like, I've got a stack of laptops over here, a couple of Macs. I, the problem is, I do like Windows, and that's not because I work at Microsoft. It's just I've used Windows since 1992. I like it, it makes sense to me. I've used Mac. I've got a Mac that I have to use to build my pancreas app. I find Xcode to be very frustrating. I find Mac to be not very hotkey friendly. I really, really, really dislike the finder on Mac. Finding a file like without using the command line, I would challenge a Mac user to open two windows to two different folders and copy a file from one side to the other without a mouse.
ADRIANA:
Yes, yes, I agree with you on that. That is one thing. Like I knew all my Windows hotkeys.
SCOTT:
Mac is missing the hotkey boat.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, I, I do agree, I do agree it's, it's definitely, a more, it encourages more mouse use. Compared to Windows. Look at that.
SCOTT:
It's a little skirt.
ADRIANA:
That's so cute.
SCOTT:
So then she'll she'll sit on this and her little skirt, and then we'll have her head printed out soon.
ADRIANA:
Oh that's great.
SCOTT:
And then I'll decide if. If I want to change the color of this.
ADRIANA:
Geeking out! I love it. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?
SCOTT:
I, like C#. That's kind of the one that my brain goes to the most. But, any curly brace related language is usually fine. But I feel like as a person of a certain age, I don't really see the difference as much anymore. Like, for loops are for loops, maps, and arrays, and data structures. So I look at it like, you know, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. They’re just kind of all close enough, you know. You know, I don't speak Portuguese, but my, I've got Chipotle-level Spanish. So when I hear when I hear Portuguese and I'm like I got 40% of that, I feel like that. So when I go pop over to like C++ or TypeScript, I'm like, yeah, I got I got most of that. I got it.
ADRIANA:
And... What was your, what was your first programing language?
SCOTT:
Technically depends on what you would call a programing language. First, first, first, would be Logo.
ADRIANA:
Ooooh!
SCOTT:
Which was the little turtle that you would use when you were like ten. And you would, you know, go left to, you know, go five forward, turn left, you know, 40 degrees kind of thing. Then I would say BASIC on a trash 80. On a RadioShack TRS-80. And then, but I would say my first like one for money I would say was C. And then I wrote an app that was a combination of VisualBasic, had C DLLs, dynamic link libraries, and then it called into a, turbo vision, which was Object Pascal. But this was a time when there were just lots of languages you didn't really think about.
ADRIANA:
I remember! It brings back memories. My first language was BASIC as well. I spent a lot of time in QBasic, and I fondly remember the gorilla. The gorilla game with the exploding bananas. Gorilla and nibbles, I. I wasted a lot of time playing around here.
SCOTT:
I've got one of my first applications that I ever wrote. That was in a box. We actually had boxes. That's when we shipped software and it was called Fool Proof Software. I'd have to dig it out, but basically it was a application that prevented kids in the library from taking a disk in and booting off of their disk and breaking into the library computer.
ADRIANA:
Oh yeah, because you could.
SCOTT:
Oh yeah. Because, like, they would lock the library computer down. So then the geeks would carry around a disk, a floppy disk like this.
ADRIANA:
Oh my God, you still have one. That's amazing. That's great. I think I got rid of all my all my floppies. I still did homework in the, in the three, three and the hard disk. Yeah, yeah, three and a half, three and a half.
SCOTT:
With the floppies inside the plastic unit.
ADRIANA:
Right. The the hard floppy.
SCOTT:
Yeah, yeah. Three and a half. And it was a five and a quarter.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. I never did the eight. That was before my time.
SCOTT:
I do a bunch of software archival-ness, basically like, like I found a bunch of disks, in the garage and, you know, you can't read like Commodore disks and Apple disks on a PC anymore. And most PCs don't even have a place to plug it in. And there's no such thing on the five and a, on these five and a quarters. There's no USB version of that.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, yeah.
SCOTT:
There is a USB version of the little ones. You can just buy one. You can buy, like, if you've got like, your college papers and stuff and you want to get them off the computer, you can buy a. Like I went to Goodwill and found a $10, you know, floppy disk, USB.
ADRIANA:
Oh my God.
SCOTT:
Five and a quarter. It's a lot harder. And there's open source projects to help you, you know, get the data off of those machines.
ADRIANA:
Wow, that is hardcore. That is true geeking out.
SCOTT:
are we doing okay? I feel like we're only through the intro, though.
