The MonkCast

RedMonk

Join the developer-focused industry analysts at RedMonk as they discuss news and trends in the software space with leaders and practicioners in cloud, AI, IaC, security, DevOps, developer relations, observability, data, and more. Can't get enough of the Monks? Visit the RedMonk YouTube channel or check out our research at RedMonk.com. You can also follow RedMonk on Bluesky, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn. Meet RedMonk's AnalystsJames Governor, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @monkchips, LinkedIn, Blog Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @sogrady, LinkedIn, Blog Rachel Stephens, Research Director @rstephensme, LinkedIn, Blog Kate Holterhoff, Senior Industry Analyst @KateHolterhoff, LinkedIn, Blog

  1. 10h ago

    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/ Chapters 00:04 Introduction to the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework 02:57 Understanding Trust in Software 05:59 The Integration Moment of Truth 08:54 Challenges in Software Development Lifecycle 11:25 The Role of the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework 14:39 Managing Change in Software Development 17:20 Versioning and Continuous Improvement 20:01 Risk Analysis and Trustworthiness in Software 24:39 Automating Testing and Confidence in Software 25:23 Bridging the Gap with Regulators 27:15 The Complexity of Software and Safety Standards 29:18 Understanding Certification and Safety Claims 31:12 The Need for a Shift in Mindset 32:16 The Role of the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework 34:18 Navigating the EU Cyber Resilience Act 37:41 The Journey of Compliance and Awareness 39:16 AI's Impact on Software Provenance 43:34 Future Directions for the Eclipse Trustable Software Framework

  2. 1d ago

    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/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:30 Removing Developer Friction in Private Cloud 02:44 Fleet Management for Platform Engineers 04:23 From Dashboards to Telemetry-as-Code 08:27 Killing Static Credentials and Shrinking the Blast Radius 11:29 AI Workloads, Sovereignty, and Cost Visibility 14:56 The 3 AM Scenario 17:27 Putting It All Together

  3. Aug 6

    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/ Chapters 00:04 Introduction and Context Setting 01:25 Challenges of Build Management at Scale 04:29 Google's Historical Perspective on Build Management 07:15 The Impact of AI on Software Development 10:19 Bazel's Role in Modern Development 13:23 Community Growth and Open Source Collaboration 16:36 Enhancing Developer Experience with AI 19:22 Customer Insights and Scaling Challenges 22:34 Bazel's Unique Advantages and Market Position 25:21 Multi-Cloud Strategies and Infrastructure Flexibility 29:36 Scaling Software Development with Data 33:06 Investing in Developer Infrastructure 36:37 Embracing GitHub and CI Challenges 42:13 The Evolution of Code Review Practices 47:11 The Future of Build Management at Scale

  4. Aug 4

    "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/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Angie Byron and Temporal 02:47 AI's Impact on Open Source Communities 05:57 Trust and Contribution in Drupal 08:40 Navigating AI in Open Source Contributions 11:40 Demographic Shifts in Open Source Contributions 14:30 The Role of AI in Contributor Onboarding 17:29 The Future of Open Source with AI 20:30 Challenges and Opportunities in AI Contributions 23:49 Conclusion and Future Outlook 27:46 Navigating AI in Code Review 29:22 Challenges of Incentivization in Open Source Contributions 30:14 The Bug Bounty Dilemma 31:08 AI's Role in Security Vulnerability Detection 32:30 Onboarding and Community Engagement in Open Source 35:09 The Impact of AI on Content Management Systems 38:40 AI Integration in Drupal and CMSs 41:21 The Future of CMS in an AI-Driven World 45:02 Call to Action for Open Source Collaboration

  5. Jul 30

    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/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to AI and Agent Management 03:11 The Role of Feature Flags in AI Agents 06:01 Experimentation in Production 09:05 Runtime Control and Progressive Delivery 11:49 The Future of Software Development and AI 15:04 Challenges in AI Adoption Across Industries 18:08 The Importance of Context in AI Systems 20:57 Navigating Regulations and Compliance in AI 24:02 Conclusion and Future Perspectives 26:34 The Evolution of Automation and AI 27:51 Shifting Focus: From Inputs to Outcomes 29:07 The Role of Gateways in AI Security 33:02 The Limitations of Observability 38:58 Continuous Feedback Loops in Software Development

  6. Jul 28

    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/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Fiber Arts and Programming 05:49 Historical Context of Fiber Arts 12:54 The Intersection of Fiber Arts and Computing 20:37 Patterns as Programs: Similarities and Differences 25:42 AI's Impact on Fiber Arts 28:30 The Intersection of Tech and Fiber Arts 32:35 Learning Through Craft: The Developer's Journey 37:26 The Emotional Connection to Crafting and Coding 42:31 Finding Meaning Beyond the Screen

  7. Jul 23

    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/ Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:51 Nobody has any change budget left 03:15 AI is forcing the discipline conversation 05:37 Broccoli first, then ice cream 06:01 Phoenix architectures, and why code isn't the source of truth 08:47 The problems AI hasn't solved 11:30 Where determinism meets non-determinism 13:29 Token maxxing, Goodhart, and the Hummer problem 15:34 Superpowers for one vs engineering as a team sport 19:00 npmx and doing open source in public 20:41 Honeycomb Canvas, and social debugging at 2am 26:22 AI norms and values 27:42 Writing is thinking 32:25 Work you stand behind vs feedback you can't outsource 35:06 The other bitter lessons 37:33 If you support artists, support artists 43:05 Performative anger and Bluesky 44:49 Knowledge management is back 46:27 Canvas, timeline analysis, and what's next

  8. Jul 21

    Tech for Chickens with JT Perry

    In this MonkCast Conversation, RedMonk Research Director Rachel Stephens talks with JT Perry, co-founder of Barn Analytics, about building ChickenSense — a hardware and software product that uses RFID tags and in-coop sensors to monitor backyard chicken health. JT shares how his own farming experiences led him to build a solution for detecting illness in egg-laying chickens before it's too late. They discuss the challenges of designing custom circuit boards for the first time, managing Bluetooth communication in environments without Wi-Fi, navigating tariffs and supply chain uncertainty, and the chicken-and-egg problem (pun very much intended) of building a data analytics platform before you have the data. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/tech-for-chickens-with-jt-perry/ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Background 01:32 From Tech Burnout to Farming (With Computers) 02:46 The Hypothesis: Weight Loss as a Health Indicator 05:34 Bluetooth, Battery Life, and Coop Connectivity 09:18 Protecting Hardware from Chicken Grossness 11:22 Manufacturing and Supply Chain Challenges 12:26 The Platform 16:24 Biggest Engineering Challenges 17:54 Target Market and the Cattle-Pets Spectrum 20:08 Roadmap and Product #2: USDA Temperature Monitoring 22:37 The Team Behind Barn Analytics 23:16 Lightning Round: Chicken Names, Horrors, and Eggs

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About

Join the developer-focused industry analysts at RedMonk as they discuss news and trends in the software space with leaders and practicioners in cloud, AI, IaC, security, DevOps, developer relations, observability, data, and more. Can't get enough of the Monks? Visit the RedMonk YouTube channel or check out our research at RedMonk.com. You can also follow RedMonk on Bluesky, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn. Meet RedMonk's AnalystsJames Governor, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @monkchips, LinkedIn, Blog Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @sogrady, LinkedIn, Blog Rachel Stephens, Research Director @rstephensme, LinkedIn, Blog Kate Holterhoff, Senior Industry Analyst @KateHolterhoff, LinkedIn, Blog

Information

  • Creator
    RedMonk
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    211
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 RedMonk

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