Scott Hanselman

Unofficial, machine-generated summaries, as of 2026-11-09.

How to make the ultimate Terminal Prompt on Windows 11 - This video is LONG and WORDY and DETAILED2021-10-15

2021-10-15 · open the original ↗

synopsis

Hanselman rebuilds his own terminal setup, the one viewers asked about in an earlier video, on a fresh Surface Laptop Studio. He ends with Windows Terminal running PowerShell 7 and Ubuntu under a customized Oh My Posh prompt, with icons, predictive history and a few hotkeys. He deliberately leaves the mistakes in. His argument is that doing it slowly by hand teaches you how to fix it, which a script would not.

Setup. Only Visual Studio and VS Code are installed. He adds ZoomIt for on-screen annotation, sets Windows Terminal as the default terminal application so cmd opens inside it, and installs PowerShell 7.1.4 from the Store. He makes it the default profile and hides Windows PowerShell. wsl --install showed WSL already enabled, and Ubuntu came from the Store as Canonical's own package. A starting-directory setting failed to drop him in home, so he switched the profile's command line to wsl ~.

Fonts. He installs Cascadia Cove, the Nerd Fonts variant of Cascadia Code that carries icon glyphs. He leaves the prompt broken first to show the empty squares. VS Code's integrated terminal needed its own font setting, and it took an exact family name and a reload.

Oh My Posh. Installed with winget, it is an executable that prints the prompt, so the shell profile has to call it. His first try left the profile unchanged because the command he ran wrote a local config file. He admits he had not read the manual. He swaps in his own theme from his gists and explains its segments: path, git status, .NET version and an error-level heart. Then he moves the file to a stable folder after finding theme files duplicated across locations.

Profile. He adds Terminal-Icons, then pastes his long profile from a gist and comments out what he no longer needs. PSReadLine's list-view predictions failed until he installed the 2.2 beta with prerelease allowed. He adds z for jumping to visited folders, Ctrl+R history search, and a Ctrl+Shift+B handler that types dotnet build. The acrylic tab row turned out to be a Terminal Preview feature.

Left to the viewer. He sets an exercise: install Oh My Posh in Ubuntu's bash, reuse the same theme JSON, and get the same prompt on both sides. He says that is how his earlier video looked the same everywhere.

Build the prompt by hand, mistakes included, to learn the pieces. Hanselman sets up a brand-new Surface Laptop Studio unedited and refuses to hand out a script, so that viewers see what breaks and how to fix it. He separates three layers: the shell, the prompt it prints, and the terminal that paints the text.
Make Windows Terminal and PowerShell 7 the defaults first. He sets Windows Terminal as the default terminal application, so Win+R cmd opens there instead of the old console host. He installs PowerShell 7.1.4 from the Store, makes it the default profile and hides Windows PowerShell. He then adds WSL and Ubuntu (about 500 MB, published by Canonical), and launches the Ubuntu profile with wsl ~ after a starting-directory setting failed to land in home.
Prompt glyphs need a Nerd Font everywhere the prompt renders. Before he switches to Cascadia Cove from nerdfonts.com, the prompt shows empty squares. He sets the font in Terminal and separately in VS Code's integrated terminal, where the font name had to match exactly and the editor needed a reload before it took.
Oh My Posh is just an executable that prints the prompt. He installs it with winget and adds an init line to the PowerShell profile. He admits his first attempt failed because he "didn't RTFM", and the command wrote a local config instead of editing the profile. His theme from his gists has segments for path, git, .NET (version 6 here) and a heart that turns red when the last command fails. He keeps the theme in a stable folder after finding the default themes in more than one place.
Profile add-ons make PowerShell behave more like bash. He adds Terminal-Icons from the PowerShell Gallery, PSReadLine predictions, z as a learning replacement for cd, Ctrl+R history search, and Ctrl+Shift+B to insert dotnet build. The list-view prediction style needed PSReadLine 2.2 beta 1 rather than 2.1, which he says goes in his notes. An acrylic tab row was then available only in Windows Terminal Preview.