ADRIANA:
We're good.
SCOTT:
Well, I keep, I keep, it’s a podcast, but I keep standing up and running away. And then.
ADRIANA:
It's going to compel people to, to see the YouTube version.
SCOTT:
If you are listening to this audio, you need to go watch the YouTube.
ADRIANA:
You really do have to watch the YouTube.
SCOTT:
There’s a lot going on in the background here.
ADRIANA:
And if only for the t shirt and the 3D printed stuff. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?
SCOTT:
Dev or ops? I do not think about them as being separate.
ADRIANA:
I love that.
SCOTT:
I think when that when. People love to call themselves full stack engineers. But unless you like, carried the pager, you know, and you actually, like, keep a machine alive in the cloud, like I've, I've had a blog since 2002 and I've been online. I've had websites online since the 90s. You know, 30 years of keeping a website online changes your relationship to the code. And I was I've been been doing continuous integration since before it was called that, right. We just called them build servers. So the idea of checking code in and having it automatically get deployed is not a new one for me. So I, I think the line between ops and and dev is blurred.
ADRIANA:
I agree, and I have a question for you along those lines. Do you think that a developer that's working on a containerized application should know how to containerize their application? Because I was surprised by how many people don't.
SCOTT:
So, people who know me and have seen me online probably are tired of my... They're probably tired of the 5 or 6 things that they keep hearing me say. So you just described what people who know me know is the classic do you teach your kid how to drive stick shift problem.
ADRIANA:
So true!
SCOTT:
Right? You know, you're going to like, should people who know how to take an Uber know how to change a tire? One should argue that all able bodied people who can change a tire should change one at least once. Like this is why we send kids to camp. Like, do you need to know how to start a fire and cook a can of beans? No. Does it make you a better person to have lit a fire once in the woods and cut up? You made a can of beans once and cooked it? Yes. So yeah, you should containerize an app once or twice so that you know what ops is doing. This gets to the whole point of what full stack means. Do it once, then go, HUH! So that's what ops does.
ADRIANA:
yeah. You need that appreciation, right? And we're we are forcing ops people to code... effectively, right?
SCOTT:
Oh yeah. I don't like, making a caste system like we used to have software testers, and now it's more kind of like life cycle, but, like, we would treat the software testers poorly. Not not we me, but like, they were considered a second class. And I don't like that. Everybody should. Everyone should familiarize themselves with everything. So like, if you think about being a chef, if you ever saw like, The Bear on Hulu, there's sous chefs and there's prepping, you know, the sous chef do the preparation and there's the head chef and there's line chefs. But they move from station to station. The whole point of doing that is to have a, a journeyman program, an apprenticeship where you learn all of the jobs to make a good meal.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. And I and I feel like that's, that is missing a lot in tech. And I agree with you also on your comment about the, the, the caste system. I, I actually started off, my first job out of school, the first role that I was given, I wanted to actually start off doing dev, but they put me, I was put into a, a, testing role and my God, were we treated badly. And I, I'm not going to lie, I was frustrated in that role, but I have such an appreciation and I'm, you know, looking back, I'm so grateful for having had that experience. Because it puts things into a very different perspective. And I don't think, like, how can you understand what someone does if you haven't been in their shoes.
SCOTT:
Hundred percent. Being a full stack engineer means developing empathy.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
For those that are that have your job.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, definitely love that. Okay. Next question: JSON or YAML?
SCOTT:
Not YAML.
ADRIANA:
Not YAML...
SCOTT:
The answer is anything but YAML.
ADRIANA:
So are you okay with TOML then?
SCOTT:
Anything in the world but YAML. YAML is a dumpster fire. YAML is crap.
ADRIANA:
Oh, and you mentioned you like the curly braces.
SCOTT:
YAML, I, let me go so far as to say I find personally, significant whitespace to be generally problematic. I know my Pythonistas will not appreciate that, but just the idea of that getting a tab wrong or a couple of spaces wrong means that that's not going to compile. That's insane. Like if you, if you go and look at if you went and I have to use YAML, of course, for my CI/CD pipelines. So if you go look at my GitHub actions or my Azure DevOps, stuff, you'll see that there's like trying again, trying again, moving that. Like, just like over and over again trying to get it to work. And everyone will say, yeah, use a linter. You know, I was doing YAML before we had like, really good linters. So like, yeah, just moving moving it around is challenging.
