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twenty twenty four NDC schedule. We'll be at as many NDC conferences as possible
this year, and you should consider attending no matter what. Ndcoslo is happening
June tenth through the fourteenth. Get your tickets at ndcoslo dot com. The
Copenhagen Developers Festival happens August twenty sixth through the thirtieth. Tickets at Cphdevfest dot
com. Ndcporto is happening October fourteenth through the eighteenth. The early discount ends
June fourteenth. Tickets at Ndcporto dot com. We'll see you there, we
hope. Hey, guess what it's dot net rocks. In a very special
episode nineteen hundred, Scott Hansman is here. I'm Carl Franklin. I'mgor Campbell
and we're at build Yeah, and happened to have just made our aprocess making
O nineteen hundredth episode. How did that happen? How did that happen?
Well, we got a really great guest who's been part of the dot net
rocks U environment, if you will, for ever since we can remember show
seventeen you I tell people how did how did Hansel Minutes start? Right?
It's because Carl Franklin called me eighteen years ago and he said, why don't
you have a podcast? In your answer? And I saw podcast sucks?
And then he said, well, I dare you to make one better?
Yeah, And I said, well, fine, I will all but you
know, to your credit, though, what you really meant to say was
the podcast that I've heard it sucks. So when I said podcasting sucks,
I want to point out that there were only like five podcasts because it was
twenty years ago, but it was because so many podcasts were just a bunch
of idiots sitting around jabberin. And now podcasts are just Instagram reels with a
bunch of idiots at around with their headphones on. So, yeah, welcome
to our podcast commute. And then then they say the weirdest you know,
it's like, did you read that article in New Yorker about how cinnamon cures
diabetes? And then they then that goes viral and then we have to talk
about how that's not true. Right, yeah, over and over again.
But yeah, I appreciate it very much. Carl. You supported me for
gosh five hundred episodes. Yeah, you know, edited produced a handsome and
it would not exist without well, thanks Carl Franklin family. I remember being
at the first time I met you was at an RD meeting and we were
talking about I think we were talking about Joseph Campbell of all people, and
maybe the hero's journey. The hero's journey and how you know the similarities between
cultures and the religions and the things that manifest themselves related it to c Sharp,
that's awesome. You're like, yeah, it is kind of like that.
We just love my analogies. Oh. It was great, And I
was like, all right, this is a smart guy. I want to
get to nybody. Did you want to do the open Yeah, let's do
the open framework music. All right, dude, what do you got?
I came across this and I said, this has got to be the better
no framework for Scott Hansman, because he's such a Commodore nerd. This is
eight bit due retro mechanical keyboard C sixty four edition, programmable keys, intuitive
controls. It's a keyboard for your PC that looks like the Commodore with the
rainbow logo and all of that. Oh my god, just that on March
twenty nine. Of course it has been on pre order with a July shipping
date, and it turns out that it is going to be arriving Wednesday.
That's also Now, this was just convergent thinking, right. I mean,
you found it just probably the same time. And I wore a Commore sixty
four T shirt yesterday. Nice and at dev Intersections on stage with you,
we asked chat ChiPT through a Commodore sixty four. We had a Commoce sixty
four live on stage. We used a BBS software great to simulate talking to
a bulletin board. You can go and the young people can google for that
with bing and we got we bbs'd into an Ubuntu VM, ran a Python
script he called chat chept and asked it to run and write a sixty five
oh two assembler and then say Hello World and then run it on the Commodore
sixty four. Why because it's awesome, because it's a lot of hoops.
HiT's retro too. It was a lovely Commodore sixty four user group active.
Yeah, in the Portland area. We meet kit. We meet at Kingpins
in Beaverton. You're more than welcome to join us. That's phenomenal. How
do I mean the traces a got to be falling off those boards? Man?
No, Man, so we do. You can actually go and search
for a C sixty four cap kite, get and recap. So like if
you talk to a Commodore or the x Spectrum or an Amiga person, you
say, oh, yeah, when was the last time you recapped the board?
Yeah? I had a fifteen seventy one Commodore disk drive and it had
magic smoke come out of it. All right, they do, and I
I got to recap it. And you go and you buy all new capacitors
you disordered the boards and your redo them and they'll live forever. Yeah,
that's moving part. I just have one question before we get started. Can
I buy a pair of Crocs? I I I've been, I have moved,
I have so I made a video where I three D printed a pair
of croc like not Crocs, and people have told, I mean the comments
that they are very litigious. They are simply plastic shoes, yes, with
a with a passing resemblance, Yeah to Crocs. There you go. I
was worried that you had said the word Crocs in that video. They are
not yasis, they are not easy slides. They are not Crocs. Okay,
that's what you made him for your son wear them is not They're too
slippery, slippery ron material material. Yeah, I get change. It puts
like they're missing that Crocs magic. This episode is brought to you by Crocs.
All right, Well, Richard, who's talking to us? I grabbed
a comment of the show eight hundred because why wouldn't I go eleven hundred shows
back? Right? But you know, we always have fun with our ad
shows. And when we made show eight hundred and twenty twelve, our guests
were Scott Hanselman and Rob Connery. Yeah, so it was like the podcaster
gang. And there's like thirty something comments on this show, like it's huge,
lots of chatter, just you know, it was fun. But I'll
read James McLachlan's comment from eleven years ago he started with Avengers Assemble. Okay,
wow, Yeah, Marvel Universe has been going on that long. Yeah.
