Staying Curious with Scott Hanselman

Scott Hanselman: The death of curiosity and the idea of doing your own research is really just looking for someone's opinion that agrees with you is not the same thing, right? Like the death of science and, and vibe Coding can theoretically cause people to not agree with like how computers should work. I.

Justin Garrison: Welcome to Fork Around and find out the podcast about building, running, and maintaining software and systems.

Scott Hanselman: I think you just faff FOD right there, y'all.

Justin Garrison: Oh geez. We, that's a verb now. Wow. Welcome to Fork Around and find out. I am Justin Garrison and with me is Autumn and Scott Hanman today. Welcome Scott. I. Hey friends, this is turning into the show and tell episode of, uh, Scott's, uh, Scott's office and all the cool things you can do as a Microsoft employee.

Scott Hanselman: Well, no, I would respectfully push back on that. It's not all the things you can do as a Microsoft employee. It's all the things you can do as a person who wants to build crazy stuff in your spare bedroom.

Justin Garrison: We also started with a little bit of, uh, burrito hacks, which was fascinating. All the things you can do at fast food places, uh, to max out all of your credits, which is just always fun to learn about.

Scott Hanselman: We who love Chipotle prefer to refer to it as fast casual.

Autumn Nash: Can we just talk about the fact that Scott has a taco next to his name, like

Justin Garrison: you just saw it? That was, I just

Autumn Nash: like, like I would be like, I would scroll through half of TikTok just to watch Scott talk about his Chipotle that day. Be like, we're on the same page.

Like, you understand my life.

Justin Garrison: Scott's holding up his, uh, his Chipotle VIP card, the, what is it called? The the burrito card?

Scott Hanselman: It's the burrito card, yeah. It's what they give you. If you have way too much Chipotle. It's the, it's the American Express Black Card of Chipotle. Okay.

Autumn Nash: Y'all can't see it though, but Scott's name is on the burrito card.

Justin Garrison: It's bespoke. Yeah. They, they, they print that for you. Speaking of printing, uh, Scott is also the reason that Autumn and I both have Bamboo Lab printers.

Autumn Nash: Scott Tova here is spending everybody's paycheck.

Justin Garrison: Do not become Scott's friend. If you do not, do not

Autumn Nash: follow him on social media, money will disappear out of your bank account.

Oh my, my gosh. Did you seriously print that

Scott Hanselman: that was printed? This is, I'm holding up a bronze Mandalorian helmet that was printed in one shop. With no sanding on a Bamboo labs. And then

Autumn Nash: how did you print that in one shot?

Scott Hanselman: This is multiple shots. You can see I have a nasty seam right here. That's a Fallout helmet that was printed in two.

Justin Garrison: Oh my gosh.

Scott Hanselman: That is, that's a bamboo that was printed at nine. That's a bamboo. It's a Mandalorian helmet printed at 97% on a bamboo labs P one s in one shot. That fits on a P one s. Nope.

Justin Garrison: Oh my gosh, Scott, I'm gonna have to go buy more filament.

Autumn Nash: I aspire to be the level of nerds that have like finally made it, and you have enough money for Chipotle and to do nerd stuff.

Like Scott, like that's, that's goals. What y'all, you can't see it, but Scott just walked over here with a full sword like this. That's the mandalian

Justin Garrison: has to be video. Okay. What's it called? The dark saber.

Scott Hanselman: That's a dark saber.

Justin Garrison: Yeah.

Scott Hanselman: Uh, you got sound effects and lights. One, uh, is 3D printed using plans from ADA Fruit and it runs Circuit Python and there's a,

Autumn Nash: it runs Python.

Scott Hanselman: Yeah. Yeah. So I pop this open here at the bottom. There's a python feather from ADA Fruit down there, and then there's a button right here, and I don't, you probably can't hear it, but it, it turns on and then it lights up.

Justin Garrison: I heard some of the sound effects, but I'm sure, uh, descrip or whatever we use to make this audio better, we'll remove it right away.

I think

Scott Hanselman: that they're removing the sound effects from the, uh, podcast. It's

Justin Garrison: background noise. We don't want that, but I

Autumn Nash: love that this shows that Scott is constantly. Building projects and figuring out how like, like things work. Like it's the epitome of being a, like all the time, engineer all the things that like you enjoy.

You find a way to hack or build or make more of. And I love that.

Scott Hanselman: Well, I appreciate that. I just, you gotta push back against the chaos or cause some of the chaos, right?

Justin Garrison: Like this, Scott, you've been, you've been in tech, in software for, for a minute now. What do you think makes good engineers?

Scott Hanselman: If we put it in the context of ai, one of the things that I've been talking about is that AI is going to make the incurious.

Less curious. If you already don't ask questions, you're in trouble. I think that an engineer should be curious. Like, I don't understand. This is just how I'm wired. I don't understand how you can not want to know how stuff works.

Autumn Nash: Yeah. That's my problem. It's the rabbit hole. Yeah. I'm like, oh my God, I wanna know everything.

