Scott Hanselman

Clive Thompson is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired and now has a new book out called "Coders."

"Along the way, Coders thoughtfully ponders the morality and politics of code, including its implications for civic life and the economy. Programmers shape our everyday behavior: When they make something easy to do, we do more of it. When they make it hard or impossible, we do less of it."

I'm quoted in the book and I talk about how I've struggled with context-switching.

Here is TechTarget's decent definition of Context Switching:

A context switch is a procedure that a computer's CPU (central processing unit) follows to change from one task (or process) to another while ensuring that the tasks do not conflict. Effective context switching is critical if a computer is to provide user-friendly multitasking.

However, human context switching is the procedure we all have to go through to switch from "I am at work" mode to "I am at home" mode. This can be really challenging for everyone, no matter their job or background, but I propose for certain personalities and certain focused jobs like programming it can be even worse.

Quoting Clive from an ArsTechnica article where he mentions my troubles, emphasis mine:

One of the things that really leapt out is the almost aesthetic delight in efficiency and optimization that you find among software developers. They really like taking something that's being done ponderously, or that's repetitive, and optimizing it. Almost all engineering has focused on making things run more efficiently. Saving labor, consolidating steps, making something easier to do, amplifying human abilities. But it also can be almost impossible to turn off. Scott Hanselman talks about coding all day long and coming down to dinner. The rest of the family is cooking dinner and he immediately starts critiquing the inefficient ways they're doing it: "I've moved into code review of dinner."

Ordinarily a good rule of thumb on the internet is "don't read the comments." But we do. Here's a few from that ArsTechnica thread that are somewhat heartening. It sucks to "suffer" but there's a kind of camaraderie in shared suffering.

With reference to "Scott Hanselman talks about coding all day long and coming down to dinner. The rest of the family is cooking dinner and he immediately starts critiquing the inefficient ways they're doing it: "I've moved into code review of dinner.""

Wow, that rings incredibly true.

That's good to hear. I'm not alone!

I am not this person. I have never been this person.
Then again, I'm more of a hack than hacker, so maybe that's why. I'm one of those people who enjoys programming, but I've never been obsessed with elegance or efficiency. Does it work? Awesome, let's move on.

That's amazing that you have this ability. For some it's not just hard to turn off, it's impossible and it can ruin relationships.

When you find yourself making "TODO" and "FIXME" comments out loud, it's time to take a break. Don't ask me how I know this.

It me.

Yep, here too 2x--both my wife and I are always arguing over the most efficient way to drive somewhere. It's actually caused some serious arguments! And neither one of us are programmers or in that field. (Although I think each of us could have been.)
From the day I was conscious I've been into bin packing and shortest path algorithms--putting all the groceries up in the freezer even though we bought too much--bin packing. Going to that grocery store and back in peak traffic--shortest path. I use these so often and find such sheer joy in them that it's ridiculous, but hey, whatever keeps me happy.

This is definitely a thing that isn't programmer-specific. Learning to let go and to accept that your partner in life would be OK without you is an important stuff. My spouse is super competent and I'm sure could reboot the router without me and even drive from Point A to Point B without my nagging. ;)

However we forget these things and we tend to try and "be helpful" and hyper-optimize things that just don't need optimizing. Let it go. Let people just butter their damn bread the way they like. Let them drive a mile out of the way, you'll still get there. We tend to be ruder to our partners than we would be to a stranger.

That’s part of the reason why I’m now making all dinners for my family ;-)

LOL, this is also a common solution. Oh, you got opinions? Here's the spatula!

What do YOU think? How do you context switch and turn work off and try to be present for your family?

Sponsor: Manage GitHub Pull Requests right from the IDE with the latest JetBrains Rider. An integrated performance profiler on Windows comes to the rescue as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Per Wikipedia, "In mathematics, a binary relation ... is transitive if ... element a is related to an element b and b is related to an element c then a is also related to c."

Per Me, if I am cool with you, and you are cool with your friend, then I'm cool with your friend. I've decided this is The Transitive Property of Friendship.

As I try to mentor more and more people and help folks Level Up in tech, I'm realizing how important it is to #BeTheLuck for someone else. This is something that YOU can do - volunteer at local schools, forward that resume for your neighbor, give a Warm Intro to a friend of a friend.

A lot of one's success can be traced back to hard work and being prepared for opportunities to present themselves, but also to Warm Intros. Often you'll hear about someone who worked hard in school, studied, did well, but then got a job because "their parent knew a person who worked at x." That's something that is hard to replicate. For under-represented folks trying to break into tech, for example, it's the difference between your resume sitting in a giant queue somewhere vs. sitting on the desk of the hiring manager. Some people inherit a personal network and a resume can jump to the top of a stack with a single phone call, while others send CV after CV with nary a callback.

This is why The Warm Intro is so important. LinkedIn has tried to replicate this by allowing you to "build your professional network" but honestly, you can't tell if I'm cool with someone on LinkedIn just because they're connected to me. Even Facebook "friends" have changed the definition of friend. It certainly has for me. Now I'm mentally creating friend categories like work colleague, lowercase f friend, Uppercase F Friend, etc.