This episode is like all my favorite podcasts put together, very interesting behind
the scenes glimpse of how you guys all do it. Scott's comment about asking
potentially stupid sounding questions really resonated with me. If I'm to build something for
someone, I'd rather keep going over it until we're both convinced that I've got
it. I don't want to go away giving the other person the impression that
I understand and then build something incorrect. I also don't want to keep going
back with questions about things that the other person thought were settled. It serves
everyone better when you spend all the time up front to come with a common
understanding, even if it means you have to take a credibility hit up front.
Remember Jane McLoughlin, he's from the UK. Yeah, and when you
come back and the exact thing is built, you look like a pro very
nice. Yeah. No, And the comment about asking potentially dumb questions that
the whole my whole podcast is to me asking dumb questions. Someone asked me
how I did so many episodes. I know that I'm not in teen hundred.
I'm only at nine hundred and fifty. Ire. But the trick is
if people email you and say, hey, can I pick your brain and
buy you coffee? Right, that's annoying. Yeah, But if they say,
hey, would you come on my podcast, that's not annoying. Yeah.
But it's the same exact thing. It is pretty much just right.
Yeah, yeah it is. I have no business talking to these but that
is one of the secrets, isn't it. James, thanks so much.
You're a comment at a copy of music code by. It's on its way
to you, And if you'd like a copy of music cod buy, I
write a comment on the website at Donna at rocks dot com or on the
facebooks. We publish every show there, and if you comment there and every
ready on the show, we'll send you a copy of music to go buy
and you can follow us. So it's very smooth. I'm sorry, can
we don't know that? He does that live every time? And people when
we do live shows, they're like, what, yeah, the look on
their faces when we do a live show and I rip that out and they're
like the part that I was missing though, was the part like the prescription
drug part where you go music to code may cause a dumble distinction, but
do not talk to music to code. That's three x speed maker. None
of these. It's been valid by the FAA. Very nice. Talk to
your doctor before rocks. Anyway. You can follow us on x Twitter,
which is what I'm calling it now, get it x Twitter. I refuse
to call it x Yeah. Yeah, we're in the same boat. We've
been on there for a long long time. But all the cool kids are
hanging out. I'm asked done, I'm at Carl Franklin at techot dot social,
and I'm Rich Campbell at mastadon dot social. Do you have a mask
don account? So I do, and I can give you a cool tip.
If you just search for at Scott dot hansone dot com, you'll find
me. I'm actually on hackyderm right, But you can use a thing called
web finger. You put a single file on you know, Franklin's dot net
or on Campbell Associates, and then it will be a pointer to or where
you are. So you can just look for my first name and at my
last name and you'll find me. It's very good. That's awesome. Yeah,
yeah, should do that. I'm also on threads, air Chat,
Instagram. I have a list of all those at Carl Franklin dot com.
So tell people I'm on all of them. I'm only set up the finger.
I think that's good. I yeah, okay. So we haven't formally
introduced Scott, but if if you haven't listened to him lately, he is
now vice president of Developer Community. Congratulations, What is that? What is
that about? I don't know what crazy? Is that? What a weird
complicent capitalism? You so? Uh, it's but you know, I didn't
want this show, and neither did Richard to be you know, three old
guys talk about the old days, get off my lawn. But it turns
out that, you know, that's a really valid point of view that may
be missing in some conversations. Maybe not the get off my lawn part.
But we did the show with Sean Wildermuth about you know, the aging senior
developer and you know, the decisions that we make in our older years about
what do we want to do next? Yeah, and it resonated with the
listeners. We weren't sure if it was going to, but it really did.
And then follow that up with Aaron Erickson's show, Yeah, who is
also a fifty something developer, but he was the nomadic developer while he mages
ago and now he's he's working and he did all the jobs. He's been
a consultant, and then he went into a he dabbled with some other companies.
Then he did a startup that I moved to San Francisco did. The
startup failed horribly, but it was an AI start up, and he got
hired by Nvidia and now he's working with then Video on large language model stuff.
But the Energizer Bunny still just going and yet super excited down. I
just thought it was a really interesting set of shows to think in terms of,
you know, what did you want from your career? Like you've got
your VP. I don't know if that was a goal for you. Well,
so now that I'm on the downslope, on the way out, I
have thought about what my identity is. It's not my company. I was,
never ever was, never has been. I feel like I'm a teacher.
I was a teacher before, I'll be a teacher after. All of
my vibes are teachery. Now that I'm older, I've been told that I
give off big dad energy. Yeah, So that I think is a position
that I will happily take. Yeah. And my job is to make the
kids successful, whether it be my own kids or whether it be early in
career people regardless of their age. Because there's a lot of great forty somethings
career switchers yet early in career. So on my way out, the question
is who is the next Richard Campbell, Who's the next Carl Franklin, Who's
the next you know, Angie Jones. How do we make these great new
developers that are maybe in their twenties, yeah, or are in their forties
and their career switchers. So that's that's my goal. I want to pay
you a compliment of data you paid me one early on. When I think
of you, one word comes to mind, and that's integrity. Oh absolutely.