Scott Hanselman: You know, like there's this question that people think is a controversial, um, question for, um, interviewing. I love this question, but I can, I can argue both sides if it's a horrible interview question or I could argue it's the best interview question ever. And the question is, tell me what happens when you go to google.com and you press enter.

The simplistic thing is, oh, that's a stupid question. It's um, it's trivia and you wanna know about H dtp and DNS and you wanna know how much trivia that they know. But I'm not asking you to tell me what you know. I'm asking you to imagine how it must work. And I want you to go as deep as you can. And one time I interviewed a guy and he says, well, how deep do you want to go?

And I said, let's go. Like how far can you go? And he says, well, let's start with the keyboard. You press enter and the metal contacts of the enter key touch. And then electrons jumped between, you know, the, those contacts. And he started going in and we spent like 20 minutes and he never got off the keyboard.

And into the USB,

Justin Garrison: he's like, is this wireless? Then someone probably just sniffed that outta the air and now someone knows you pushed enter and Right. So.

Scott Hanselman: The point is how do you think it must work? So you can ask a person who is not technical, who doesn't know DNS and HDDP, and just, okay, well go one level deeper.

Go one level deeper. And I think that's super interesting because it tells you if they're curious or not. Another example that I like to give a lot is it, I did this talk at like high school hackathons and I say, we're gonna learn how to code. Okay kids, yeah, we're gonna learn how to code. And I say, uh, my toaster doesn't work.

And then we pause, we make it super awkward and like, well, let's debug this toaster In curious people say, buy a new toaster in curious people are like, uh, does the power work? Uh, is it hot? One little girl said, are the neighbor's lights on?

Autumn Nash: Well. 'cause if the neighbor's lights aren't off, I mean aren't on that means power's out for the whole street.

She's smart. That's my favorite part of going to schools is because kids aren't broken yet. Kids think about all the things. They have abstract thinking as just like that's their first level of thinking. Everything is possible and they're so much fun to talk to.

Scott Hanselman: That is such a, it's DNS answer for, I want toast.

The neighbor's lights are off, power's off for the neighborhood. Therefore, and then it's also systems thinking. They understand that toast does not exist in, in a vacuum. It requires society and civilization and where did the toaster metal come from and the plastic and all that kinda stuff. So when you order crap on Temu, if you're not thinking about the giant ship spewing oil into the ocean as it goes across the Chinese sea, so you got a $1 piece of crap from Temo and you're not thinking about the system.

That the thing works in. So good engineers to answer your questions are curious and they think about that stuff,

Autumn Nash: which goes back to his shirt right now that says, be curious, not judgmental.

Justin Garrison: Two things. Have you read the book, the Toaster Project? I.

Scott Hanselman: Uh huh Yeah. When the guy tries to build a toaster from original parts and he has to go and selt his own iron.

Justin Garrison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Uh, second thing, I read a book about Leonardo da Vinci, which he, I didn't know this beforehand, was he was commonly considered the most curious person in history.

Scott Hanselman: That's an interesting, I don't know if that could be measured, but I, I, I wouldn't hate that.

Justin Garrison: Right. And it was, it was fascinating hearing all of the things.

'cause the thing I found most fascinating was he was not curious in a way that was trying to get him any sort of notoriety or sharing it. Like everything that we found out that he learned, we found out after the fact, right? It was like all private journals that he wasn't public. He published one book in his entire life that wasn't even like completely written by him.

He wasn't like sharing this with the world. He just wrote everything down. 'cause he wanted to learn it for himself. And he was so curious about so many different areas that he would just spend years. Oh, let me just dissect an eyeball. Literally would dissect an eyeball over and over again for like a year to figure out the best way to do it, what's inside of it.

Autumn Nash: You know who that reminds me of too? George Washington Carver. I think that's, he made I think 40 different ways to use a peanut and he used the different oils, peanut butter, but he used it for like medicinal things. He used it for like, I think he ended up using the oil to light, like, you know, like to burn a fire.

Like there it is just amazing. Like how, who would sit there with a peanut and say, I wanna use this 40 different ways. You know what I mean? Like he had so many patents and it's just like, I think that's gonna set people apart in the future. Being genuinely curious. Like I think for a long time people want it to be in tech because it made a bunch of money and we're gonna get back to like the people who just wanna sit there and know how everything works in obsessive detail.

Justin Garrison: Do we still, do companies still allow that in tech? No, and that's one of my concerns. Yeah, because like now companies are making all the money and they say you have to move faster. You can't spend a year on a peanut. Is that a, is that gonna be a concern for us going forward? I feel like AI can, it's already

Autumn Nash: a concern that the 10 x engineer and just break things and build things fast and as profitable as possible.

But we've lost all curiosity, all time to invent cool things.

Justin Garrison: Maybe our curiosity also just gets shallower, right? Like we only, a lot of people just like know a little bit about a lot of things, but rarely I know all

Autumn Nash: the people that we talk to on this podcast, everybody's got dips and depths of curiosity.

I think we're not allowing it to be showcased anymore.

