Hanselminutes - Fresh Talk and Tech for Developers

Ada Rose is an engineer and developer advocate for Samsung. Her passion for the open web and VR has led her to explore WebVR deeply. She explains to Scott why this open technology may be the next big thing!

Mina Markham built "Pantsuit," Hillary for America’s internal design system. The core CSS architecture of Pantsuit is based around a combination of SMACSS and Harry Roberts’ ITCSS, along with his brilliant namespacing patterns. How complex are systems like this? How does a well-documented styleguide and system improve your developer's workflow?

Most of us started talking to computers with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and were somewhat disappointed. Now with Siri, Cortana, and Alexa it's getting better...fast. Scott talks with Kimberley Hansen about her startup Signl.fm and how they are aiming to change how podcasts to transcripts in the race to 100% comprehension. Check the transcript at https://transcripts.hanselminutes.com/

Jerome Hardaway left the Air Force and saw an add for Code.org on Facebook. Working his way through CodeAcademy tutorials and online courseware he's turned himself into a polyglot developer. What kinds of strengths can vets bring to the world of code?

I'm in New York this week checking in with Joel Spolsky from StackExchange/StackOverflow. Big things are happening in Joel's world. They've just hired Anil Dash to be the CEO of FogCreek and launched a new product. What's it like to be Joel and what's it like to NOT suck at Excel?

Nolan Lawson sparked a niche debate with his statement "In 2016, it’s okay to build a website that doesn’t work without JavaScript." In this show Nolan explains what he meant by this, and dissects the concept of Progressive Enhancement in web apps today. Where will the next billion web surfers come from and what do their apps look like?

Angie Jones is a Consulting Automation Engineer who advises several agile teams on automation strategies and has developed automation frameworks for countless software products. She challenges us to consider including Automation earlier in the product development cycle. Is Automation included in your company's "Definition of Done?"

Dr. Henry Segerman works at Oklahoma State University in the Department of Mathematics. He's looking at interesting ways to visualize mathmatics using 3D printing! Is this a new idea or a new take on an old one? Is tactile 3D math easier to pick up and understand?

Una Kravets is front-end developer who works at Digital Ocean, has worked for IBM, spoken all over, and likes to rethink things. She's written about rethinking everything from JavaScript to Responsive Design to Harry Potter! She also wonders if we need JavaScript! She educates Scott in this episode about all things webby.

You may know Amir from his #1 AppStore Game "A Dark Room." Amir is a programmer who has learned (and continues to learn) multiple programming languages. Is being a polyglot programmer a good idea for all programmers? Which languages should you start with?

Does the tech industry have an alcohol problem? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Does the alcohol have a place on the job? At parties? How far does one go? Scott talks to Victor Yocco about a way to think about drinking in the workplace.

Scott talks to Data Scientist Safia Abdalla about the rise of python notebooks and new ways to think about interactive computing, both online and off. What is "interactive literate coding" and how does it change computing for both the technical and not-quite-technical user? All this and Safia teaches Scott about the "nteract" project.

You've pair programmed but have you tried Mob Programming? Woody Zuill and his team "discovered" programming as a group and it changed their whole process. Woody joins Scott and explains how they stumbled on this, how they refined it, and how Mob Programming may make your programming life better.

Sandi Metz and Scott explore the art and science of teaching. How to people learn? How can we be better teachers? When presenting information, what's the best way to get it from your brain into the students? Why am I phrasing everything like a question? All this and more on this week's episode.

Iheanyi Ekechukwu is a Product Engineer with Digital Ocean. He has a background in both design and development. Are such people unicorns? How closely should designers work with developers? Are these truly separate practices...and how separate?