You spoke truth when truth needed to be heard and wasn't very popular,
and you still do that to this day. That's very kind. Thank you
for that. Well, it's very true, and I think a lot of
people will agree with me. Sure. No, When I folks ask me
about you, I talk about your diabetes video, watching you do your routine,
Oh yeah, and then to me. It's always the thing of it
doesn't matter that you I think you're a thirty something when you did that video
and Lord, but you're still flinch. Oh it hurts. Yeah, Its
like does it hurt to the needle hurt? No? They yes, they
hurt. It's a needle, look at it. I remember being on the
phone with you before we did a handsome minutes one day and you were like,
hang on one second. I got a jab myself and it sounded like
a horror movie, you know. I'm like, Oh, I'm so sorry.
You know. Yep. No, it's your life a glckle pilot.
And none of us are getting out of this alive. No, no are
at all. But back to the the the old programmer thing m M.
The thing that we can offer is kind and patient mentorship and historical context exactly
knows. I love historical context, and I love the enthusiasm of the earli
in career developer of the young person. I love how excited they are about
stuff. And I don't want to bring stop energy. And one of the
things that we as as older as elders will say, have a tendency to
do is bring stop energy. Yeah, it's to get off my lawnman.
Yeah, oh we did that. Oh go man, we did that before.
Yeah, yeah, and why would you do that? That's a lot
of work. Instead of no, we did that before and you shouldn't do
it now, we go, yeah, okay, I can see why you'd
want to do that. Here's what we learned when we tried. Yeah,
exactly, yes, and yeah, yeah, take and take them forward on
it. Certainly be enthusiastic with all the possibilities that are out there. Oh
yeah. I mean I'm the fifty something still in the speaking circuit and most
of the speakers are into thirties now, and they're like, there are a
great crop of speakers. There's a bunch of very very exciting speakers out there
right now, and they're doing a lot of really cool stuff. And I
think we're also starting to see uh and I always like to see speakers that
build first and then talk. Yeah. You can really really easily get pulled
into the quote unquote international technical speaking circuit and all you do is talk about
stuff. Yeah, and you know, yeah, go make things, go
make things that disappear, and then talk about what you made, because I
want to know what you made. When I was wondering where you were.
Where are they? They're off making stuff they were making so generation and I
don't want to be the In my day we use punch cards and we liked
it. Guy, But our generation saw the evolution of computing from you know,
maybe just after punch cards, you know, to the PC, certain
from the PC certainly all the way up to now. And there is some
I don't know. Would you say that we came of age there and there
were fewer people maybe following that curve as there are now, and you know,
so it's easy to because there were less of us, too easier to
fall into the success or do you think that now with so many things being
so easy? All right, let me give you an example what you just
talked about with hacking this common or sixty four and BBS's and stuff. You
know, we've been doing stuff like that the whole time on the bleeding edge
where things were people didn't know you could do what we did, and so
you're like, wow, you can do that. It's really much a meritocracy
in my career. Anyway, you can do that, you're hired. You
can do that, you're hired. Whereas now there's so much information out there.
It's easier for people in some way to get in on it and learn
things quickly. But are they as motivated or is there a difference? Let
me let me train it like this. It's easier to get the information.
It is harder to get noticed. When we were starting up, there were
like two or three books. You're in the basement. You have a question,
you can go on fighto net or comfee serve and you can wait a
couple of days. You send a box top to kelloggause you get back a
toy in six to eight weeks. Right, there's no idea of like skyping
a friend. All right, you're writing on CompuServe to Dan Appleman about his
win thirty two books. Dan Appleman wrote me back, and he wrote me
back always, and he wrote fast. At one point I literally said to
I don't understand how you're doing this, and he's like, yeah, I
don't get as many questions as you think. I disagree. I'm sure Dan
Alman gets that brilliant, lovely guy. No. One of my inspirations,
like when I grew up, I want to be Dan Appleman like he he
was so kind. I want to Actually I have three favorite Dans small,
small side thing. If this was a book, this would be the little
box in the corner of the book with the off site. You got your
Dan Appleman, lovely, you got your Dan Bricklin, Yes, made visit
account right, and then you got your Dan Schiffman from the coding train,
Oh, processing wrote a processing language. Lovely. You want to just meet
who's the mister Rogers or the the the Bob Ross of programming, Dan Schiffman.
So because it's harder to get noticed now, do you think is like
the current environment of social media TikTok stars and all of that, where people
want and to get noticed for being a developer, it takes too long?
Like is that a barrier? I'm trying to figure out, Like, what's
the difference between what challenges that young people have today that we may have had
Differently? There is the getting noticed, but there's also the does getting noticed
matter? Yeah? Yeah, right? There are lots and lots. I
still stand by my my blog post about Dark Matter developers so many years ago
that said that there are a ton of For every one Twitter star, there's
a thousand people that are just doing the job, doing the work, and
they're doing great, and they're well known in their space, and that's fine.
I don't think Twitter. And when I say Twitter, I'm using the
word like Kleenex. The brand name Twitter means all of social media. All
you have to be a YouTuber. There's a lot of introverted people out there
that have no reason to be on Twitter, but they can consume, right.
I just think that we see the glamor, but we are algorithms,
algorithmically designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. Right, So don't look
to Twitter and somebody's freaking GitHub graph And I agree, comparison is a thief
of joy. Work on yourself. The only person you should be comparing yourself
against is you yesterday. I agree, see how podcasting same thing. Like
we both got into it. We all got into it very early on,
and that's why at Rocks and Handsome and nets became very popular, arguably because
we were the go to places to listen to for dot neis essentially, and
now everybody and their brother has a podcast. And I love when somebody tells
me, have you heard of podcasting? I look going, but people ask
me for advice about podcasting, and I do have to tell them that you
have to grind nobody listened to the first hundred episodes, so my show.