Scott Hanselman: I think that if I, as an older person born of a certain generation with the privileges that I have had say to someone that you should learn, c, that can land wrong. Right?

Autumn Nash: Why? Why would that land wrong?

Scott Hanselman: Because, because it sounds like old dude who already did it, is telling young person do it the way I did.

Now I grew up with a dad who said, you gotta drive stick shift. And other people are like, Hey, I just can use Uber, man. The problem is when, when you're using Uber or God help me, Uber Eats and I say, well, before you're allowed to use Uber Eats, you need to make a garden in our backyard. So that you appreciate what food look looks like, right?

Like, hey, this drone will deliver tacos and then a man will come over and move my jaw for me because it's too hard to chew.

Autumn Nash: But that's valid though. 'cause I think AI is gonna make people dumber now. Dumber. 'cause like we're. Like, but like, because you don't have to go and do the work, right? And sometimes it's not the fact that you need the answer, it's going through the struggle of finding the answer and the things you learn along the way.

Scott Hanselman: Yeah. There's a, uh, I'm gonna pull this up on my screen over here, there. This was a, a horrible thing I saw today. Let bring this up. Uh, I called it a tragedy in three acts. There's a gentle, I'm not on Twitter right now, but there's a gentleman on Twitter who says, he, he says. Uh, March 15th. This is a tweet, my sas, my software as a service.

Uh, business was built with cursor zero handwritten code. AI is no longer just an assistant. It's also the builder stop whining and start building. That's March 15th. March 17th. Guys, I'm under attack. Ever since I started to build my SAS using Cursor, I maxed out on API Keys. People are bypassing the subscription and creating random crap in the db.

I'm not technical. So this is taking me longer than usual to figure out, okay, now March 19th, guys, I'm shutting down my app. You were right. I shouldn't have deployed Unsecured code to production. Cursor is breaking parts of the code. I'm gonna rebuild it with Bubble.

Autumn Nash: What is Bubble? Bubble

Scott Hanselman: is a no code platform for people who can't code.

But the point is, is that I vibe coding. I get it. Like I vibe coded a 3D Pro fractal thing that runs in the background that looks pretty and it like we took about 15 minutes rather than learning how to ride a shader in unity. Because it's fine. It's not going anywhere. And it was fun, but I don't think you vibe code like the social security database, right?

That's why the Doge boys are so dumb is just that like you can't vibe code your way out of government and cleaning up after Brownfield Enterprise applications is not built on vibes, it's built on knowledge. So I don't wanna gate keep vibe coating, but I at the same time need people to understand that somebody's gotta know how to change oil change tires.

Rebuild an engine and there's not a lot of software engineers on the Walking Dead. Like we don't really make it into season two or three of the Walking Dead. It's mostly people who know how to chop wood and like make food. So I wanna encourage people to go deeper.

Autumn Nash: Do you think that we are going to learn from this though?

Like or do you think we're like, do you think that we finally dispel the 10 X engineer and vibe coding at the end of this Dodge Fiasco? Like, does security become important? Do we all of a sudden realize that we are missing curiosity and like that we cannot do engineering in this way? Does this dispel the tech bro toxicity or does this No.

Like we're just gonna end up in the same thing?

Scott Hanselman: Well, that gets into a big longer conversation, but you're right, the death of curiosity and the idea of doing your own research is really just looking for someone's opinion that agrees with you is not the same thing, right? Like the death of science and, and vibe coding can theoretically cause people to not agree.

With like how computers should work and vibe coding will eventually turn into really, really good prompting, which will turn into quality code being generated. But that doesn't change the fact that all of the existing code that already exist in the world does has not been coded by ai. I.

Autumn Nash: But think about the fact that we've always looked like everybody's always looked at somebody's example on Stack Overflow, right?

But this is to the point where like you have to dig deeper. Like at Stack Overflow you're like, this could work, or this couldn't work. So we're gonna look at four different examples, figure out why these examples do this and dive deeper. But this is where we're gonna start. Like do you think it becomes a starting point?

Or like, but it's not even just the vibe coding, like the way that Dodge is doing it in such a do it fast. Do it. It doesn't matter if you know it, but like it's just not the vibe coating, it's the vibe of just hoping it all works out. You know? It's the, it's the

Justin Garrison: fork around stage. Yes. Right. Like that everyone thateveryone just wants to be in the fork around stage.

Autumn Nash: Yeah.

Scott Hanselman: And I know I overuse analogies and stuff like that, but like you can keep driving all you want, but like when you eventually run out of oil and your car seizes up, you're gonna find out.

Autumn Nash: Do you think we learn from this? Find out is this the time that we're finally going to learn? You know what I mean?

Scott Hanselman: As the parent of a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old who are finding out whether it be like, yeah, I can, I can do an all-nighter and do that homework, and finding out that that's maybe not the move. I think that finding out matters and it is a healthy part of life. I just don't think you should find out on important.

Stuff. I always talk about natural consequences when I talk to my sons like this, and if, if you make a mistake and something bad happens, hopefully it's not a mistake that costs you a foot or a toe, but you do need to screw up. You need to run out, run out of gas, and pull to the side of the road and call aaa.

