Introducing Scott Hanselman

Scott Hanselman is a programmer, teacher, and speaker who works on open source at Microsoft. His blog at hanselman.com has been running for over 15 years. In addition to writing a number of books, Scott hosts several podcasts, including Hanselminutes, which recently published its 700th episode. Scott talks about code, tech, culture, gadgets, diversity, code, and the open web. An avid presenter, Scott has spoken in person about code and coding to over half a million developers worldwide. Find Scott on Twitter: @shanselman.

Geertjan Wielenga: Do you see yourself as a developer advocate?

Scott Hanselman: Perhaps, but for some there's a generational gap with developer advocates. You have people in their early 20s who treat the role differently. I've made software for over 20 years and even now, I'm still not 100% comfortable saying, "I'm a developer advocate," because some people feel that developer advocates aren't doing any work; they're just running around giving talks at conferences.

Geertjan Wielenga: That is work, isn't it?

Scott Hanselman: The problem is that there are a lot of young people who have never built anything. How can you advocate for developers if you've never built anything? I tend to disappear for several months, ship something, and then talk about it.

We, as advocates, should seek to find a balance between building and talking—in that middle space we can find advocacy.

What I worry about is people in their early 20s who have never shipped anything working as developer advocates. They might get to 30 or 40 years old without building software. What are they talking about at conferences? Are they simply marketing people with charm?

I'm a big fan of the Kelsey Hightowers of the world: people who build stuff and then talk about it. I try to follow that. Should developer advocates give talks professionally 100% of the time? They also need to take [customer] feedback to their team, so you really need to dissect the word "advocacy."

If Oracle does something wrong and doesn't hear my voice, I can call you. Microsoft has 130,000 employees and I've got followers on Twitter. I need those followers to be able to say, "I've got a buddy who works at Microsoft. Hanselman will help us." I'm not their buddy in real life, but they do know that I will advocate on their behalf.

Geertjan Wielenga: What do you focus on building?

Scott Hanselman: My main goal is to open source .NET, which means making sure that we're doing the right thing in the entire stack. .NET historically wasn't open source and there were patent issues. Our larger team is currently working to merge .NET, Mono, and .NET Framework, and make sure that our licenses and codes of conduct are solid.

I need to be able to hear all voices. Someone wanted to do something on Linux on a container a couple of weeks ago. The license wasn't right, so we fixed it.

Geertjan Wielenga: What led you to Microsoft in the first place?