ADRIANA:
I agree. Okay, we're almost done. Next question. Spaces or tabs?
SCOTT:
I don't think it matters. And I know that there's a whole argument on Reddit about how spaces versus tabs matter to the visually impaired. I have not spoken to a visually impaired person who agreed with that because their screen reader chooses how to present significant whitespace. I would probably argue tabs is correct, technically. No one has changed... We used to set our tab stops, but no one even knows what a tab stop is anymore. So tabs is the correct answer, but, “It doesn't matter” is probably also appropriate.
ADRIANA:
Fair enough. Okay, two more questions. Do you for I prefer to consume content through video or text?
SCOTT:
It depends on the content, right. Like I've got a stack of books right here, with a cookie on top. So, like, I'm consuming these books. As soon as I finish this cookie. I, I don't like. I like that I get to choose the speed of the book. Like, if you think about a video, there's people who, like, go online and then change their video to 1.5x or 2x, and they think that they can, like, consume it at that speed. My wife does audiobooks at 1.2x. What I like about reading is that it's pull versus push.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
So I can change the speed depending on how fast or deeply I want to read. Like there's no there's no way to like, squint and think and make the YouTube slow down so you can absorb.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
So I prefer a medium by which I can pull. So I would say my happy medium and why I do it the way I do it on my YouTube is small, 15 minute bite sized videos. I know there's a rise right now of these like two hour long watch it dude, yap, and code. Not a fan, I don't. I just don't like that. I don't know why, but it doesn't. It doesn't work for me. But as long as there's an option for everyone.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. No, I agree, I agree. Yeah I, I much prefer reading. My daughter loves watching YouTube. She learns the most obscure things on YouTube.
SCOTT:
I do want to say though, I do appreciate a well organized, well edited YouTube that like.
ADRIANA:
Oh yeah.
SCOTT:
You know, a Hank, Hank Green or like a hit, you know, like whatever. Drunk History or what. People putting work into explaining a concept. That's different than just someone yapping.
ADRIANA:
Oh, no, I, I, I totally agree. I mean, if it's boring, like, forget it, I the most I'll do I, I will deal with Instagram shorts. Sorry Instagram reels. Sorry. But the the captions have to be on. I have the sound off and I have the captions on, and I much prefer that.
SCOTT:
I just popped up my screen. Let's see how our print is doing.
ADRIANA:
Oh, look at that. Which one are we printing again?
SCOTT:
This is the head.
ADRIANA:
Cool.
SCOTT:
So let's go and see how that's doing. So that was not that one. That was. Her head. Which is this one here.
ADRIANA:
Nice.
SCOTT:
So you can see that we are roughly 37% roughly... exactly 37% of the way there.
ADRIANA:
Nice.
SCOTT:
So pretty cool. Should be done in 28 minutes.
ADRIANA:
Okay. Final question. What's your superpower?
SCOTT:
Napping? I think my superpower is probably analogies. Explaining technology to, non-technical people. I think I'm pretty decent at.
ADRIANA:
And I think this is also a great segue into your TED talk. Because, yeah, for those who haven't watched Scott's TED talk, I'm going to include a link in the show notes because.
SCOTT:
I just put it on hanselman.com. So you can just go to my last name.com. It's right there now.
ADRIANA:
Amazing. Yeah. It was it was such a great and engaging talk. And as we were chatting before the, before starting the recording, I was listening to it, just before going on vacation and you, so many things that you said resonated with me, about, like, you know, putting in boundaries, for example, I believe I seem to remember you also told the story of, your your sons.
SCOTT:
I did mention my son getting a.
ADRIANA:
SH: a flip phone. Yeah.
SCOTT:
And that had happened like two weeks before the TED talk. So that’s why it was top of mind.
ADRIANA:
So I, I got to ask, though, how did you, first, how did you get asked to do the TED talk? And second, what what inspired you, to come up with with the topic of your talk?
SCOTT:
It's, the whole TED thing is a complicated organization. Like there's the big nonprofit and there's like TED all up, which is out of like Vancouver, Canada, or, or something. And so there's like TED global and then there are these like franchises. So you could have like TED Fort Wayne, Indiana, or TED such and such college. And those are independently run what are called TEDx events. And, they're all of different sizes. But they are run by and okayed by the TED people. So you have to like, have a relationship with TED. It's kind of like you, you get a taxi medallion in order to drive a taxi. You can't just. You and I couldn't put one on. We'd have to work it out with the TED people.