That true. Very few listened to the last hundred episode. But you know,
like the first hundred were grind So then you just ask yourself, well,
what's a good number, and people like, well, if I don't
get a thousand, I don't. It doesn't make you get more than one.
Right, did anyone listen Who's not your mom? That's awesome, you
got ten listeners. That was never the motivation. Ten x. No,
it was never the motive. It was never the motivation. It was the
conversations, right, you know, and you said this offline, but let's
you know, it wasn't the show. Actually I can't even remember now,
pretty consistent that the bugging from somebody to have coffee with them is annoying,
but asked them to come to the podcast is not. But they're actually the
same thing. They are the same thing. And I would encourage people,
if you are having great conversations to document them right about to share them.
It doesn't matter so that other people can feel connected. Well, and that
was your line right as you saw Rocky and Billy arguing over the first version
of dot net and thought everybody should hear. Everybody should hear this conversation.
Yeah, because it was two really great minds that there were a couple of
times. I don't know if we actually did a show, but we did
attempt to record conversations in the lobbies of hotels, because there's this magic that
happened somewhere around nine to thirty in the lobby of the Hilton after the you
know the thing, and everyone's kind of quiet and tired, and they're coming
down from an exciting day one or day two. Yeah, and then they're
reflective, and then there's just VI. We did a show Dot and Rock's
called The Speaker's Lounge, and you were on it, and I will be
quizzing you about these shows after the break. I don't remember any of the
things that you said. I'm worrying them multiple choice and yeah, it was
very much like that. And that was the reason, because we all had
these great conversations in the hallways outside or in the speaker's line literally trying to
catch or the hallway track, right. But you make the point, it's
like there were certain times in the day where you're more reflective and it's a
great time to catch a story. Nighttime quiet is the time for me.
That's what I'm reflective or when I'm retired. Well, I definitely remember you
and I doing like a handsol minutia in the corner of a lobby of a
hotel somewhere and in the evening and you know, just riffing. My most
fond lobby of a hotel moment was in Stockholm and you busted out a guitar,
which he started doing. What did you do? I've got the video.
I was recording on a flipcam. Nice what this is pre smartphone and
you had a guitar and you just busted out some I don't know what it
was it was. I'm not a classic rock guy, but you just started
started busking in the middle of the lobby of the hotel and I had a
flip phonel like me. It was freaking amazing. Yeah, you know what
I mean. Definitely said a vibe. So, speaking of music, I
experienced this from the opposite side in music right in the music business. I
am not popular. I did not ride the wave of the sixties and seventies,
and I wasn't in the right place at the right time in la when
the things were happening. But so the music business. You know, I
feel like I was born too late to be noticed, and so by the
time I was good enough as an artist, according to me, to create
an album, it was harder and harder, like albums didn't exist anymore,
and oh, now we're in cassettes. So then I started making home cassettes.
But you know, and then CDs, and I thought, okay,
I'll make a CD. By the time I was able to afford studio production
and make a CD that was right on the right about the time where people
didn't want CDs anymore. So I kind of feel ripped off a little bit.
But now that vinyl is coming back, I'm actually going to do a
vinyl album. I would buy a Carl Franklin vinyl press. Wouldn't be cool,
that'd be amazing. It's not going to be cheap either, but it's
going to be full of Kickstarter Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But also,
you know, it's interesting with that vinyl movement is really the music as ceremony.
Yes, one thing I don't know people know this, but you and
I have been hanging around with each other for a fairly long time, fairly
long time, and one thing I know about you, you do love to
play, but you want people to listen. Yeah, you are not willing
to be background noise. It's very soul draining when I have those and you're
you're volunteering, you're not being paid, Like you're just going to play.
I just want to play. Yeah, Home at Last. Okay, that
was the song. That was a song that's one of your favorites. It
was I did a video of that actress, a silver video. You did
a video with you playing each individual yeah thing. It was an experimenting video
for you as well as you're using the civil publishing engine. It was very
Jacob Callier. Uh, you were you know what I mean. You were
just riffing and like it was very early earlier on because people now do those
kind of videos all the time, where like you bring in the next person
and it's the same guy in a different run and the Battle of Woodford and
every shot shot. I did a better one called Waiting for the Summer to
Come where I actually had one shot with all me in it in four different
instruments at the same time, and I can zoom and pan across it.
It's really cool. I remember that one too. But anyway, so I'm
wondering what developers that are younger think. I mean, are the golden years
of software development gone? Does it matter that Gen Z and millennials didn't grow
up on the bleeding edge? Does it? Does having more choices today from
sophisticated tools and platforms make it easier or harder to break in? You talked
about this makes it harder to get noticed. But do you You told me
that your goal now is to be the mister rogers of development and sort of
talk to the young people. What kind of feedback are you getting from the
young people that about writing software, about you know, the things that we
were doing versus now today. I think that the stack is really deep,
yeah, and most people go kind of to HTTP and not much far.
I think that a lot of things that we learned building home networks, you
just buy a you know, Google Mesh or whatever and it just just works.
