Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman

Latest Episodes:

AI Preceptorships with CMU's Dr Michael Hilton and Julia Gao Nov 05, 2026

Show notes

What does it mean to learn software engineering when AI can already write much of the code? And how do we make sure the next generation of developers builds the skills, judgment, and confidence to succeed?

In this special collaboration between Hanselminutes and Microsoft's Command Line blog, Scott Hanselman sits down with Dr. Michael Hilton of Carnegie Mellon University and Julia Gao, an early-in-career software engineer at Microsoft, to discuss PRAISE (PReceptorship for AI augmented Software Engineering), a new approach to developing software engineers through mentorship, hands-on experience, and AI-assisted learning.

Read the original PRAISE paper at the CACM

Changing how Engineering works with Ironclad CTO Sunita Verma Oct 22, 2026

Show notes

AI isn't just changing how we write code. It's changing how we build software, structure teams, and think about what it means to be a software engineer. In this episode of Hanselminutes, Scott Hanselman sits down with Sunita Verma, CTO at Ironclad and a longtime Google engineering veteran, to explore why simply adding AI tools to existing development workflows isn't enough.

They discuss the shift from writing code to directing AI agents, why traditional sequential software development processes may need to evolve, and how smaller engineering teams can compete with much larger organizations. How do engineers adapt when writing code is no longer the primary measure of productivity? What happens to collaboration, ownership, and engineering judgment? And can AI actually reduce burnout, or does it just raise expectations?
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The Quantum Revolution with Turing Award Winners Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard Oct 15, 2026

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What happens when the laws of quantum physics meet computer science? In this special crossover episode of Hanselminutes and ACM ByteCast, Scott Hanselman sits down with Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard, recipients of the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award, often called the "Nobel Prize of Computing."

These two pioneers helped lay the foundations of quantum information science, revolutionizing how we think about computing, cryptography, and secure communication. From their groundbreaking work on quantum key distribution to the surprising possibilities of quantum teleportation, Bennett and Brassard explore the ideas that helped launch an entirely new field of computing.

Join us for a fascinating conversation about curiosity, collaboration, quantum mechanics, and what happens when fundamental research changes what's possible.

A special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and Hanselminutes.

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Compile after Class Crossover Episode Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

A young man who's a sophomore in high school emailed me to come on his podcast that he does with his friend, and I had so much fun. I decided to make it a crossover episode. Check out "Compile after Class" on this week's episode!

https://www.youtube.com/@shreemanickaraja

Robots, Nukes, and AI: A Career at the Frontier with Maynard Holliday Aug 13, 2026

Show notes

Maynard Holliday spent 30+ years at the intersection of robotics, nuclear security, and defense technology, most recently serving as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies. He's worked on everything from helping remediate Three Mile Island to securing tons of Soviet nuclear material in post-Cold War Ukraine to overseeing the Pentagon's critical technology portfolio including AI, hypersonics, and microelectronics. He shares what "trusted AI" really means, why he co-founded Black in Robotics, and how T'Challa and Tony Stark shaped his career more than you'd expect.

https://www.maynardholliday.com/

Language Model Builder with Felix Rieseberg Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

Felix Rieseberg came to computing through poetry, and that background gives him a unique lens for explaining language models. A longtime engineer, Felix now gets to watch AI evolve from the inside. In this episode, Scott and Felix explore why language models are surprisingly easy to understand despite feeling magical, what it's like to train a model from noise to coherence, and the bigger philosophical questions about intelligence that AI keeps surfacing. You can learn how AI really works by making your own in a weekend with his free https://languagemodelbuilder.com/

AI and the Software Supply Chain with Endor Lab's Varun Badhwar Jul 30, 2026

Show notes

Varun Badhwar, CEO and Co-Founder of Endor Labs, joins Scott to explore the expanding software supply chain risk in the age of AI-generated code. They discuss how developers have gone from writing code to assembling it from layers of dependencies like open source, third-party libraries, and now the outputs of AI...and what all this means for security. From hallucinated npm packages that could be squatted on, to developers becoming part of the attack surface themselves, this is a wake-up call for anyone building software today.

https://www.endorlabs.com/

Stack Overflow for the Agent Era - with VP of Product Alex Lato Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Alexandra Lato, VP of Product at Stack Overflow, joins Scott to talk about how Stack Overflow is evolving for the age of AI agents. They explore the new "Stack Overflow for Agents" feature, where a single prompt bootstraps an agent with all the knowledge and APIs of Stack Overflow, and what it means for how developers, agents, and communities share and verify knowledge together.

https://agents.stackoverflow.com/

Who is left behind when AI moves fast? with Dr. Chinasa T. Okolo Jul 16, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Chinasa T. Okolo is the Founder and Scientific Director of Technecultura and a consultant for the United Nations and the World Bank. She talks with Scott about the yawning gap between AI's pace of development and policymakers' ability to understand it. She also discusses what it means to do AI governance research with a focus on Global Majority communities that are too often left out of the conversation.

https://www.chinasatokolo.com

The space between the Commits with Zed and DeltaDB's Nathan Sobo Jun 18, 2026

Show notes

Scott talks with Nathan Sobo, CEO and co-founder of Zed, about what comes after the traditional code editor. They start with Zed’s vision for a fast, collaborative, AI-native development environment, then go deeper on DeltaDB: a new approach to versioning software at the operation level, not just at the commit level. Nathan explains why so much important software work happens “between commits,” how agent conversations and code changes can become durable shared artifacts, and what it might mean for Git, collaboration, and the future of programming tools. Nathan previously helped build Atom at GitHub, and Zed describes DeltaDB as operation-level version control for human and AI collaboration.