To all those don’t meet you yet. How do you describe yourself?
My name is Scott Hanselman. I’m a programmer, teacher, and speaker. I work out of my home office in Portland, Oregon for the Web Platform Team at Microsoft, but my blog, its content and opinions are my own. I blog about technology, culture, gadgets, diversity, code, the web, where we’re going and where we’ve been. I’m excited about community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web.
I have three podcasts and a YouTube channel. One podcast is a weekly talk show on tech, one an occasional one hour essay on developer’s lives, and one a social media and tech culture show with my friend Luvvie.
When you started developing, what were some common mistakes you made along the way?
Not asking questions of people who were senior than I.
Frontend seems to be easy until you start to learning. How do you face the challenge of learning new things?
Breathe. Set aside quiet time. Read, repeat. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
What would you qualify as the top few problems facing developers today?
Folks today don’t really understand how things work. They just google or stack overflow and copy/paste.
How would you recommend somebody to start learning web development?
Now’s the perfect time to buy your kids/nieces/cousins some robots. Robots are a great way to get children excited about computers. Robots get them stoked in a way that a simple Hello World console app just can’t.
If you’re not careful you can spent hundreds on robots. However, I’m notoriously frugal and I believe that you can build some amazing stuff with children with a reasonable budget.
- Continue reading here.
What are the things you would have known when you first started?
I would have read “Code” by Charles Petzold more often and tried to understand the full stack.
When starting a new project, if you feel stuck where do you look for inspiration?
I walk. I also call friends.
What was your first development job and how you faced it?
I worked on a Car Fax system in VB3 and SQL 4.2.1. I read a lot and asked a lot of questions.
What was the most challenging project you ever faced and why?
Large scale banking systems. It was hard because there is a lot of regulations in banking.
Can you describe your workflow when you create HTML, CSS and JavaScript from scratch?
I use Yeoman and Visual Studio Code.
What excites you most these days?
3D Printing.
What is the most important thing you’ve learned?
To phone a friend when you are stuck.
Do you have any favorite books, videos, or resources that you could share with the readers?
Do you have any advice for new developers just starting their career journey?
What can we expect from Scott in the future? Anything you want to share?
I’m just continuing to learn.