So I'll make a comment about you know, rest, and then we'll
start talking about HDDP, and then we're talking about TCP and then we hit
we hit the granite very quickly and magic network stuff. Yeah, and then
and then a miracle happens. I love it. I mean, I you
know, we're all storytellers here, and I do know. I can engage
people to take them down through the stack and those things, and they often
are interested. Uh it's not always try to ask first. But you talk
about the old guy know. The old guy know is well I had to
learn this before I could work, so you have to learn this before ye,
right, So the example that I give, uh, you know,
and to try to give a gender non specific old guy know here, which
is the my sixteen year old wants to drive, so should he learn how
to drive stick? And the fact is he doesn't need to drive stick,
not in America, you know, if in Europe, or he wants to
experience far fag Neugan. You know, in America three to four percent of
cars are stick. In Europe it's more like fifty or sixty. But the
point is he lives here. So then the question is, well, uber
is a thing. Well, we don't live in a big, big city.
But there are perfectly cromulent New Yorkers that are living their lives without ever
having gotten their licenses. My stepdaughter is one of them. And that's fine.
So if I were to insist and say, well, young man,
you have to change your oil and change your tire and learn how to drive
stick. And then I'll give you an automatic and you have to learn how
to code an assembler and debug a dump, and then I'll give you a
garbage collector. That would be disrespectful, but to let them know that the
information is available if they want. I always have been couraged, and people
who've heard me before we'll say that, yeah, this is your handsleman.
It's like six phrases, but take the level that you're currently working at and
go one level below your comfort zone. So if you're a JavaScript person,
like understand how V eight works. If you are a dottinet person, how
does the CLR work. You don't have to learn how to like smelt your
own iron or generate electricity, right. You don't have to take the rock
and inject lightning and make it think. But it's it's nice to have a
sense of systems thinking and how these things all shut together. And I will
say though, that there are people, there are personalities, there are types
of people who are naturally systems thinkers. One of the stories that I love
to tell was doing a Black Girl's Code presentation, and I was saying,
we're gonna learn how to code. We're going to debug a problem. Hey,
let's debug a problem. All the kids all have fourteen fifteen year old
high school kids, and I said, all right, everybody, my toaster
is broken. And I pause and I make it really awkward, and I
say, I really want toast. And they're like, well, you should
buy a new toaster, and I said, that's one way to solve it.
We can probably do that. But what if I buy a new toaster
and it doesn't work? And then someone's like, well, is there is
there any electricity? Is there power? And they're all sitting there thinking,
and then one girl in the back yells out, do the neighbors have power?
Look outside? Are the lights on on the street. We're talking about
toast. All I wanted was hot bread and and And that's a that's a
programmer, Like whoever she is, she's wired. She's like, it's probably
DNS. Look outside, it's okay. But the fundamental the the like going
from point A to point D or point G. That's how programmers like to
bug things. And the fact that she was able to go I understand the
system in which the toaster exists, and exists in one where power is a
thing, right, and maybe maybe the neighborhood had of power out it.
Yeah, that's great, it's great context. I've also come to be really
comfortable with the idea that they're not only different species of programmers, but they're
all and there are that are their best selves. You know. They're not
all developers are the same. They're not even close to the same. You
know. It's one of the biggest problems you deal with is folks thinking,
well, I can plug any programming to any problem. It's just not true.
You know, certainly, working around Microsoft as I have for so many
years, it's like, do you know how many places are to work where
you write programming languages like five? And the folks that are good at that,
that love that, they're a different species and it's the same like building
great teams over the years is like that guy loves networking, he's got a
knack for it. Like that's the piece he wants to follow your bliss.
Yeah, following your bliss and value each of them. And good leaders go
and put the puzzle pieces together. Well, everybody doing their favorite thing,
and it makes the whole thing. Scott Hunter likes to say, if you're
putting together a team, a basketball team. You should hire for height,
right, So I don't care. I don't care about your I've tid this
before. I don't care about your degree, where you came from, your
your native language. If you're tall, I can teach you the ballhand and
dribbling. Yeah, so like, oh I learned you know, like I
learned JavaScript. Okay, we'll teach a C sharp. I learned rust,
Okay, we'll teach a VB. Or it's easier. It's easier for a
tall person to just put the ball, just just put it in exactly,
just reach over. And and of course to our friends who may not get
that analogy we were talking about like intellectual height, just like if you're if
you're professionally curious, if you're excited. One of my most favorite programmers is
Sofia Abdullah on the sp dot net team. She's so grat beast and I
think she didn't even know C sharp when she came to work at the company.
She was a Python person right now, but she you can see her
like the matrix. She's putting code together in her brain and snapping things together.
So it's not about the syntax, it's about just before we break here,
my brother was an marine engineer naval architect, and so he went to
school for an ann arbor for engineering, got his degree, and then he
was like, I don't like this anymore. And I was like, yeah,
you should get into programming. So he took a VB class. After
graduating the VB class, he went right to work for a company learning Java,
JavaScript, mumps like. There was like several languages that he learned and
he's been there ever since because he could just adapt. He had the engineer
brain. Yeah, and all of those examples that we're giving are examples of
people feeling empowered, being empowered by the people around them, Like you're encouraging
him, and I want the young people in the early in career of people
the code switchers, to feel empowered. One of my faves is a gentleman
named Lawrence who's on Twitter at Lawrence Codes. He was in the hospitality for
twenty five years wow, and he started being curious about tech and he's like,
there's no reason I can't do that? Why not me? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, why not be? Why not? That very powerful statement?
Yeah? All right, well, before we move on, let's take
this pause for a few very important messages we'll be right back. We're back.