ADRIANA:
LIke a franchise sort of thing.
SCOTT:
Kind of a franchise, a nonprofit franchise. And but, the one in Portland, where I am, is they say, top three, top four TED event. It's quite large. It was like 4500 people. So it wasn't like a couple of kids at a, at a, at a community college. And they they had asked me a couple of times over the years, but I kind of didn't want to take up space, and it just felt kind of weird and pretentious to me to do a TED talk, because it feels like people who do TED talks are trying to sell me a book or something. I didn't have a book, and I don't remember, like, I don't care. But they were very persistent and they were very nice. And my buddy Stephen Green was like, I think, you know, we would always get together and have lunch and then say, oh, I wish we had recorded this. And he's like, we should talk about these things. You should do this TED talk. So Stephen Green really pushed me from Vanport Studios to to do this. So I said, all right, fine, I'll do it. But I want to do it like kind of my way. And then you go through this really awkward 6 to 9 month process. The haters online and the haters in the comments are like, oh, they let anyone do a TED talk now. But you know, like, thanks haters. This was formal. Like I was assigned a speaker coach. And yeah, Cathy Armillas was my speaker coach. She's like, wrote the book, how to give a great TED talk.. We met like twice a week for like six months and like I put in. I think I did the talk by 30 times and I, proposed different versions of the talk 5 or 6 times. And the first versions, they hated it. This talk, the one guy who was like, this is barely a talk, like, go back. So, like, they have a plan.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
And they build a, an arc across in this case 11 or 12 talks and they want you to fit into a slot. And, I don't like reading from a script. I don't like writing a script. Most of my talks are just vibes.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
This is not that. This is like, Toastmasters, you know, it's like it's. I would even say it's a one man show, you know, one person. Show it. This is a stand up comedy with PowerPoint. It was very formal. It was a it was a stage show. There was showmanship.
ADRIANA:
Well, for what it's worth, it came off as very casual.
SCOTT:
Did it really?
ADRIANA:
And I mean and I mean that in, in like a very it's like, I mean that in the best way possible. Like I didn't get like any stuffy formal vibe from. So. Yeah. So.
SCOTT:
That’s very kind. Thank you for that. Yeah. I, I didn't want it to not be me. And then they wanted, you know, it's, it's got to be topical. So they want AI. But also as I mentioned before, I'm a person of a certain age. So like I like, I think computer science history is not taught enough. So as I work on the cloud I still have old computers behind me and you know arcades from Tron and stuff like that. So like this is not just like, “Old man has nostalgia”. This is, “Old man tries to remember why we did this in the first place.” Which is the point of the TED talk. Like, why did we even do this? It feels like we're doing tech to make billionaires more billionaire. That's not why I got into tech. I'm glad you liked it.
ADRIANA:
Oh, no, it was, it was. It was really great. And and, you know, there are so many, so many different aspects, like, I, I love also the story of, like, you know, how there were so many sacrifices made by your family to give you.
SCOTT:
I'm sure you have a similar story. Like, we have no idea how much our parents did for us to make us have these these jobs.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. I mean, I remember we got our, our first computer, and I, I was barely allowed to touch it because those things are so expensive.
SCOTT:
You could break it.
ADRIANA:
You could!
SCOTT:
$2,000, you can totally break it!
ADRIANA:
Do you remember, like, having to turn it on in a certain order. Otherwise you would short things and you had to like, ground yourself.
SCOTT:
They put. They put the fear in it. My dad had like, this kind of like a static thing or was like when you walk over and you have to touch the static thing first before you touch the computer. We lived in fear of those things, 100%.
ADRIANA:
We did. Even like, you know, we were talking about the the floppy disk. The first time that I saw a floppy disk, I remember, it was it was in school and the teacher pulled it out, and the first thing I wanted to do was touch it. And that's how I'm, like, getting ready to touch the magnetic part. He’s like, “Don't touch it!”
SCOTT:
People do not understand. Like, people are, like, putting USB keys in their mouth and like, chewing on them. The first time they, the teacher would stand in front of the audience, in the front, in front of the kids and go, all right, do not touch that.
ADRIANA:
Yep.