Here's where it gets hard. You can't help everyone. You also have to protect yourself and your own emotional well-being. This is where cultivating a true network of genuine friends and work colleagues comes in. If your First Ring of Friends are reliable, kind, and professional, then it's safer to assume that anyone they bring into your world has a similar mindset. Thus, The Transitive Property of Friendship - also know as "Any friend of Scott's is a friend of mine." The real personal network isn't determined by Facebook or LinkedIn, it's determined by your gut, your experiences, and your good judgment. If you get burned, you'll be less likely to recommend someone in the future.

I've been using this general rule to determine where and when to spend my time while still trying to Lend my Privilege to as many people as possible. It's important also to not be a "transactional networker." Be thoughtful if you're emailing someone cold (me or otherwise). Don't act like an episode of Billions on Showtime. We aren't keeping score, tracking favors, or asking for kickbacks. This isn't about Amazon Referral Money or Finder's Fees. When a new friend comes into your life via another and you feel you can help, give of your network and time freely. Crack the door open for them, and then let them kick it open and hopefully be successful.

All of this starts by you - we - building up warm, genuine professional relationships with a broad group of people. Then using that network not just for yourself, but to lift the voices and careers of those that come after you.

What are YOUR tips and thoughts on building a warm and genuine personal and professional network of folks?

Sponsor: Manage GitHub Pull Requests right from the IDE with the latest JetBrains Rider. An integrated performance profiler on Windows comes to the rescue as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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AdaFruit makes an adorable tiny little Circuit Python IoT device called the PyPortal that's just about perfect for the kids - and me. It a little dakBoard, if you will - a tiny totally programmable display with Wi-Fi and  lots of possibilities and sensors. Even better, you can just plug it in over USB and edit the code.py file directly on the drive that will appear. When you save code.py the device soft reboots and runs your code.

I've been using Visual Studio Code to program Circuit Python and it's become my most favorite IoT experience so far because it's just so easy. The "Developer's Inner Loop" of code, deploy, debug is so fast.

As you may know, I use a Dexcom CGM (Continuous Glucose Meter) to manage my Type 1 Diabetes. I feed the data every 5 minutes into an instance of the Nightscout Open Source software hosted in Azure. That gives me a REST API to my own body.

I use that REST API to make "glanceable displays" where I - or my family - can see my blood sugar quickly and easily.

I put my blood sugar in places like:

• my git prompt
• the color of my keyboard keys
• Siri and Alexa
• DakBoard family wall mounted dashboards

And today, on a tiny PyPortal device. The code is simple, noting that I don't speak Python, so Pull Requests are always appreciated.

import time
import board
from adafruit_pyportal import PyPortal

# Set up where we'll be fetching data from
DATA_SOURCE = "https://NIGHTSCOUTWEBSITE/api/v1/entries.json?count=1"
BG_VALUE = [0, 'sgv']
BG_DIRECTION = [0, 'direction']

RED = 0xFF0000;
ORANGE = 0xFFA500;
YELLOW = 0xFFFF00;
GREEN = 0x00FF00;

def get_bg_color(val):
    if val > 200:
        return RED
    elif val > 150:
        return YELLOW
    elif val < 60:
        return RED
    elif val < 80:
        return ORANGE
    return GREEN

def text_transform_bg(val):
    return str(val) + ' mg/dl'
    
def text_transform_direction(val):
    if val == "Flat":
        return "→"
    if val == "SingleUp":
        return "↑"
    if val == "DoubleUp":
        return "↑↑"
    if val == "DoubleDown":
        return "↓↓"
    if val == "SingleDown":
        return "↓"
    if val == "FortyFiveDown":
        return "→↓"
    if val == "FortyFiveUp":
        return "→↑"
    return val

# the current working directory (where this file is)
cwd = ("/"+__file__).rsplit('/', 1)[0]
pyportal = PyPortal(url=DATA_SOURCE,
                    json_path=(BG_VALUE, BG_DIRECTION),
                    status_neopixel=board.NEOPIXEL,
                    default_bg=0xFFFFFF,
                    text_font=cwd+"/fonts/Arial-Bold-24-Complete.bdf",
                    text_position=((90, 120),  # VALUE location
                                   (140, 160)), # DIRECTION location
                    text_color=(0x000000,  # sugar text color
                                0x000000), # direction text color
                    text_wrap=(35, # characters to wrap for sugar
                               0), # no wrap for direction
                    text_maxlen=(180, 30), # max text size for sugar & direction
                    text_transform=(text_transform_bg,text_transform_direction),
                   )

# speed up projects with lots of text by preloading the font!
pyportal.preload_font(b'mg/dl012345789');
pyportal.preload_font((0x2191, 0x2192, 0x2193))
#pyportal.preload_font()

while True:
    try:
        value = pyportal.fetch()
        pyportal.set_background(get_bg_color(value[0]))
        print("Response is", value)
    except RuntimeError as e:
        print("Some error occured, retrying! -", e)
    time.sleep(180)

I've put the code up at https://github.com/shanselman/NightscoutPyPortal. I want to get (make a custom?) a larger BDF (Bitmap Font) that is about twice the size AND includes 45 degree arrows ↗ and ↘ as the font I have is just 24 point and only includes arrows at 90 degrees. Still, great fun and took just an hour!

