The Stack Overflow Podcast

In this week's episode, Joel complains about Excel on Mac, the hosts play Start Up or Shut Up, and surprise! The One Minute Tech Review is NOT about light switches. And Stack Overflow's own Dr. Julia Silge comes by to tell her Developer Story.

Welcome to the Stack Overflow podcast #99 recorded Thursday, January 19 at the Stack Overflow HQ in NYC. Today's podcast is brought to you by Reverse Polish notation.

25 enter

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It's 41!

We actually have 2 sponsors for today:

Grace Hopper - A program of Fullstack Academy. The Grace Hopper Program is an immersive software engineering course for women. Students only pay tuition once they secure a developer job after the program. Visit The Grace Hopper Program at www.gracehopper.com.

Girls Who Code - A national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology. They create a stronger community around girls and women that will empower the next generation to be leaders in technology. Visit www.girlswhocode.com.

In today's episode, Joel complains about Excel on Mac, the hosts play Start Up or Shut Up, and surprise! The One Minute Tech Review is NOT about light switches.

On this week's episode, Joel rants about travel for the first time ever, Jay explains the Developer Survey (launched last week), and the hosts ponder the reason for Connecticut's existence. Also, our friend Scott Hanselman tells us what we should be doing.

Happy New Year and welcome to the Stack Overflow podcast #98 recorded Thursday, January 12, 2017 at the Stack Overflow Headquarters in NYC. Today's broadcast is brought to you by Sydney, Australia. If there are any Australian listeners left after Joel's terrible accent, thank you and we're sorry.

In this episode: Joel rants about travel for the first time ever; Jay explains the Developer Survey (launched last week); and the hosts ponder the reason for Connecticut's existence.

This week's Developer Story is prolific programmer, teacher, writer, podcaster and so much more: Scott Hanselman! In his 3rd appearance on the podcast, Scott recounts some of the earliest inspirations that helped take his life from being "voted most likely to be convicted of white-collar crime" to the success that he is today. Just some of his great advice to us about helping the next generation:

"Stuff that you might be doing alone, find a kid and do it with that kid. Include them in soldering or in chopping down a tree or putting together a square-foot garden in the backyard. Those are all gifts that we can give to people moving forward."

As you know, we're preparing a constitution for Stack Overflow. Each week, we bring you a proposal, and you, our listeners, will decide on whether that proposal becomes a part of our new constitution. This week's question:

Is it sufficient to close a bug as NOT REPRO or do you have to write some kind of explanation?

Listen to the opinions of the hosts, and then post your answer to Twitter using the hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO if yay, or CON if nay, along with your explanation. Keep it short! The funniest explanation, whether winning or losing, will be read on next week's podcast and win an awesome Stack Overflow Sticker. We also need new amendments, so tweet us your ideas and we could name an amendment after you!

Last week's winner, answering the question: The Simonyi Amendment, Shall we bring back Hungarian Notation? Is:

"YAY but only the real Hungarian notation. Semantics based instead of type based. In Hungarian instead of English." Thanks @inka22222, you win a thing!

Week Links:

Quark Conference India - Joel will be there if he can navigate the dropdown boxes.

Developer Survey Blog Post

OMTR - Lutron Light Switches

News: Atlassian buys Trello! (Also, proof that Michael Pryor was a cheerleader.)

Podcast Links:

Twitter: @stackpodcast

Facebook: The Stack Overflow Podcast

Our website is now live: http://stackoverflow.com/podcast

Links from our conversation with Scott Hanselman:

Listen to his podcasts, they are amazing. Seriously, Just do it. Hanselminutes.com, This Developer's Life, Ratchet & The Geek

Anjuan Simmons - Lending Privilege

Babysmash.com

On this week's episode, the gang talks about their favorite hats... for Winter Bash 2016! Developer Dan Luu comes by to tell Joel why he's wrong, and Joel talks about awful airports.

Welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast #97 recorded Thursday, December 15 at the Stack Overflow Headquarters in NYC, home to the some of the crappiest airports in the western Hemisphere (Yup, Joel talks about travel in this episode). Today's show is brought to you by Mott St. Get anything that you want (really, anything) for only 99¢!