That's not a life changing thing. So I want natural consequences to happen to people so that they can learn and grow, but I don't want natural consequences to happen to people where they hurt themselves or others.

Autumn Nash: That's where I'm at with my kids. I'm getting into that preteen stage and I'm like, what things can I let you find out on your own and that will teach you to be a better human and plan in the future?

And what things do I need to stop you from doing? You know what I mean? And I like, is the government something you can let natural hawk consequences happen? Like, are we gonna survive?

Justin Garrison: How does that apply to like other areas of life? Right. When I think of things that I've learned my lesson about was I broke my arm when I was.

15 years old and it's still, it doesn't work well today. Is

Autumn Nash: this the mosh pit thing?

Justin Garrison: Yes. Like is this

Autumn Nash: the mosh pit?

Scott Hanselman: Yeah,

Autumn Nash: that is the, that pitcher just every time

Scott Hanselman: my 19-year-old put his arms up and a limo, uh, and the, the wind caught one of his arms and it flipped his arms backwards and popped it outta joint and he had, he had shoulder surgery to fix it and it's never gonna be the same.

Justin Garrison: Yeah. So there, there's those sorts of things that are just kind of like, it wasn't really a decision. Necessarily it was a thing that happened and, and I found out in a way that I didn't want to. Um, but I also feel like there are a lot of those areas that it, it's fine, right? Like I've crashed my bike plenty of times.

I've, I've written bad front end code plenty, plenty of times. And like, none of that was super critical. But the areas that, yeah, you're right, there are levels of importance and, and the repercussions are a lot more serious. How do we keep that, like the back to the curiosity piece, like. That often comes from learning a lot of different things, right?

Like Scott, you, you have 3D printing, you have video games, you got fast food, you know, stuff like, whatever. Like you have so many different areas that you have been curious and explored and gone deep in. Some of them. We want to keep letting people go wide to find where they're curious and see how those interests overlap.

Right? And like those, like your, the things you learn probably on your arcade cabinets apply to some of your 3D printing and apply to some of your coding.

Scott Hanselman: Yeah, well, so the example I give is that my, I'm the first one in my family to really go to college and be like a programmer type, but I'm realizing as I get older that my dad and I are the same guy and all this 3D printing and video games and retro gaming and raspberry pies. It's the same thing. He said.

He's in his shop with a LA and making wood stuff and making toys for kids, and he's doing the exact same stuff except his, his computers are. Woodworking tools and the Yankee workshop, but the same like pushing back against the chaos by just making stuff and trying to put good things, you know, take molecules and put them into an oriented positive way, and then put them into the universe is we're the same guy.

You know what I mean? Making stuff for joy's sake. Don't have, like, you can have hobbies. Like this is another thing we need to tell the young people and, and the post covid people is like, it's okay to not monetize stuff. Like you just have a hobby. Like there's this buddy of mine on, on TikTok named Rodney Norman.

I know Autumn, you've probably seen him. He's a crazy eyed long beard zz, top looking dude. And he comes, he pops on your for you page. He goes, Hey, hey, uh, how's it going you guys? Uh, you know, you can just do stuff. I give

Autumn Nash: up TikTok, but I honestly miss it, not because of what TikTok is supposed to be, but the fact that people share the random joy of their life, like you're saying.

But you know what's interesting? It sounds like you and your dad both make art, but you're making it with different mediums almost. You know what I mean? Like you're making something, but they're just different mediums in which, and it sounds like it's also funny that like you approach all these things in the same process of curiosity and wanting to make things like code.

3D printing all of these things. And so your process is the same, it's just for different outcomes?

Scott Hanselman: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't even know the, the, the result is different, but the, the result is joy and happiness and making people happy. Whether if I make a toy and print out a little man and give it to somebody, I.

After the 3D printer, my dad makes it outta wood. The point is, we made something I, I really try to find a balance between consumption and creation. I do realize that one, like things suck right now and everyone's working really hard and it's okay to sit down and doom scroll. I. But I think we should doom scroll with intention.

Like I don't want you to think that, oh, Hanselman's got more serotonin than I do and, and he somehow can like work a nine to five and then work a five to nine. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that if you find yourself doom scrolling for more than three or four hours, maybe take a beat and go, did I do this on purpose or did this happen?

Autumn Nash: You gotta balance it out too, right? Like we can't endure and still show up and kind of be a part of good things and the change and like see it through if we don't endure and get through what we're doing now. And I think sometimes you need the rest. Like you don't always have to earn the rest. You have to rest and have the hobbies and find the joy because it's the only way that we make it to create that good in the end, you know?

Like it's just not sustainable.

Justin Garrison: Is there a balance there? I I'm thinking of my own, like consumption habits and Yeah. During covid time, like I did way too much TikTok consumption. I, it comes in waves for me of being able to create things. I'm like, oh, I get inspired to create some stuff, so I'm just gonna create a bunch of stuff at once and then maybe go back to kind of a consumption mode, read some books, things like that.

