41. From closed-source to source-open to open-source & the essence of edutainment - with Scott Hanselman

In this episode, we talk to Scott Hanselman, who works in Open Source on .NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft and is a well-known – perhaps famous - face in the .NET community. He has been a developer for 30 years, has been blogging at hanselman.com for 20 years, has been podcasting for hanselminutes.com and Azure Friday for more than 15 years, and has written a number of technical books. We talk about how he creates his ‘edutainment’; providing entertainment and education, keeping it fun and yet making people think about all the possibilities. For example, by bringing old technology into the modern world, as he recently did by connecting a Commodore 64 to the internet. So it’s half fun, half getting people's brains working. We discuss why he likes to visit thrift shops and the importance of the right to repair; he does not want to be a part of the throwaway society – waste not, want not - and prefers to give away his obsolete (tech) items to someone who can use them. We also dive a little deeper into his Microsoft journey, as he received his 15-year congratulatory email this month. He recalls his collaboration with Scott Guthrie to work on Ruby on Rails and his participation in the first open-source .NET project. Especially zooming in on the change from closed-source to source-open – Rotor as Microsoft called it – to finally truly open-source. And what it entailed to get here.

About this episode, and Scott Hanselman in particular: you can find @shanselman on Twitter and GitHub. Check out his blogs on hanselman.com or watch his video's on his YouTube channel. Also, don't forget to check out his TikTok and listen to his podcasts 'hanselminutes'. 

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