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The MonkCast

A RedMonk Production

Technology analysis and insights from the RedMonk team

Join us for in-depth conversations with technology thought leaders, industry experts, and the RedMonk analysts as we explore the intersection of technology, business, and culture.

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Latest Episodes

Evidence Over Certificates: John Ellis on the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework - Cover Art
New Episode
August 13, 2026

Evidence Over Certificates: John Ellis on the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework

What does it mean to trust software? For this RedMonk Conversation, Kate Holterhoff sits down with John Ellis, President of Codethink and the contributor to the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework, to pull that question apart. Ellis leans on an old image: the bridge builders who once slept under their own bridges to prove the work was sound. Modern software rarely faces that kind of test, even when it steers a car or flies a plane. He explains where trust tends to break, especially the integration step where hidden dependencies finally show themselves, and points out that a safety certificate almost never uses the word "safe." Rather than pass-or-fail box-ticking, the framework asks teams to state their confidence and back it with evidence that others can inspect and challenge. They also dig into AI-written code, the EU Cyber Resilience Act, and why rising software recalls suggest current habits fall short.This RedMonk video is sponsored by the Eclipse Foundation.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/john-ellis/Chapters00:04 Introduction to the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework02:57 Understanding Trust in Software05:59 The Integration Moment of Truth08:54 Challenges in Software Development Lifecycle11:25 The Role of the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework14:39 Managing Change in Software Development17:20 Versioning and Continuous Improvement20:01 Risk Analysis and Trustworthiness in Software24:39 Automating Testing and Confidence in Software25:23 Bridging the Gap with Regulators27:15 The Complexity of Software and Safety Standards29:18 Understanding Certification and Safety Claims31:12 The Need for a Shift in Mindset32:16 The Role of the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework34:18 Navigating the EU Cyber Resilience Act37:41 The Journey of Compliance and Awareness39:16 AI's Impact on Software Provenance43:34 Future Directions for the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework

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From Dashboards to APIs: Day Two Operations in VCF 9.1 with Sehjung Hah - Cover Art
August 12, 2026

From Dashboards to APIs: Day Two Operations in VCF 9.1 with Sehjung Hah

In this MonkCast conversation, Rachel Stephens talks with Sehjung Hah, a product marketing engineer at Broadcom, about how VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 is shifting private cloud operations from click-driven dashboards toward programmable, API-first workflows.Hah walks through the expanded VCF API surface that lets developers pull network details, vSphere diagnostics, and real-time infrastructure health in a self-service fashion. They also discuss a new fleet management capability that centralizes password rotation, certificate updates, and identity management across massive compute footprints.This RedMonk video is sponsored by VMware by Broadcom. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/vcf9dot1-dashboards-to-apis-sehjung-hah/Chapters00:00 Intro00:30 Removing Developer Friction in Private Cloud02:44 Fleet Management for Platform Engineers04:23 From Dashboards to Telemetry-as-Code08:27 Killing Static Credentials and Shrinking the Blast Radius11:29 AI Workloads, Sovereignty, and Cost Visibility14:56 The 3 AM Scenario17:27 Putting It All Together

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Dealing with the Next Bottleneck: Build Management at AI Scale with Helen Altshuler - Cover Art
August 6, 2026

Dealing with the Next Bottleneck: Build Management at AI Scale with Helen Altshuler