SCOTT:
You can touch this, but you have to only put your fingers in a certain way no matter what you do. Never touch this. And we were just like, so gentle and genteel. Just like, pushed it in, real slow. So you ever have it? When the floppy got caught inside, you're like, oh my God, it's like stuck. I can't get it out.
ADRIANA:
Yeah, moments of terror.
SCOTT:
It's like we had like perfect little envelopes and we drew them carefully.
ADRIANA:
And then when we got to the smaller ones, the diskettes, it's like, oh, now we have hard cases for them and you can slide that little metal that protected the, the magnetic.
SCOTT:
Yeah, yeah. And then look at it and like, I can touch that if I want.
ADRIANA:
You can like, you can move it back and forth. And there is the, I also remember the, the, the tab on those to prevent like, overwriting your data.
SCOTT:
Yeah. This part here.
ADRIANA:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SCOTT:
Do you remember, do you remember cutting another tab to make it double sided. Do you ever do that?
ADRIANA:
No, no, I didn't even know you could do it on on the, on the five and a half I knew. No wait, sorry. Five and a quarter, I..
SCOTT:
Yeah, you couldn't flip over the the plastic ones. But this one here, it says DSDD. Double sided, double density.
ADRIANA:
Oh, yeah.
SCOTT:
So this, this notch here is the right notch. If you took a hole punch, you could hole punch the other side and then flip it over and you could create Side Two.
ADRIANA:
The original hacks.
SCOTT:
That's how we saved money. Because I don't have I don't know if you got floppy money, but I didn't have floppy money.
ADRIANA:
No. Definitely not. I mean, I remember, like, getting a computer game was even like a saga when I was growing up because, you know, like, you'd go to the computer store and you mentioned, like, software came in boxes and there was something magical about, like seeing. It was almost like going to a bookstore. And I remember my dad's like, If I'm going to buy you a game, it had better be educational.
SCOTT:
I got this. Speaking of software and boxes, this is a thing called eXoDOS, E-X-O DOS. And what this is, is it's this wonderful collection of all the DOS games from when we were kids.
ADRIANA:
Oh. Oh, that's amazing.
SCOTT:
You know, like, like Sierra and all those games. And it is presented to you and given as a see how it looks like a floppy.
ADRIANA:
Yeah.
SCOTT:
It's actually a hard drive.
ADRIANA:
Oh that's cute.
SCOTT:
It's a hard drive with a picture of a floppy on it. And then you plug it in and then it has all the DOS games from when you were a kid. And, you know, we would go to like, PC Micro Center or RadioShack and, and buy a game in a box and read the. Actually read the instructions and you remember sometimes you would have to go and like they'd say, give us the third word on page 14. And that was to keep you from stealing the game, because if you stole the game and you didn't have the instructions, you wouldn't know the third word on page 14, which was their their way of, keeping you honest.
ADRIANA:
Hard core. See the things that kids these days just don't appreciate.
SCOTT:
These kids these days.
ADRIANA:
These kids these days, apps on their phones. Yeah, I I'm, I'm in awe over the fact that, you know, my, my iPhone has more compute power than my, you know, 386 SX from 19, whatever, 1989.
SCOTT:
And not just more... hundreds of thousands of times more. And we're looking at it too, you know, and the whole point is now to argue with people on the internet. That's, that's what I, that's what were you doing all that power for it, which is another theme of the, of the TED talk is like, what are we doing, man?
ADRIANA:
It's true. I, even like, you know, I've, I've had this conversation with so many folks as well, like, when it comes to contributing to open source and finding that right open source community and one where you feel respected and that people aren't going to yell at you like, you know, when you post a question on StackOverflow and it's like, I just want to ask a question, and this dude is ripping into me for existing, because I'm confused.
SCOTT:
Yeah. For existing.
ADRIANA:
before we wrap it up. Do you have any parting words of wisdom?
SCOTT:
Trying to think about, like, what does Bill and Ted say at the end of Bill Ted's Excellent Adventure? Stay awesome, dude? I don't know. Sorry, I know, I wish I knew my end. I should have known my Bill and Ted. I ruined that exit. Be excellent to each other.
SCOTT:
That was the one. Took me a second to come back. I had to, like, get my inner Keanu man.
ADRIANA:
Well, I really appreciate it. Scott, thank you so much for geeking out with me today. This was. This was a treat. It was such a great trip down memory lane. And y'all, don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time.
SCOTT:
Peace out and geek out.
ADRIANA:
Geeking out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who incidentally design all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout