The Top 5 Scott Hanselman Videos on the Web

We don’t hear the word ‘famous’ all too often in the programming world, but by definition, famous is simply “being known by many people”. In that regard, there are some individuals who have a very big influence in their field, and Scott Hanselman is one of those people. Scott works for the Web Platform team at Microsoft, but has gained a following through his blog, YouTube channel, and all things social. With close to 150,000 followers on Twitter and 6,500 on Instagram, he rakes in consistent likes on Facebook, and even has over 50,000 followers on the one everyone forgets, Google+ (sorry Google). His passions lie in the community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web. He has three podcasts: a weekly talk show on tech, hour-long essays on the lives of developers, and a social media and culture show he co-hosts with his friend Luvvie. All in all, he’s a very busy man.

Why is he so great?

Before his involvement with Microsoft, Scott worked as a Principal Consultant at STEP Technology, speaking, writing, consulting, and in his words “very much not getting rich during Web 1.0”. He was also a Professor at Oregon Tech, teaching C# and Web Services. Scott suffers from diabetes, and created the first PalmPilot Diabetes Management System in 1998, selling it to a healthcare company further down the line. Scott said he loves to give back to the community, and that isn’t limited to open source development. He has authored and co-authored a number of successful books on programming (what else!) and also has a major presence on GitHub and contributes great content regularly.

In the words of the man himself: “That's me, today. I'll be different tomorrow, hopefully better.”

It seems as though Scott fits what most of us aim to accomplish in a month into a single day, and if all the above hasn’t convinced you on the authority that is Scott Hanselman, then you may as well stop reading here. But for the inspired among you (which we will presume is all of you!) here are the top 5 Scott Hanselman videos on the internet:

1. Learn Windows 8 in (4) minutes

It’s no understatement to say that Windows 8 didn’t receive the kind of reception that Microsoft had intended. Now that the much-improved WIndows 10 is available as a free upgrade to Windows 8 users, it’s unlikely many will still be using the old OS. However, for any of those still using 8, Scott’s YouTube video is a four minute guide to navigating Windows 8 with ease. The 1.6 million people who have watched the video is testament to Scott’s skill of creating a quick and informative guide to the overly-complicated nature of Windows 8. Plus, if you can’t keep up with Scott’s fast-paced tutorial, he also has a longer, more relaxed 25 minute version.

2. Visual Studio 2015 - Keynote

Scott takes part as one of five speakers in this overview packed with starter demos of Visual Studio 2015, .NET 4.6 and Visual Studio Online from back in July. Almost 350,000 people have watched the clip, witnessing the new opportunities that will be available in the future and how they will open the Visual Studio family to target any platform - iOS, Android and Windows - to backend development on Windows Server and Linux.

3. ‘Build’ talk

Scott joins Seth Juarez and Microsoft’s Donovan Brown after the Visual Studio keynote to talk about the keynote itself, as well as the cross-platform story, Microsoft branching away from solely PCs and Visual code being optimized for ASP.NET. Scott brings his usual insight and analysis as they wrap up the success of the keynote and look towards the future for Microsoft and VIsual Studio 2015. Certainly a good watch.

4. Introducing the future of .NET on the server

The future of Microsoft and .NET is a very exciting one. This talk sees another bright Scott - Scott Hunter - team up with Hanselman to create the duo “The Lesser Scotts”, as they introduce new thinking around ASP.NET and the .NET Framework. The talk explores ASP.NET in the modern web, and touches on an array of topics ranging from transitioning from on-premesis to cloud, open source with contributors and cross-platforming across Windows, Mac and Linux.

5. Live Q&A

Dan Fernandez sits Scott down for a Q&A on cloud development and ASP.NET. Answering questions from the public as well as from Dan, Scott explains being able to make an ASP.NET app, publish it to a local file system, put it on a USB key and then running the app perfectly on a machine that doesn’t posess the core framework.

So there we go, there are our Top 5 Scott Hanselman videos we think are well worth a watch. If you think we’ve missed a particularly great clip, please let us know!