I just read The Interview with Chris Sells.

I don't mean that I read it with him, like he's standing here in my kitchen with me, but that I read the interview in which he was asked all sorts of questions by another human, and it's a must read.

On the few occasions that I've been lucky enough to sit around and talk to Chris, it's already been a bit interview-like, but it's never gone too far beyond the surface. This is probably because we're both such totally opinionated people, and we both tend to begin our sentences with the words "I" and "Well, I." In short, we both converse as though we're already being interviewed:

R: "I like vanilla ice-cream."

C: "Well, I like chocolate ice-cream. I think vanilla's good, but it's nowhere near as good as chocolate. Chocolate is the way to go for serious ice-cream eaters."

R: "I disagree. I think that vanilla delivers a more satisfactory ice-cream experience, and the numbers are out there to prove it. I am in the majority on this one. Vanilla is the best."

C: "I like chocolate."

R: "I like vanilla."

C: "I."

R: "Me."

C: "No, I."

R: "No, me."

C: "I infinity."

R: "Me infinity plus one."

And so on.

Notice that the pronoun "you" is never used. Also note the complete lack of question marks.

The conversations are actually much more interesting than that, but they're very first-person pronoun heavy.

And now I'm realizing what I've missed out on with my chest-beating.

When I first encountered the name "Chris Sells," it was while searching for a book on TAPI. I wanted to write an application that would run on my laptop and automatically buzz people into my apartment, and it seemed that the only book in the universe on the subject was by Chris. A few hours later, though, I learned that my hardware sucked, wouldn't do what I needed, and I dropped the project, went outside, and tanned naked in the yard.

It wasn't until a Portland .NET user group meeting that I encountered the human being known as Chris Sells. Familiarity with his TAPI stuff was fine and all, but I wasn't a serious TAPI developer, so I was really going to the meeting for the free pizza.

By the end, however, I decided that I wanted to do something similar to what he did.

I mean, here was this guy who managed to make .NET Code Access Security look like fun. It'd be easier to pull a three-headed monkey in a tutu singing barbershop choir out of your ass, but he still accomplished it. Even my girlfriend who didn't know diddly about coding walked away making thoughtful noises to herself. To this day, she sleeps in a blue oversized Chris Sells t-shirt. How many other coders out there have silk-screened images of themselves draped over the nubile naked bodies of women as hot as my little tart of a girlfriend? Not many, my friends. Not many at all.

It's because he's more than a coder. I've read books, and I've been to talks - something I've learned is that there is exactly one Chris Sells, and you get to see quite a bit of him in the interview. For years, he's been talking about ATL, .NET, this, that, blah blah blah. Finally, someone peeled back a corner of the rug covering his brain and poked around with an interview-shaped stick to see what he'd say.

It was interesting.

One thing you'll note in the interview is that he spends very little time talking about code.

He talks about books he's reading (non-technical (mostly)), working in a management position, the nature of large companies, and experiences he had in school. I've asked him questions about this stuff, but I still hadn't heard most of what was in this interview.

You might think I'm going on quite a bit here, but you have to understand that he's the guy who made me realize that the developer community isn't just long faces in white lab coats talking about all sorts of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo bullcrap, and that's a huge deal for me. Much of the communication I've done in the developer world (small amount though it has been), I've done with Chris in mind as the benchmark for class A delivery. From the humor to the clarity, I've strived to be as good as Chris. I'm certainly not as prolific, but I also drink a lot more booze than he does, so don't I have as much time to think since I have to spend more time being drunk.

Yup. I'm definitely rambling now.

What I'm trying to say is that if you haven't read it yet, go read the interview. It'll get you inside the noggin of one of our industry's most interesting bastards.