NOTE: I used the Chortkeh BDF Font viewer to look at the Bitmap Fonts on Windows. I still need to find a larger 48+ PT Arial.

What information would YOU display on a PyPortal?

Sponsor: Manage GitHub Pull Requests right from the IDE with the latest JetBrains Rider. An integrated performance profiler on Windows comes to the rescue as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Thousands of years ago your ancestors, and myself, were using DOS (or CMD) pressing F7 to get this amazing little ASCII box to pop up to pick commands they'd typed before.

When I find myself in cmd.exe I use F7 a lot. Yes, I also speak *nix and Yes, Ctrl-R is amazing and lovely and you're awesome for knowing it and Yes, it works in PowerShell.

Here's the tragedy. Ctrl-R for a reverse command search works in PowerShell because of a module called PSReadLine. PSReadLine is basically a part of PowerShell now and does dozens of countless little command line editing improvements. It also - not sure why and I'm still learning - unknowingly blocks the glorious F7 hotkey.

If you remove PSReadLine (you can do this safely, it'll just apply to the current session)

Remove-Module -Name PSReadLine

Why, then you get F7 history with a magical ASCII box back in PowerShell. And as we all know, 4k 3D VR be damned, impress me with ASCII if you want a developer's heart.

There is a StackOverflow Answer with a little PowerShell snippet that will popup - wait for it - a graphical list with your command history by calling

Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key F7

And basically rebinding the PSReadlineKeyHandler for F7. PSReadline is brilliant, but I what I really want to do is to tell it to "chill" on F7. I don't want to bind or unbind F7 (it's not bound by default) I just want it passed through.

Until that day, I, and you, can just press Ctrl-R for our reverse history search, or get this sad shadow of an ASCII box by pressing "h." Yes, h is already aliased on your machine to Get-History.

PS C:\Users\scott> h

  Id CommandLine
   -- -----------
    1 dir
    2 Remove-Module -Name PSReadLine

Then you can even type "r 1" to "invoke-history" on item 1.

But I will still mourn my lovely ASCII (High ASCII? ANSI? VT100?) history box.

Sponsor: Manage GitHub Pull Requests right from the IDE with the latest JetBrains Rider. An integrated performance profiler on Windows comes to the rescue as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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It's super easy to get started with .NET Core and/or ASP.NET Core with Docker. If you have Docker installed you don't need to install anything to try out .NET Core, of course.

To run a little .NET Core console app:

docker run --rm mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/samples:dotnetapp

And the result:

latest: Pulling from dotnet/core/samples
    Hello from .NET Core!
...SNIP...

**Environment**
Platform: .NET Core
OS: Linux 4.9.125-linuxkit #1 SMP Fri Sep 7 08:20:28 UTC 2018

To run a quick little ASP.NET Core website just:

docker run -it --rm -p 8000:80 --name aspnetcore_sample mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/samples:aspnetapp

And here it is running on localhost:8000

You can also host ASP.NET Core Images with Docker over HTTPS to with this image, or run ASP.NET Core apps in Windows Containers.

Note that Microsoft teams are now publishing container images to the MCR (Microsoft Container Registry) so they can use the Azure CDN and pull faster when they are closer to you globally. The images start at MCR and then can be syndicated to other container registries.

The new repos follow:

• .NET Core Runtime dependencies (just the stuff .NET Core needs, but not .NET Core itself - useful if you want to distribute your own copy and still want a small container image size)
• .NET Core Runtime (Just what's needed to run a .NET Core app)
• .NET Core SDK (includes the compilers, everything)
• ASP.NET Core runtime (everything you need to RUN your ASP.NET Core web app)

When you "docker pull" you can use tag strings for .NET Core and it works across any supported .NET Core version

• SDK: docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/sdk:2.1
• ASP.NET Core Runtime: docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/aspnet:2.1
• .NET Core Runtime: docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/runtime:2.1
• .NET Core Runtime Dependencies: docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/runtime-deps:2.1

For example, I can run the .NET Core 3.0 SDK and mess around with it like this:

docker run -it mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/sdk:3.0 

I've been using Docker to run my unit tests on my podcast site within a container locally. Then I volume mount and dump the test results out in a local folder and inspect them with Visual Studio

docker build --pull --target testrunner -t podcast:test .
docker run --rm -v c:\github\hanselminutes-core\TestResults:/app/hanselminutes.core.tests/TestResults podcast:test

I can then either host the Docker container in Azure App Service for Containers, or as little one-off per-second billed instances with Azure Container Instances (ACI).

Have you been using .NET Core in Docker? How has it been going for you?

Sponsor: Manage GitHub Pull Requests right from the IDE with the latest JetBrains Rider. An integrated performance profiler on Windows comes to the rescue as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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