Joel's rant today: Turns out, Jeff Atwood was right! Joel was FINALLY on an episode of This Week in Tech (TWiT) Episode 277, enabling him to cross off the only thing that Jeff put on Joel's to-do list all those years ago. Better late than never, Coding Horror...

Today (Dec 19) is a very special day: It's the start of Winter Bash! The season of Hats! To celebrate, our hosts chat with Stack Overflow Community Manager Bluefeet about the making of Winter Bash and what the users can expect for the next few weeks, as well as how she fell into programming and then Stack Overflow. Moral of the story? "Never quit late." Thanks, Jay.

David also very modestly takes credit for the whole idea while recounting the history of "Hat Dash". There's even a totally real and not at all silly documentary!

There are 28 known hats as well as a few secret hats that users will have to find on their own. Winter Bash runs December 19 - January 9th on (almost) all Stack Exchange sites. How many hats can you collect?

This week's Developer Story is Dan Luu, senior engineer at Microsoft and prolific blogger at DanLuu.com. He and Jay discuss Dan's blog post called Developer Hiring and the Market for Lemons that challenges Joel's 2006 blog post Finding Great Developers.

"Hardware tools are really really bad... so you can get a lot of value in writing your own, only somewhat crappy tools… it's a very slow process."

This week's constitution question: The Simonyi Amendment, Shall we bring back Hungarian Notation? Post your answer to Twitter using the hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO if yay, or CON if nay, along with your explanation. Keep it short but thick! The funniest explanation, whether winning or losing, will be read on next week's podcast and win an awesome STACK OVERFLOW STICKER. We also need new amendments, so tweet us your ideas and we could name an amendment after you!

Last week's winner is Jason St-Cyr!

"I like my Gifs with a hard G, because I refuse to unwrap Jifts at Christmas." - @AgileStCyr

Links!

Winter Bash 2016

TWiT ep 277 - Joel Spolsky

DanLuu.com, twitter: @danluu, wat

In The News: Google's BigQuery + Stack Overflow! It's a big deal, Joel!

Twitter: @stackpodcast

Facebook: The Stack Overflow Podcast

Our website is now live: http://stackoverflow.com/podcast

In this week’s podcast, Anil Dash - new CEO of Fog Creek and old friend of ours - stops by, as does Dr. Dave Robinson for our new segment, Dr Dave’s Data Desk with Dr. Dave Robinson. Because alliteration. And this week’s Stack Overflow Constitution question has the potential to destroy us all: Is it pronounced GIF with a hard G /ɡif/ or GIF with a J /jif/?

Welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast #96 recorded on December 8, 2016 at the Stack Overflow headquarters in the jackhammer capital of the world (probably), NYC. Today's podcast is brought to you by the Pizza Saver, otherwise known as the small table thingie that keeps your pizza from sticking to the top of the box. It is also brought to you by IBM Watson. What does a world with IBM Watson look like? With Watson, the world is getting healthier, safer, cleaner, more creative and even more personal. That's cognitive that matters. Welcome to the IBM Watson world.

For today's shenanigans, we are so lucky to have guest host (as well as new Fog Creek CEO and close friend of Stack Overflow) Anil Dash, who rightfully mocks Joel's recent keynote at Slush 2016 in Helsinki. If you watch the video here, you will understand this reference:

Thanks @balpha

Joel and Anil talk about the past, present, and future of Fog Creek and it's ties to the origins of Stack Overflow and Trello, as well as the amazing new GoMix (formerly Hyperdev) app building software. So what's been the hardest part of taking over Fog Creek? Figuring out where to sit in the lunchroom every day during mandatory lunches! Duh. Seriously though, culture is such an important part the company's success and Anil is committed to preserving that culture so that Fog Creek can continue to "help ordinary people make extraordinary things on the Internet."