But in there I often find that I miss the, like, maintenance side of things where I'm like, I just have to maintain something sometimes. And last night I was, I'm, I'm trying to put in some new faucets in my bathroom and literally like went to. Home Depot bought the, you know, new valve. They all have different sizes for everything.

So like bought new valves, stuff like that. Started taking off, shut off the water for the house, took it apart. I'm like, oh, everything I bought is wrong. And then realized that like. I can't, I either have to go back to Home Depot right now. It's like nine o'clock. I'm like, they're still open. I could go, it's like, or I could just call the plumber, have them come do it the next day, which is actually, they're coming in in an hour.

Scott Hanselman: So you, so you gave up, like you just said, this is no longer worth my time.

Justin Garrison: I threw in the towel. Right. Like I was, I wasn't doing it to save money. I was doing it because I thought it'd be an easy job to do and I was trying to save time. 'cause I was like, I didn't want coordinate with someone else, be home, have them do this stuff.

And then I realized that like I didn't have the skillset to do it and I didn't have the tools necessary to do it. And so my, my water at my house has been shut off. For almost 24 hours now, uh, because one of the pipes was leaking and I couldn't get it sealed again, and I didn't go back to the store. I didn't have time.

So now it's just like, okay, I'm, now, I found out that I could not do that maintenance, but that it's, it seems like that's often missed in this. We can consume things, we can make things for joy, which is often great, but then sometimes we have to patch some drywall.

Scott Hanselman: I think that's valid. I would, I, I resonate with that a lot.

Like I've replaced all the toilets myself and I've done the, a bunch of plumbing, but at some point, like, uh, my son, my 17-year-old bought a thing 'cause he, it gets cold here and his car needs to be warmed up. So he has to wake up early, go out, warm the car up. Go back in the house, make breakfast, and then his car can be driven.

So he got a remote starter and I was like, oh yeah, we'll bang that out in a weekend. You and I'll be bonding thing and we'll, we'll take the car apart. We'll put the remote starter thing in in your 2001 Honda and everything is gonna be great. And we popped the thing open and started pulling panels off the car and we were like.

Dad does not know how to do this. And we had YouTube and we sat there for six hours and I buttoned the whole car up and I says, we gotta get somebody to help me. 'cause I can't. I felt bad as a dad. I felt bad as a dude. I felt bad as a person. Like I don't think I have the ability to take this car apart.

But that's

Autumn Nash: a skill in itself though, knowing when to quit. Is a skill because like, you know what I mean? Sometimes you can keep going and completely mess something up so much first. I mean, how many

Justin Garrison: GI branches do you have that you're just like, you know what, not doing this anymore, right? Like we're starting over with this reboot.

Scott Hanselman: Well like get commits. All my get commits are like. Maybe this'll work trying again. Yeah. Jenkins this time. And then you're like, how do I squash? How do I squash commit? No one should see this. Yes.

Autumn Nash: I tried to hide the like my GI pages, like history. 'cause I tried to like fix something so many times and then it unpublished my whole website.

I was so mad.

Scott Hanselman: I've got a bunch of comments in my code where it's just like, I don't know how many times I've written. May God have mercy on my soul in a comment. In actual production code.

Autumn Nash: That's so real though. Like in that moment actually, you know, it's another thing that's interesting about consumption now that people are doing so many band, like, you know, like not buying things at certain places or whatever, it's like makes you think about what you actually buy and the fact that you can make cool things with 3D printers or just making things is like so much fun.

Scott Hanselman: You know, every time I go on TikTok, and again, I know you're not a TikTok anymore, but like. But my TikTok is a, is a joy. I I have curated my FYP and it's lovely, but whenever I go there and I share my joy of 3D printing, they're like, ah, more plastic crap for the oceans. And it's like, I can, I can use all the like, just plant-based disposable, biodegradable plastic that I want to use, but it's like surely making, like, I made a tablet holder, you know, with like a, it's got like a, a, you can like adjust it.

It's a whole thing, right? Like this is the kind of crap that we're shipping from China. And we're cool with that. We're flying it here with petrol, but then I make it in my house and I'm the one that should, you know, like. Can we just celebrate the fact that this was beamed here with electrons? Like it's a freaking Star Trek replicator.

I spawned this from my, like Minecraft. I went to a, I said Tea Earl Gray Hot, and this thing popped out of a microwave oven.

Autumn Nash: Okay. And I don't get celebrated for that. I'm excited about that movie. Then my kids are like, just like,

Scott Hanselman: which movie? The

Autumn Nash: Minecraft movie?

Scott Hanselman: No, that's garbage. That's an absolute nightmare.

There's that, that Jack Black. I love him, but he's gonna ruin that movie. It cannot be the voice of her. Okay. He's definitely

Autumn Nash: gonna ruin it. But the fact that I get to see like a little square B, like,

Scott Hanselman: I don't know. I'm very concerned about that movie Jack

Autumn Nash: Black and Jason Momoa. Like it was, this was not your like, why are you here?

