Hanselminutes - Fresh Talk And Tech For Developers

Gina Marie Maini is a functional programer. She's the most totally amped functional programmer I've ever met, and she told me that OCaml was wonderful. Today Gina tries to get me to accept OCaml and functional programming as the way and the light.

NativeScript lets you build truly native iOS, Android and Windows Phone apps with Javascript and CSS. How is it different from Xamarin? What about Cordova? How can we tell what's "native" and what's not, and honestly, when should we care? Scott talks to Jen Looper about the NativeScript OSS project.

Aniyia L. Williams saw a gap in the market and a product that needed to be created. Tinsel creates tech jewelry to ensure that fashion-savvy women can enjoy technology without sacrificing their style. How did Aniyia bootstrap her hardware startup? She explains the concept, funding, prototypes, development, and manufacturing on this episode.

Rob Eisenberg is the creator of the Aurelia JavaScript framework. This open source framework is a reimagining of how we create rich apps in the browser. Is this the framework that you were looking for? How does it compare to others?

There's so much talk about containers as it's clearly the buzzword today. Rather than doing a deep dive into container tech, Scott talks to Aja Hammerly about what containers really means to us as developers. How do containers change our workflow? Is the promise of cloud portability real?

Scott sits down with software developer and development manager Louise Elliott about her ideas around "Punishment Driven Development." Why is this such a common way to run a project? Does it work and is it ever appropriate?

Former VC Nadia Eghbal is exploring the world of open source and how tech gets funded. Her investigative work is currently supported by The Ford Foundation as she explores the way that the public infrastructure of the Internet gets built. She talks with Scott about how Open Source Software gets funded!

Arlan Hamilton is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a seed investment fund that backs high-potential, underrepresented startup founders. She talks to Scott about how starting a fund works, how much money one needs to invest, and demystifies many of the buzzwords around investing in tech today!

Nick Farmer is best known for developing the Belter constructed language (conlang) for Syfy’s The Expanse. What's involved in creating a convincing constructed language? How real are these languages?

Scott talks to web developer and entrepreneur Kronda Adair about her business and her recent failure. How do projects fail and what do we do with that failure? Can failure be a motivator or does it slow us down? How can we turn lemons into lemonade as technologists?

Scott sits down and talks with Lyza Gardner, CTO of Cloud Four and long-time web expert, about her recent explorations into hardware using the Johnny-Five Framework. You can control Arduinos and other devices and make robots with brains written with Node.js and JavaScript! Is this the framework we've been waiting for?

Erin Tomson left Pixar after 13 years to pursue something totally new! Her hardware startup called "Modulo" brings plug and play flexibility to the world of microcontrollers like Arduino and Particle. How did she get started and make the move from 3D software to modular hardware?

This week Scott talks to to electrical engineer Laura Hughes from Arrow.com. Laura specializes in lighting and power supply design and can solve pretty much any problem with an LED. Laura schools Scott on a number of electrical issues and they come up with an epic new project idea!

Simone Giertz is a Maker, a robotics enthusiast and surprisingly (her words!) a non-engineer. She's become somewhat of an expert in sh*tty robots and we love her for it. Also, she happens to be Swedish but sounds totally American just to confuse us. Scott talks about how she gets her inspiration and how she got started!

Captain Brent Chapman has a BS from the West Point, an MS in Information Security from Carnegie Mellon, and has been tearing electronics apart since he was four. Today, Cpt Chapman works for the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) at Moffett Field and puts those skills to work. In his spare time, he tinkers, creates, and helps others do the same.

Scott talks to Lauren Tan, a Senior Developer at Dockyard, about her excitement with the Ember Framework. Her talk on "Ambitious UX for Ambitious Apps" covers new techniques like Reactive UX that are made easy with the Ember.js framework.

Afua Richardson joins Scott for this creative episode. Afua is a comic artist who has worked for Marvel, Image Comics, Top Cow, and many more. Her work on "Genius" was nominated for a Glyph Award. She's also a singer/songwriter and an accomplished musician. Afua and Scott explore how comics are made, who owns them, and how creators can express themselves in the digital age.

Scott sits with fellow Type 1 Diabetic Dana M. Lewis about the Open Artificial Pancreas System that she and her husband Scott Leibrand created. As other commercial entities race to "close the loop" for diabetics, how did two regular folks control diabetes with off-the-shelf parts? Dana demystifies the technology behind this software-managed diabetes solution.

What's it like building and scaling a mobile game to millions of users and billions of transactions? Does the cloud really allow you to "not worry about scaling" and just focus on the game? We'll hear from Kalle Hiitola, the CTO of Next Games, about their experience scaling The Walking Dead, an app that got over a million downloads in its launch weekend!

Scott talks to Kris Rothe about the best way to get started making your own video games! How technical do you need to be? Should you start with Unity, GameMaker, or something else? We'll hear about all this and more from an experience game creator!