Windows 11 runs Graphical Linux Apps out of the box with WSLg2021-10-09

2021-10-09 · open the original ↗

One command sets up Linux on Windows 11. Hanselman shows wsl --install installing Ubuntu, setting things up and rebooting, and the same command with a distro name fetching Debian as a tar file. Windows Terminal, which ships with Windows 11, auto-detects each new distro. wsl --list -v showed him running Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04 and Debian side by side, all in a tiny utility VM that he says starts very fast.
Linux GUI apps install with apt and land in the Start menu. He installed the Git client Giggle with a single apt command, and Windows 11 added it to the Start menu. The window is painted by Linux and shown through a seamless remote-desktop connection. He also runs GIMP, Emacs and mpv, and stresses that sound works.
Files and tools cross the Windows–Linux boundary in both directions. Linux apps see the Windows drives under /mnt, and Linux distros appear in Windows Explorer. Typing code . in Linux installs the VS Code server and opens Windows VS Code connected to Ubuntu. A dotnet run site on localhost:5000 opens with a click from the terminal.
His case is Windows plus Linux, not Linux instead. Asked "why not just run Linux", he answers with his own preferences: Windows runs his games, and he likes its UI, File Explorer and terminal. He points viewers to a team member's architecture article on WSLg (Wayland, Weston, RDP RAIL, and a separate Windows-maintained system distro).

Teach Little Hackers to Code Without a Computer with Brandon Tory - Hanselminutes #8082021-10-06

2021-10-06 · open the original ↗

synopsis

Brandon Tory, a staff AI engineer at Google, formerly on Apple's first-party apps team, and a musician, argues that children as young as six can learn computing from paper workbooks. His case is that what they need first is the language and the systems underneath, plus the confidence that they can learn. Little Hackers, his Kickstarter project, is built on that view.

Multi-dream. Tory took the term from multithreading. Switching between engineering and music has a cost, and the way out is "multiple machines": trusted collaborators, which take time to cultivate. Code-switching as a Black engineer added overhead until his sister told him to be open about both identities, which he says is when his press and success began.

Closed boxes. Hanselman worries that iPads make kids consumers. Tory dislikes closed systems while crediting Jobs, and judges a fully open alternative unrealistic.

The book. Many six-year-olds have no computer, so Tory teaches computing as math is taught, on paper. The workbooks follow Forrest Mims's notebooks and ration screen time. QR codes launch browser-based AR with no app to download, because he says a download loses most users.

Root before flower. Tory favours starting low in the stack: hex editing, assembly, then C and C++. He says new technologies like the EVM echo the foundations, though the right starting point depends on the goal. To Hanselman's "computers are computers" he replies that humans design the interfaces.

Belonging and confidence. He says IRC's anonymity spared him questions of inclusion, and that tech is improving but statistically still short. His self-doubt came from music, never from technology. Children decide early whether they are smart, often when schools sort them, so he argues for telling them they are great.

Context switching is the cost, so scale by trusting people. Tory, a staff AI engineer at Google, says his "multi-dream" idea came from the Intel manual's multithreading. Real throughput, though, comes from "multiple machines", meaning bringing in people you trust, and that requires setting aside time to build relationships. Hanselman adds that the "Beyoncé has the same hours" line forgets that she has a team. Tory says success came after his sister told him to "just be honest" with his tech and music circles about being both.
Little Hackers teaches 6-to-8-year-olds computing on paper, not screens. Tory says the idea came when children at his son's basketball practice told him they had no computer, so he asked why coding should not be taught without one, the way math is. The workbooks are modelled on Forrest Mims's handwritten circuit books and tell parents how much screen time to allow. Browser-based AR, triggered by QR codes with no app download, makes characters walk off the page, built on AR.js and A-Frame with 3D models by his wife. His priority is vocabulary, so that words like CPU and RAM do not scare children later. Hanselman's plug says a Kickstarter would launch around September.
Closed devices turn kids into consumers, both argue. Hanselman contrasts the Apple II, whose lid you could pop, with the black-box iPad. Tory grants that Steve Jobs's impact has been positive but dislikes the closed-system mentality. He sees starting over with open hardware as unrealistic given the capital incumbents have built up in device drivers and the like.
Learn systems first, starting from the root. Tory's motto is "don't design the flower, design the root". He came up through hex editors, the C64 demo scene and assembly, and notes the Ethereum virtual machine's manual resembles Intel's x86 manual. He qualifies this by goal: assembly still matters for embedded work but may not be where an AI engineer starts. He has seen mathematicians join Google without programming experience and become effective in C++ within months. To Hanselman's "computers are computers" he adds that humans design the interfaces, and that is where the trouble comes.
Inclusion in tech is improving but not yet equitable. Tory calls the community fairly inclusive to people who do their homework, but says statistics still show deficiencies under the visible diversity. IRC's anonymity let him be judged on skill, and only later did he notice he was "the only black guy here". He traces children's sense of being "not smart" to schools sorting them into talented groups, and his remedy is to tell kids they are great until they believe it.