It's not in at Rocks. I'm Carl Franklin. That's Richard Campbell and
our friend Scott Hansomen is here. It's show nineteen hundred. Can you believe
it? I can? And I guess it's a quiz time. Well you're
up, man, I was not told there would be a quiz, No
way before we do the quiz. Is there anything that, any sole message
that you want to tell the people from your perspective as a VP, from
being here at build? What's the message if you if you like a thing,
or if you don't like a thing, vote with your feet. Interesting,
you have power, You have you power if you don't if you don't
like it, tell people that you don't like it. If you like it,
tell people that you like it. Microsoft is not a monolith. It's
a big giant company. It's three hundred thousand people. Sure it's your quote
that is that, Yeah, we are not organized enough to be as evil
as you're accusing us of being. Oh yeah, yeah, we are not
as organized as to be as evil as you think we are. Yeah.
Absolutely, We're just a bunch of stormtroopers running around on the way each other
way at each other in the desk star. No, but like, there's
a lot of really smart people have empathy because every feature, every button,
everything, every idea was a human behind it. And if you presume that
they're doing their very best to make a fun and exciting and fair and safe
and responsible private product for you, engage with those people because they're all out
there. You don't see Apple engineers on social media. You can't just find
the owner of the thing. No, they're strictly against Actually, Apple employees
aren't allowed to a bit. They were for app. Yeah, to Microsoft's
credit, if you like a thing, or you don't like a thing,
you can find that person say hey, here's some feedback, and we'll usually
listen. And I think I'm not off base by saying one of your catchphrases,
don't be mean, don't be a dick, You'll get a lot further.
Yeah, I actually had a T shirt I was going to wear it
today that said work hard and be nice Nice, but it doesn't fit anymore.
Well, there's a classic photo of you, is very old of you
holding up a post it note that says why so mean? Yeah, I
just think well should be pleasant, that's all. Yeah, I agree.
All right, let's get into the quiz. So what I did was I
went back through all the shows that you were ever in and I pulled out
some questions that we asked you were things that you said, and we're going
to see how well you're how good You do know that I am not known
for a memory like I live in a so this should be a less one.
I live in a blissful window of three days in either direction. All
right, I don't know what's going on. First question in episode seventeen,
published in March two thousand three, I asked you what is the one Windows
tool you can't live without? And you said A seven zip, B,
Dave's Search bar, or C open Office two thousand and three. I don't
think that seven zip existed in two thousand and three. I think it was
win rar for arg which you still haven't paid for. I did the research.
Seven zip didn't did exist in two thousand and three. Two thousand and
three. Dave's search bar. I like to quick run, slick run,
and to open office, I would half to it's gonna be either it's not
open Office, it's gonna be Dave's search bar, or it's gonna be seven
zip pick one. Let's go with dave search bar. Here's the answer.
You know, if I could say there's one tool that I would install Windows
and then install that tool, it would be Dave's search bar. That's awesome.
Oh my god. All right, here's here's to pull that out of
the area. Well reasoned, good lord? Yeah, all right. So
in episode fifty one from February two thousand and four, you told us you
had laser surgery on your eyes. God, what you did? What was
the startling fact that you discovered during this process that A the laser itself was
hot pink, and you were waiting for Nurse Barbie to walk in. B
you were surprised to learn you would not be under general anesthesia or C.
The machine was running Windows ninety eight, see one hundred percent. I mentioned
this yesterday, no kidding, because I was talking to Shandei piers person and
she just got Lasik and I pulled out that out of the archives that I
in fact had a very old here's the answer. I had laser surgery on
my eyes a couple of days ago. Really, and damn it, if
the machine wasn't running Windows ninety eight, I have nothing if not consent.
It was Rory yeah, yeah, said really yeah, oh wow, yeah
it was okay, you're You've battened a thousand so far. In episode seventy
called The Speaker's Lounge, which we talked about, recorded July two thousand and
four, you had sent me a bunch of topics that we could talk about.
And when I asked you, what's on your mind? What did you
answer? A? You were fascinated with the artist Usher, b the final
episode of Friends made you weep like a baby, or see you forgot the
list of topics? What year was this? Two thousand and four July two
thousand and four, fascinated with Usher final episode of Friends made you cry?
Or you forgot the list. I'm going to say it's Usher, but it's
probably I forgot the list of topics. Here's the answer. So we want
to know what's on your mind? And I guess Scott brought up some good
topics. Scott, what's on your mind? Uh? I think I emailed
it to you and then at that point I've forgotten it. I'm taking that
one as the whim. Absolutely it should have been sure. I remember you
and I planning out a handsel Manu show. Oh no, we've sort of
padded some stuff back and forth what we were going to talk about. And
then you went to Chipotle inevitably and got on their Wi Fi and their WiFi
had been hijacked. Oh I remember. Then you came and when you got
it like an hour later. We made this perfect planets like I'm going to
get something, I'll come back and then we'll record. Okay, get back.
We are only gonna talk about hijacked Wi fi from now on that whole
show. They had a root kit on their on the Yeah, I became
friends with the manager and I had to go and get the root kick off
the router because it was you helped them. Yeah, it was great because
it's my favorite Chipotlet use that Wi Fi that wife. It's as much it's
a public service. And what was it was hijacking DNS. Yeah, sending
people to bad signs. And I mean, I'm the kind of guy I
also can roll with that too. I think we ended up talking. We
didn't talk about all kinds of exploits going on. I'm impressed you pulled the
audio. That's that's a nice you know me? I next level, man,
I have these all right. So, an episode one hundred and seven
with you and Rory Blythe recorded April two thousand and five, I asked you
how many readers your blog, which was computer then at the time, had,
and you said A over ten thousand b somewhere between one thousand and eight
thousand or see most of my traffic is spam. The answer was probably a.