Scott Hanselman: I just feel like the Mario movie barely was okay with Chris Pratt, my least favorite Hollywood. Chris,

Autumn Nash: why do they keep trying to like put like a whole grown adults and kids? Like why, like it. Like Minecraft is very specifically about two children.

Scott Hanselman: I know, I know. I don't understand how Jack Black is supposed to be Blo play.

Bowser and Steve. Like, it just, it's, it's between him and Chris. They have all the lockdown on all of the, all the voices. And then

Autumn Nash: it ruined Jurassic Park and believing in things from my children because my kid was like, isn't that Owen? And I was like, okay. Um, this is like telling you that Santa's not real.

Justin Garrison: One of my favorite things about having a bad memory and being terrible at faces is I will watch so many movies and have no idea who the people are. Oh really? Yeah. And my wife is like, how do you not know it's that person? Like, I have no clue who you're talking about.

Scott Hanselman: Oh, I have that classic, I don't know, I don't think I'm neuro spicy or neuro anything, but like I will pause the movie and I'll go.

I saw that person in 1987 in the background scene of God, godfather two. You know what I mean? Most of our TV watching is IMDB searching for stuff. Another thing that I like doing, this is totally random, but this is, I think you're the right audience for this. I've never said this before, but I really like giving Atta boys and Atta girls to secondary characters and character actors in shows.

So if you see a show and you see like this, the friend. It could be a ha Hallmark movie. There's like the whatever, and then there's their friend. And the friend is not a name, they're just a working actor. Or you see a show and they're like fifth or sixth on the call sheet and they did a great job. I go on, find them on social media and I say, I loved you in whatever.

I thought you did a really great job and wish you all the best in your continued success. Like keep killing it. You're doing a great job on whatever power or you know, I saw you in this thing. And then inevitably, five years later. That person will come up and they'll get their big break and they'll be on a thing.

But they followed me before because they had 4,000 followers and now they're somebody. And I've like built relationships with actors by finding them during their come up where it's like, that one is gonna be amazing. And when you get your thing, like you keep freaking grinding. So a couple of times a month I will shout out a random character actor.

'cause I just think that. For every Brad Pitt, there's 10,000 that were background actors who will then be Brad Pitt in 10 years, and it's so fun to watch. People like that just keep grinding and doing awesome stuff. So I

Autumn Nash: like to do that with people that are trying to get into tech, which is like, I guess not the same, but it's just like, dude, that grind is so hard and right now it is especially hard.

Can you imagine trying to get your first job in this market? And like I'll see people and they'll be like working on a project or studying for an interview and I'm like, keep going. You've got this. 'cause like I love

Scott Hanselman: it and I get the little fire thing when you go on TikTok and you're the first comment.

So I always like keep doing it. First comment. Or I go on their lives when they're doing streams with like three people.

Autumn Nash: People need some good and happy in this world. That's one thing I really like about you. Like even your stories, you got a Chipotle card and then you start buying random, like free Chipotle.

Like it's so, it takes so little to do nice things in the world and there's not enough people doing like being the good that people wanna see. People are doing a lot of complaining. And not a lot of doing the very easy small things to try to, like, you could just say something nice to somebody. Don't be a douche.

Like, you know what I

Justin Garrison: mean? And, and it doesn't even have to be like public, right? Like, I mean, you can, you can do like, you could say that was a great project in private or whatever, like the TikTok lives. I would go into so many people and just like start tapping the screen to give the hearts, right? I'm just like, whatever.

Scott Hanselman: You don't want to quote tweet. This is not a quote tweet opportunity. This is a private conversation opportunity. But that's where PE people overthink stuff like I, the challenge is though, what is preventing people from being just pleasant?

Autumn Nash: Yeah, dude, we lost empathy during COV. Like it's empathy is a huge, like empathy is so important to how we interact with each other.

If somebody would just think about like how that person could be having a good day or a bad day, or just empathizing with the situation, we would be like, we could fix so many problems. It would be so much of a better world with just a small change like that.

Scott Hanselman: How do you find that though, because I was on this show a couple of days ago that you should have her on this show.

Her name is Sharon. Deed. She is a, uh, empathy consultant and, uh, she has a really severe stutter. And the way that she worked on her stutter was to become an international keynote speaker, which I think is such a flex to like, I have a stutter. I'm gonna go and be a keynote speaker, and that's gonna like, make things better.

And, uh, she's great. And she was talking, she, her show is about empathy and how do we find that. But my question to you is. How do you ex, is it rude to expect empathy from people who are really struggling? Like, I expect empathy. The higher up we get, the higher up in government. The higher up in life, the more money you have, the more your bills are on auto pay.

I expect more empathy from you. I think it's not good for us to expect empathy from people who are trying to pay the rent

Autumn Nash: that give. Do you ever heard the, the, um, sayings of having enough spoons. Yeah, this spoon. Yeah, you gotta have spoons. Those have, those people have more spoons for empathy. Right. But I think they should.