Along with Anil we have special guest Dr. Dave Robinson, data scientist at Stack Overflow, discussing a few of his recent popular blog posts concerning analysis of software developers in New York, San Francisco, London and Bangalore, (over 60k views) and the now infamous analysis of Trump's Tweets (over half a million views in the first week!). We apologize in advance to Android users. I'm sure you're not all angry…

This week's constitution question: Is it pronounced GIF with a hard G /ɡif/ or GIF with a J /jif/? I can't believe that we are opening this can of worms, but hey, the world is crazy right now, so why not? Post your answer to Twitter using the hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO if yay, or CON if nay, along with your explanation. Keep it short but convincing! The funniest explanation, whether winning or losing, will be read on next week's podcast and win a fabulous STACK OVERFLOW STICKER. We also need new amendments, so tweet us your ideas and we could name an amendment after you!

Last week's winner, with an answer to the question, "Is it ok to get a mechanical keyboard with loud 'clicky' keys when you are sharing an office?" AKA The Punyon Amendment, is Brian with:

"PRO because they shouldn't be able to hear the keyboard over my trap music."

-@TheBestHuman

Congrats Brian, you won a thing!

Notable Links:

Follow Anil on twitter! @AnilDash

OMTR: ecamm iGlasses and PhoneView

Ogg Vorbis explanation for the whippersnappers

Slush Conference

News items: How We Make Money at Stack Overflow, Too Young to Code?

Twitter: @stackpodcast

Facebook: The Stack Overflow Podcast

Our website is now live: http://stackoverflow.com/podcast

In this week's episode... Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! Microsoft has now joined the Linux Foundation; Google has joined the .Net steering committee; and Visual Studio is available for Mac. The end times are here. Luckily, our good friend and Jewelbots founder Sara Rey Chipps stops by to make us feel better about the world.

Welcome to the Stack Overflow Podcast #95 recorded Thursday, November 17, 2016 at Stack Overflow HQ in NYC. Our sponsor today is double-entry bookkeeping. Invented in 1494 in Milan by Leonardo da Vinci's lover, probably. Conveniently enough, that's Jay's new title!

In this week's rant, the gang discusses Microsoft Connect(); // 2016 where Channel 9 premiered a video featuring our very own David Fullerton, George Beech, and Nick Craver in which they discuss SQL Server and how it impacts Stack Overflow Enterprise. Also, Microsoft has now joined the Linux Foundation; Google has joined the .Net steering committee; and Visual Studio is available for Mac. What?!? We are now officially living in the Upside Down.

Our Developer Story today is Jewelbots CEO (and friend to Stack Overflow) Sara Rey Chipps! Jewelbots (launching this week!) are programmable friendship bracelets designed to spark girls’ (and boys’!) interest in coding. Jewelbots are the first of their kind - an open source wearable device where kids dictate the functionality. Sara and Jay discuss the importance of making programmable things that girls are actually interested in instead of just taking a pre-existing product and turning it pink, as well as the challenges of actually making hardware. "Physics are real."

Additionally, we have a One-Minute Tech Review (it's the new Macbook Pro 2016 and Joel has a lot to say about that missing ESC key, among other new "features") and another installment of "Startup or Shut Up" where spoiler alert Jay actually gets one right!

This week's constitution question is: Is it ok to get a mechanical keyboard with loud "clicky" keys when you are sharing an office? This is called the Jason Punyon amendment, because of reasons. Post your answer to Twitter using the hashtag #stackoverflowpodcast, with either PRO if yay, or CON if nay, along with your explanation. Keep it short but convincing! The funniest explanation, whether on the winning side or the losing side, will be read on next week's podcast and win a fabulous STACK OVERFLOW STICKER. We also need new amendments, so tweet us your ideas and we could name an amendment after you!

Last week's winner, replying to the question "Should you be allowed to comment out code and check it in?" is @Joe_Stetch!

"CON, this dark road leads to being featured on an episode of 'Hoarders.'" - @Joe_Stetch

We will not have a podcast for the next two weeks because of the holidays, but look for us the second week of December.

Links:

Get your own Jewelbots:

http://jewelbots.com

http://www.target.com/p/jewelbots/-/A-51848933

http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/17/technology/jewelbots-smart-friendship-bracelet/

Microsoft Connect(); // 2016