But I'm gonna say it's c here we go. I don't refer to
them as readers. It's usually spam. I most of my traffic spam.
Remember Rory's Google weirdos? Oh god, it's so funny, the funniest thing
we ever did on Rock. I'm just looking for the search strings that people
found his site on because he talked about such random stuff, right, cooking
with pig milk? All right? So I actually played this one and asked
Phil Hack about this. But in episode four hundred and fifty eight with You
and Phil Hack, recorded June two thousand and nine at NDC, you talked
about yours and Phil's NDC talk where you Scott Hansman set up an aspnut website
and Phil hacked into it by sending you a video by email that you clicked
on. What was the video of a a hamster on a piano b Michael
Jackson's autop scene or see a steamy scene from True Blood hopefully as both of
the other ones are problematic. Yeah, here we go. And then I
got this email from my good buddy Phil Hack that said, check out the
picture. This this video rather of a hamster on a piano. Who doesn't
like seeing ham on pianos? Right? I like him. I like piano,
so that would be great. So I click on it and it takes
me to his website, which then generates a fake form post with JavaScript.
And then because I was already logged into my banking site, he basically form
posted over sideways to my site and then you started a transfer to take money
away from me. Wow. That and I would talk to Phil about that.
That's a great talk. I mean, you know hacking Live, you
know legit, legit. Okay. So in episode five hundred and eighty two,
published in August twenty ten, we were talking about the web platform installer
and Richard pointed out that there were a lot of apps you could install.
What was your reaction, A, there are more apps than you can shake
a stick at. Sounds like you be so many apps, it's ridiculous.
Or see a metric as load. Oh it'll be see sure about it?
Oh yeah, okay, every question. Well, and it's a ton of
apps in here, right, I mean there's a whole e commerce section of
this. There is a metric ass load. It's you used. But you
know when I was researching this, fine, well, at least they use
the metric measurements because that way they are divisible. Imperiod. Yeah. But
you know, here's the thing. Those other two answers are legitimate. Last
very much something Yeah, all right. In episode seven and thirty one,
published January twenty twelve, I read a tweet by one Matt Rock which read
getting an IM from Scott Hanselman in an intro to Richard Campbell is like,
what A like my daughter getting the same from I Carly and Justin Bieber,
B Like Bill Clinton getting a letter stating that he had won Big Max for
Life, or CE like Lindsey Lohan accepting the Best Actress Academy Award for her
role in the Lifetime movie Liz and Dick. I don't know what B and
CR. So I'm going to Oh, that's good. Listen to this tweet
from Matt Rock getting an I am from Scott Hansman and an intro to rich
Campbell is like my daughter getting the same from I Carley and Justin Bieber.
I think you're Bieber. I think Scott's Bieber. I could go with that
nice to be very nice. Richard pulls out exactly what his reaction was.
Then, how you guys remember this stuff? I don't remember what I had
for lunch here. Richard remembers everything. I don't remember anything. My wife
hates that she remembers random conversations on random Tuesday. I don't know what day
it is. I'm wonder why I'm so happy in chow because I don't remember
any worry about. In episode eight hundred with You and Rob Connery, published
September twenty twelve, you told us of a place you'd like to go to
work and watch people. Was it a Starbucks, B McDonald's or c the
Multima County Library? What was the context? So you told us of a
place you like to go to work and watch people, Starbucks, McDonald's or
the Multima County Library Noma County? What year is this? Twenty twelve?
Twenty twelve? McDonald's really okay? Moltoma County libraries are deep cut, but
I didn't. Let't live Indoma County. Okay, let me just come out
and say it. I'll just confess I was at McDonald's earlier. Hang on,
mcdiabet's meal, they hang on now they have there are there's free WiFi,
and there are things you can buy at McDonald's that are not bad.
There you go, You got it right, Okay, So now let's move
on episode Hey, I'm sweeping this are killing it? My goodness. In
episode eight hundred and five with you and Chris Sales, which we recorded on
the twenty twelve road trip and published in September of that, we totally lost
control of that show. At one point just went off. You were speaking
of how people who post comments on your blog are me and that had made
you afraid to post anything at all. And Richard asks you why you allow
anonymous comments at all, and your answer was A I believe in free Hey,
you can't google this. What is your answer was? I believe in
A. I believe in free speech, even if it hurts my feelings.
And this is why you allow anonymous comments on your blog? Twenty twelve b
Because karma I mean mean commenters have to sleep at night too, or see
because I don't know how to make oth work. Oh man, probably all
of those, but I'm gonna go a see. Okay, here's the answer.
Well, the question is why are you allowing anonymous comments at all?
I don't know how to make oth work. I mean, well, you
gotta give me is a huge fail. No, but you gotta give me
credit for at least knowing myself. So the pause, that's what you answered.
It is perfect because because I don't know how to make it well,
because the pause there is do I be honest? Or do I not be
honest? Do I say something funny trying to say something honest? Yeah?