AI agents are writing code faster than anyone can build, test, and ship it. James Governor talks with Helen Altshuler, CEO and co-founder of EngFlow, about why the bottlenecks that once happened at Google scale are now showing up everywhere. Helen traces the story back to Google's 2008 push for five-minute builds, which produced Blaze and eventually Bazel, and explains why that system is finally having its moment a decade after it was open sourced. The numbers are hard to ignore: EngFlow's customers went from 250 million build actions a week to nearly 2 billion in a single year. Companies like Snowflake, Databricks, and Tinder are using Bazel, managed by EngFlow to keep up. James and Helen also dig into agent-ready documentation, why verification is increasingly automated or even ignored, and what happens once people stop using pull request workflows. We're about to hit a wall of AI created scale, and companies are going to fundamentally rethink architectures and approaches if the want to make it.This RedMonk video is sponsored by EngFlow.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/helen-altshuler/Chapters00:04 Introduction and Context Setting01:25 Challenges of Build Management at Scale04:29 Google's Historical Perspective on Build Management07:15 The Impact of AI on Software Development10:19 Bazel's Role in Modern Development13:23 Community Growth and Open Source Collaboration16:36 Enhancing Developer Experience with AI19:22 Customer Insights and Scaling Challenges22:34 Bazel's Unique Advantages and Market Position25:21 Multi-Cloud Strategies and Infrastructure Flexibility29:36 Scaling Software Development with Data33:06 Investing in Developer Infrastructure36:37 Embracing GitHub and CI Challenges42:13 The Evolution of Code Review Practices47:11 The Future of Build Management at Scale

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"Don't Submit Code You Don't Understand": Angie Byron on AI and Open Source Trust - Cover Art
August 4, 2026

"Don't Submit Code You Don't Understand": Angie Byron on AI and Open Source Trust

Open source has a new problem: you often can't tell whether the contributor on the other end is a person or an agent working on their behalf. In this RedMonk Conversation, Kate Holterhoff talks with Angie Byron, Senior Manager of Community and Advocacy at Temporal and lead of applied AI at Drupal, about AI's effects on open source communities. They discuss the issue of AI-generated slop on maintainers, the credit and trust systems AI breaks, and the policies projects are testing, from disclosure rules to outright bans. Angie also makes the case for the upside: tools that let product managers and marketers ship real code, security work that surfaces decades-old bugs, and a much lower bar for who gets to contribute. Underneath all of it sits a harder question about identity, and what happens to developers who built a career on the craft of writing code.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/angie-byron/Chapters00:00 Introduction to Angie Byron and Temporal02:47 AI's Impact on Open Source Communities05:57 Trust and Contribution in Drupal08:40 Navigating AI in Open Source Contributions11:40 Demographic Shifts in Open Source Contributions14:30 The Role of AI in Contributor Onboarding17:29 The Future of Open Source with AI20:30 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Contributions23:49 Conclusion and Future Outlook27:46 Navigating AI in Code Review29:22 Challenges of Incentivization in Open Source Contributions30:14 The Bug Bounty Dilemma31:08 AI's Role in Security Vulnerability Detection32:30 Onboarding and Community Engagement in Open Source35:09 The Impact of AI on Content Management Systems38:40 AI Integration in Drupal and CMSs41:21 The Future of CMS in an AI-Driven World45:02 Call to Action for Open Source Collaboration

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Why the Gateway Approach to Agents Sucks (and What to Do Instead) with Marek Poliks - Cover Art
July 30, 2026

Why the Gateway Approach to Agents Sucks (and What to Do Instead) with Marek Poliks

James Governor sits down with Marek Poliks, Head of AI at LaunchDarkly, for a spicy conversation about what it actually takes to manage agents in production. Marek makes the case that feature flags were almost designed for this moment: pulling agents out of application code lets teams gate, roll back, and iterate on whole agent harnesses as testable variations rather than hard-coded entities. Along the way he argues that everyone is now experimenting in production whether they admit it or not, and that the popular gateway approach introduces brittle third-party dependencies at the most security-sensitive point in the stack. According to Marek, observability "will not save us." Passive logging is a lagging indicator; the real value lies in runtime control and adaptive triggers that intervene before bad things happen. The discussion ranges across progressive delivery, software factories, healthcare and finance adoption, and closes with Stafford Beer and outcomes-driven engineering.The RedMonk video is sponsored by LaunchDarkly.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/marek-poliks/Chapters00:00 Introduction to AI and Agent Management03:11 The Role of Feature Flags in AI Agents06:01 Experimentation in Production09:05 Runtime Control and Progressive Delivery11:49 The Future of Software Development and AI15:04 Challenges in AI Adoption Across Industries18:08 The Importance of Context in AI Systems20:57 Navigating Regulations and Compliance in AI24:02 Conclusion and Future Perspectives26:34 The Evolution of Automation and AI27:51 Shifting Focus: From Inputs to Outcomes29:07 The Role of Gateways in AI Security33:02 The Limitations of Observability38:58 Continuous Feedback Loops in Software Development