Yeah, they should. They, so like, I think like I'm a single mom, I have things going on, but I am so much better off than other people that could be in my situation. Right? So if I see a mom that needs help, or if I see moms working on stuff for tech, where if I see other women struggling, like I. We all have stuff going on, but if you have been blessed in some sort of way, I feel like it is on you to pay that back and be like, I remember I got this job and Kelsey Hightower out of nowhere, didn't even know he knew I existed, was like, been watching you.

I'm so like, like glad that like everything worked out for you, dude. That makes your day when someone is nice and kind to you. Like the little things, just encouraging other people, like a lot of it doesn't take a lot of extra work.

Scott Hanselman: Yeah. Kelsey lives in the same town as I do, and he and I talk and he's, that's a classic Kelsey move you to be, but that

Autumn Nash: is, that's so impactful to other people.

A hundred percent. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Scott Hanselman: Real G's move in silence. Like lasagna.

Autumn Nash: I'm putting that on his shirt and it's gonna be like Scott Hanselman.

Justin Garrison: That's not, sounds like a Garfield quote, but not, and that like. I do think that goes what you're saying there, like autopay, like the, the moment I knew that I had made it was when I had my bills on autopay, right?

Because the, the amount of people that. Don't have that especially, and the amount of people that go from not having that to having that is actually a pretty small portion. Right. Some people just have always had auto pay bills and they don't know what it's like to have to actually count and, and pay on a certain date.

Autumn Nash: That wi is wild to me. My kids will like, ask for stuff and I'll be like, you have fresh fruit and dental coverage. Sit down, middle class children. Like,

Scott Hanselman: yeah. I mean, like it's, it's challenging too because you wanna like. Everyone wants street cred and everyone wants to be taken seriously and like I get that my bills are on auto pay now, but I still will say to my kids, like, you, you have McDonald's money.

Like that kind of conversation needs to happen because if you forget where you came from and not only your bills are on auto pay, but someone mows your lawn and you know you don't even know how much milk costs, then you completely lose touch.

Autumn Nash: I think that's a huge part of the empathy is that people forgot where they came from.

Like,

Scott Hanselman: one of the things I tried for myself was, I'm thinking about J-Lo at the bodega right now. Sorry, go ahead.

Autumn Nash: I just wanna live in the side quest in Scott's brain because they're lit.

Scott Hanselman: Well, you, you were like, you were like people. You forget where they came from and I just imagine like lo going bacon, egg and cheese and an orange drink, if you know, you know, I'm like, no, Jenny.

Jenny, no. You

Autumn Nash: know what? Like, I just like the memes that could come from your brain are gold. My,

Scott Hanselman: my brain is primarily ran on animated GIF of Neil Patrick Harris. It seriously though I had an absolute banger of a GIF recently, I was in like, my day is just. Meetings, right. I just have like Tetris shaped, L-shaped meetings coming down, coming in, clicking into Outlook, and I just like, my body hurts.

I'm sitting here, I'm doing meetings all the time, so the only thing I live for anymore is to just nail a gif perfectly in a meeting and then get a bunch of thumbs up. I had an. Absolute banger of a gif recently in a big all hands, and I was like on a high for like an hour, and then one of my VPs texted me.

Not helpful.

Autumn Nash: I've had that message. Okay, but can we just talk though, like the worst is when you have like the best joke or like reply and then it's like not the right audience, nobody gets it or they're like not appreciative or like five people get it and you're like, this is great. Like,

Scott Hanselman: I don't know how old y'all are, but like my, it's time for me to retire some of my office space gifts because people have never seen that movie.

No one has any idea my references anymore. Like I said, recently I was in a meeting and I said,

Autumn Nash: I've never seen that movie.

Scott Hanselman: Exactly. That's my point. Right? Like I was in a meeting recently, I said, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. And it was crickets. And Justin knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Nobody. Jeez. And Autumn, I'm assuming you have no idea what that is about.

Justin Garrison: This is what's wrong with Vibe coding. This is what problem

Scott Hanselman: is. America. All my Glen Garry, Glen Ross gifts have been all retired. I get coffees for closers. Autumn. No idea what that means. You know

Autumn Nash: what? He sent me a shirt that said that and I was so confused.

Justin Garrison: I did. I literally mailed her a shirt that said Coffee's for clothes, and she's like, I don't know what this is. I wore it

Autumn Nash: to scale and I was like, I like coffee. I know I hurt Justin's soul all the time.

Scott Hanselman: That's so bad. The only time

Autumn Nash: I remember our age gap is when he takes naps and then his dad jokes in like random movie.

Like sentences.

Justin Garrison: I'm just happy to hear that I'm not the only one that gets messages from my VP saying not the right

Scott Hanselman: time, because

Justin Garrison: that has been a constant in my career.

Scott Hanselman: Absolutely. It is just, it was such a banger of a gif. It was just so good.

Justin Garrison: Before we wrap up, what do you think that you've learned that what, besides vibe coding?

Besides saying cur curious somewhere and like you've had a very successful career from the outside, it seems like you've had very successful No, I'm

Scott Hanselman: just saying like what's a, what's a career even? Like what? Like it's a compliment that capitalism gives you for. Moving the stock price. I don't know. What is a successful career

Justin Garrison: bills on auto pay?