Oh my goodness. Great. Okay, so the last one here In episode
eleven and thirty one open source panel discussion at dot net Fringe, published in
eight for fifteen, you called comments by James Newton quote either elitist or mean
after he said one of the following statements about Visual Studio. A. Linux
is the only operating system I will use for development. B It makes you
want to kill yourself every time you open it or see dot net. It
doesn't suck anymore. This is what I said, or what he said,
No, what he said, he said B And I called him out on
it, and he now run this thing on Linux. You can now you
can now build it with tools that don't make you want to kill yourself every
time you open them. You can see what are statements like that helpful?
But it depended honest, like, I hear what you're saying, because I
feel like seventy five percent of what you're saying I agree with, and then
twenty five percent is either elitist or mean. Boy, that was a tense
moment. Well, I mean, it was a good one. The problem
was that he's he's, he's he has valid feedback. Sure, and if
you have good feedback, that's great, put it in an envelope and mail
it. But if the envelope is a rock and you tape the message to
the rock and throw it through my window, I'm probably not going to read
the note. Yeah, you're less inclined to go along with the other side.
So I mean, I then got accused of being mean because I because
elitist was a statement or whatever. But you know, dude, that was
not necessary. I also remember talking to you mean yeah, but you called
me as I was driving back from that show from as An our drivers driving
back from Portland, and we I think we talked for three hours and then
at the end we always go, we should have recorded this every time.
I don't. I think that one actually, that one was pretty personal.
You just you don't. You are not normally a confrontational person. You want
to you want to tell the truth, and I appreciate when you are.
You know, it's not like you do it for fun. I thought it
was a very good moment. I think most people thought it was a very
good moment. But I know, I know, I've known you long enough
to know that isn't an easy thing for you to do either, right,
And we end up talking for quite a while about it afterwards. Well,
yeah, I mean, you don't want to be unnecessarily confrontational, no,
like, but I also don't want to be dismissive of people's feelings. So,
like, you know, I do have a certain amount of like,
it's not that deep, man, for some people, it is that deep.
Yeah, but you know you should consider I wrote a blog post called
software and Saving Babies nice, you know, like is it software? Is
it saving babies or is it literally baby saving software? Like you've got to
go and think about all the different things you're working on and then compare it
to whether or not we're saving babies. Right, maybe the wrong ad gets
served because you're working on ad serving software, right, or maybe you're working
on a video and the guy doesn't jump at the right time. But like,
are you saving babies? So it feels like it's a huge bug or
it's a huge problem, but it's probably not that big of a deal to
you. Yeah, breath, it's gonna be okay, let's work the problem.
So I'm very much like the older I get, the more like,
let's just chill out, let's solve the problem. It's gonna be okay,
it's gonna be So that's naive perhaps, but also a little bit optimistic.
Yeah, before we go, let's talk a little bit more about these mean
people who we've been referencing. Not necessarily James, but there are people out
there that love to throw darts at people with power, maybe people with celebrity,
as a means of furthering themselves or getting noticed. Anyway. I noticed
this in the very early days of dot net rocks. I would get people
who couldn't just come out and say Hey, I would like to be a
guest on your show. Here's what I have to say. They had to
instead throw rocks in, you know. You mean the classic was the angry
blog post referencing a show, right, and then we'd be people coming to
us. You got to respond to that. I'm like, no, no,
no, really, don't don't really want to do that. It doesn't
make that. I'm only going to do something that makes a situation better.
There was one of these people who was very mean. We actually ended up
engaging them and they ended up ruining their career and that was just the way
it went. But you know, it's sort of I'm not going to say
who it is, but it sort of speaks to the karma of the situation
that you never know who you're talking to or talking about. So be real
and don't be a jerk. Well, I don't want to. I have
no problem with James. I had a problem only with that sentence. Yeah,
so I want to make sure if James is listening to this, the
point was seventy five percent valid, and I have no problem with him.
So yeah, I don't like it makes me uncomfortable that we're talking about people
at all on a podcast. But I do believe in karma, and I
do believe that if you're kind consistently for decades, then good things will happen.
But it gets back to the very beginning of the show, the difference
between stop energy and and yes and energy. If you're a hater for a
long time, I'm convinced that it's going to cause high blood pressure and cholesterol
and heart heart disease, and you know, people, it would just it
would be very, very hard to live one hundred year plus life and everything
sucks. Yeah, try to be positive and try to be constructive, but
feedback. The great thing about pessimism is you usually write and occasionally pleasantly surprised.
Now I'm a perpetual optimist. Yeah, yeah, I know that I
know that much about you, And as funny as I may be at this
moment, I am too. And as I said, integrity is your middle
name. And everybody should realize that a taco silly quiz you just did a
proof of the integrity. Absolutely know. I'm impressed with myself because I was
literally I had no idea. You didn't tell me there's any freaking quiz.
That's a surprise. Yeah, you didn't tell me it's gonna be a twenty
years of of you have recordings like you've got tapes. Franklin brought receipts.
But at least I am nothing if not consistent. Due I learned from that.
Yeah, you still are really red or not? Thanks for doing it's
nineteen hundred with us, Ben, Yeah, absolutely my pleasure. Thank you.
Be sure to listen to handsle minutes. Yeah, yeah, that's right,
because this is also a handsome minute, isn't it. Yeah, we'll
turn around, we'll make this hands minutes as well. That'll be fantastic.
Yeah, all right, we'll see you next time. I'm dotting it right.
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next time. You got Jamal Vans and