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Where Crochet Meets Code: Fiber Arts and the History of Computing with Abbey Perini - Cover Art
July 28, 2026

Where Crochet Meets Code: Fiber Arts and the History of Computing with Abbey Perini

What do Viking needlework, the Apollo guidance computer, and a $7 Etsy crochet pattern have in common? More than you'd think. In this episode of the MonkCast, Kate Holterhoff talks with Abbey Perini, web developer at Hygiena, technical writer, and prolific crafter, about the tangled history of fiber arts and programming. Abbey walks through a condensed version of her CodeMash talk, from the earliest knitted scraps around 6500 BCE to the women who wove core rope memory for NASA and got written off as "little old lady" needleworkers. Along the way she makes the case that the Jacquard loom gets too much credit, that knitting patterns really are programs (loops, debugging, DRY and all), and that AI slop has already found its way into crochet. The conversation closes on something quieter: why building a physical thing still matters when so much of our work disappears the moment we close the laptop.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/abbey-perini/Chapters00:00 Introduction to Fiber Arts and Programming05:49 Historical Context of Fiber Arts12:54 The Intersection of Fiber Arts and Computing20:37 Patterns as Programs: Similarities and Differences25:42 AI's Impact on Fiber Arts28:30 The Intersection of Tech and Fiber Arts32:35 Learning Through Craft: The Developer's Journey37:26 The Emotional Connection to Crafting and Coding42:31 Finding Meaning Beyond the Screen

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Charity Majors on AI, Determinism, Instrumentation, & Eating Your Broccoli - Cover Art
July 23, 2026

Charity Majors on AI, Determinism, Instrumentation, & Eating Your Broccoli

James Governor talks with Charity Majors, Co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, about what AI is doing to engineering practices. Majors argues that non-determinism takes more discipline, not less, and every CEO who wants their AI cookies has to eat their broccoli first. Agents in production are finally forcing teams to do the instrumentation work they should have done years ago. They get into Chad Fowler's Phoenix architectures and the idea that the system, not the code, holds the truth about how software behaves. Also: which problems AI has genuinely solved and which it hasn't, why bragging about token spend is like driving a Hummer, and the last year of AI hype has been aimed almost entirely at individual productivity when the hard useful work is always about software development as a team sport. They discuss Honeycomb's Canvas, the company's AI-guided Observabiolity workspace. And finally they discuss the difference between performative outrage and actually artists in the AI era - and make some recommendations accordingly!Honeycomb is a RedMonk client, but this video is free an independent content.Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/charity-majors/Chapters00:00 Intro01:51 Nobody has any change budget left03:15 AI is forcing the discipline conversation05:37 Broccoli first, then ice cream06:01 Phoenix architectures, and why code isn't the source of truth08:47 The problems AI hasn't solved11:30 Where determinism meets non-determinism13:29 Token maxxing, Goodhart, and the Hummer problem15:34 Superpowers for one vs engineering as a team sport19:00 npmx and doing open source in public20:41 Honeycomb Canvas, and social debugging at 2am26:22 AI norms and values27:42 Writing is thinking32:25 Work you stand behind vs feedback you can't outsource35:06 The other bitter lessons37:33 If you support artists, support artists43:05 Performative anger and Bluesky44:49 Knowledge management is back46:27 Canvas, timeline analysis, and what's next

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