Probably for a lot of people.

Scott Hanselman: Yeah. I mean, winning, winning, winning capitalism is a thing, but like I would, I would argue that it's about the, you know, I get a couple of emails a week from people who are like, oh, I read your book in high school and now I'm a dev. Or, I met you in Pakistan and now we're, I have a little company.

Or like those, those are the things like. I look up to my aunt, who was a Portland Public School teacher for 40 years, and she will bump into someone at like Whole Foods and they're like, oh my God, Mrs. Hanselman, oh, you're my favorite English teacher, and now I'm da da da. That's the point. That's a successful career for me.

The, the bills on autopay is a gravy.

Autumn Nash: Do you think having the bills on autopay allows you to be more with the spoons to be a hundred percent. It gives

Scott Hanselman: me two more spoons than anybody else. That's why the point is, of all this work that I'm doing, and hopefully the work that you all are doing is to give people more spoons.

And if people don't understand what that means, go and Google for spoon theory and read the Wikipedia page. You wake up in the morning with a certain number of spoons and the number of spoons that you have is based on how much you got to go and dig yourself through the crap that life is gonna throw at you that day, and by the end of the day.

Do you have an, do you have any spoons left? If you don't have any spoons left, you might snap at your kids. You might not have energy for food. You might have only energy to just collapse and watch Netflix, and then you wake up the next day and you try to replenish your spoons and mental health and your background and all the things in your life can add and take away spoons.

Autumn Nash: I heard something. It was a lady and she said that when her and her husband get home, they do this check-in with like how many spoons and how many percentage you have. And I thought 50 percentage thing at my house. That was such a rad way to communicate because how true is that in life? Like very off, very like rare.

Can you be 50 50 on things, but like. If you're having a bad day or just anything like being able to communicate that 'cause it has such to do with like how you react to things and how you show up in places. I just think that's so rad to be like, you know, I don't have a lot of spoons today. It's nothing that you did, it's just because I ha like, I just think that's such a rad and emotionally intelligent way to communicate.

That is

Scott Hanselman: exactly what, my wife and I have been married 25 years this year.

Autumn Nash: I think. That's so cute. I think y'all are so cute. Hundred percent.

Scott Hanselman: Thank you very much. We do that. We like, I'm at about a 30 right now. I'm 30% like the progress bar, I'm at 30%. I'm not at a hundred percent. So like, is this a Windows

Justin Garrison: Progress bar or like a legit one?

Scott Hanselman: Like No, like you just imagine like it's the, it's the Windows file copy one, right? Uh, no, but it's just like, I've got enough spoons to make dinner. You chill. You know, like, because we, we, we use this phrase a lot unspoken. Expectations breed resentment.

Autumn Nash: They do. And consideration is one of the biggest ways to show that you care about somebody else is the consideration and the like.

That level of communicating. And I think if people even did that in other relationships, it doesn't even have to just be who you're married to, but just like having consideration, like that's a part of being an engineer and working with people that nobody talks about. Being how you can interact with other people and make their lives better and work as a team is like so important in how we show up.

To other people in the world. Like giving back spoons to people is like, you know what I mean? It's so important how we Right. Show up with other people. It's fine.

Justin Garrison: We'll change the name of the podcast. It's Spoon Around and find out. It's fine. We can, uh, Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to us.

Where should people find you online?

Scott Hanselman: They can just start@hanselman.com if you like podcasts. And if you're listening to this one, I hope that you do. I would encourage you to check out my two podcasts I've got going right now. One is Hansel Minutes, which is coming up on episode 1000 every Thursday for the last 20 years, and I have a new fresh podcast.

It's a video podcast I would encourage you to check out. It's called Mark and Scott Learn two and every week, uh, the CTO of Microsoft Azure and Technical fellow, mark Russinovich and I learned to do new things this last week. We learned to do technical reputation. How do you build your technical reputation?

You can find that on my YouTube.

Autumn Nash: Ooh, I'm gonna go check that out. I love that you're still learning new things that like, 'cause you're, it seems that's, dude, I might go back to TikTok just for Scottdale something just because you're always like this week like, look, you got me and Justin with to buy 3D printers.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, I feel like people are like, are you ever gonna retire? And I'm like, I hope not. Like I hope I'm building, like I'm maybe not working in the same, you know how Kelsey talks about how he doesn't like

Scott Hanselman: Kelsey, he didn't retire. He likes to say he retired. He's just building, he's just building stuff without a boss.

Yes. He has no boss. Yes.

Autumn Nash: And being, having that freedom, like I wanna build things and do, and learn things for forever, but just in a way that I can take back my own time and freedom. Yep.

Scott Hanselman: I have a date January 22nd, 2029.

Autumn Nash: We'll miss you though. We'll miss you.

Scott Hanselman: I'll see you. I'll

Justin Garrison: be out

Scott Hanselman: there.

Justin Garrison: Thank you everyone for listening.

Thank you again, Scott. And uh, stay curious everyone.

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