Scott Hanselman: JavaScript & the Rise of the New Virtual Machine

If you were just at VSLive! Austin, there’s no doubt you learned a lot and saw some great presentations from the likes of Billy Hollis and Tarek Madkour (more on that in another upcoming post).

Hopefully, you had some time to avail yourself of the sights, sounds and sensations of Austin as well. Renowned as a music destination (hence the hit show Austin City Limits), it's also a semi-paradise for foodies and just an all-around funky place. And it’s in Texas!

But you didn’t have had to leave the conference to be entertained. Did you happen to catch Scott Hanselman’s general session last Tuesday? (If not, the video recordings for all the keynotes/general sessions can be found here.) If Scott decides to retreat from his career as a major developer advocate/evangelist/rockstar guy, he could find success as a stand-up comedian. He punctuated most of his punch lines by displaying some hilarious GIF files.

His general session was basically a revved-up pep talk for developers moving into the brave new world of the open Microsoft, virtualization and the cloud. While Hanselman is indeed an official Microsoft guy, he doesn’t work in Redmond (symbolized by the Death Star on screen).

“I work in Portland, and I work in open source,” he says. He equates that to working at Microsoft, “like a bunch of storm troopers running around pushing buttons and hoping they don’t blow up another planet.”

The Virtual Machine "Strikes Back"

Jokes and puns aside, Hanselman did point out how well things are working in the world of code and encouraged everyone to get out and get at it. “The problems have been solved. The internet has changed. Get those virtual machines to do some work with all those processors out there,” he urges.

“We can expect more from our web tools. It actually kind of works now; it actually fits together pretty nicely. You’ve got this great cloud with massive scale and elasticity. Go out there, and use those unlimited virtual machines. Don’t forget client side. Put that to work. You have more power than you realize. You know this stuff. Get to work.” Mic drops.

But I’m still wondering... where did he find all those awesome GIFs?

Visit the VSLive! website for more details on upcoming events.

Posted by Lafe Low on 05/31/2016