The MonkCast

In this conversation, Stephen O'Grady and Rob Hirschfeld discuss the complexities of bare metal automation, the role of platform teams, and the importance of observability and governance in managing infrastructure. They explore the challenges of integrating open source solutions with bare metal and emphasize the need for specialized support in this area. The discussion highlights the evolving land...

In this RedMonk Conversation, Wes Bos, co-host of Syntax, chats with Kate Holterhoff about why he predicts 2026 is the year design makes a comeback. They explore why the design of exceptional websites like landonorris.com can be a critical differentiator in the digital space, particularly as AI tools simplify the creation of visually appealing websites. Wes emphasizes that while the baseline for w...

Modern software systems are frequently described as “complicated,” but that framing obscures the nature of the challenge. Complicated systems can be decomposed, reasoned about, and managed through clearer processes and better tooling. Complex systems cannot. They are shaped by a web of technical interdependencies, incentives, institutional history, and human behavior, and they often fail in ways t...

In this conversation, Rachel Stephens, the research director at RedMonk, discusses the evolution of observability in the tech industry. She highlights: - the shift from traditional monitoring to a broader understanding of data collection and analysis - the importance of OpenTelemetry as a standard for data ingestion - the challenges organizations face in managing and analyzing vast amounts of data...

In this RedMonk conversation, Mark Fussell, CEO of Diagrid, discusses Dapr, a runtime designed to simplify the development of distributed applications, with James Governor. Mark shares insights from his extensive experience in the field, including the importance of community contributions and the role of observability through OpenTelemetry. The discussion also touches on the future of Dapr in the...

In this RedMonk conversation, Mike Hartington, Developer Advocate at Prisma, chats mobile development with Kate Holterhoff. They discuss mobile frameworks, the challenges of cross-platform development, and why CI/CD is so hard for deploying mobile apps. Show Notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/mike-hartington-on-the-state-of-mobile-development/

In this RedMonk Conversation, James Governor sits down with Kun Chen, Lead Principal Engineer at Atlassian, to explore what “context engineering” really means in practice—and why it matters far more than one-shot “vibe coding” demos for real software teams. Drawing on Atlassian’s internal experience building Rovo Dev, Kun explains how AI agents become genuinely useful when they are grounded in the...

In this RedMonk Conversation, Rachel Stephens sits down with Zach Lloyd, CEO of Warp, to unpack how the terminal has evolved from an overlooked productivity bottleneck into the center of the agentic development workflow. Zach traces Warp’s journey from reimagining the terminal for broader developer accessibility to redefining it as an “agentic development environment” (ADE), designed around prompt...

In this RedMonk Conversation, James Governor interviews Jamie Dobson, Co-Founder of Container Solutions, about his book Visionaries, Rebels and Machines , which traces the evolution of computing technology from 1799 through Edison's workshops, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, to the modern cloud, creating what he describes as a "relay race of stories" that has not been comprehensively told. The discussion u...

In this New Builders conversation, RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady chats with Ali Spittel, head of DevRel at AWS, about the importance of developer experience, how the role of developers is evolving, and the new challenges tand opportunities devs face in the AI era. They explore how AWS is focusing on meeting developers' needs, the significance of events, and the balance between developer and buyer pers...

In this New Builders conversation, RedMonk's Kate Holterhoff speaks with Jessie VanderVeen, Global Head of Product Marketing, Agentic AI, Developer Experience and Ali Maaz, Head of WW GTM, Agentic AI and Developer Experience about how AWS is approaching the crowded agentic IDE market. They discuss the importance of customer obsession, AWS's unique launch strategy for their agentic IDE Kiro, and th...

In this New Builders conversation, Al Harris, Principal Engineer at AWS, discusses the development of a natural language system aimed at helping developers translate specifications into code and vice versa, particularly as it relates to AWS's agentic IDE, Kiro. The conversation explores the significance of this translation process, the challenges faced in natural language processing, and the poten...

In this New Builders conversation, RedMonk's James Governor speaks with Deepak Singh, VP of Agents and Experience at AWS, about the evolution of developer tools, particularly in the context of generative AI and the introduction of Kiro. They discuss the journey of AWS in the container space, the importance of developer experience, and how AI is reshaping the way developers work. Deepak shares insi...

In this RedMonk conversation, Alex Russell, Partner Product Architect at Microsoft, discusses the state of mobile development, focusing on JavaScript performance, the state of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), and the impact of major players like Apple (iOS) and Google (Android). They explore the importance of management in addressing web performance issues, the role of web standards in shaping the fut...

Java turned 30 this year, and we're celebrating. In this RedMonk conversation, Sharat Chander, Senior Director of Java Product Management & Developer Engagement at Oracle, stopped by to discuss this milestone with Kate Holterhoff. They chat about the history of this language, how perceptions of Java within the tech industry continue to evolve, and the importance of community, consistency, and...

James Governor sits down with Anush Elangovan, VP of AI at AMD, to dig into the fast-evolving world of local LLMs, edge hardware, and the future of AI-powered developer experience. They cover: Why local LLMs are exploding in adoption -Privacy, data sovereignty, and on-device intelligence Running 120B-parameter models on AMD Strix Halo laptops The software stack Anush uses: ROCm, Llama.cpp, Ollama,...

In this RedMonk conversation, David Mytton, CEO of Arcjet, chats security and developer experience with James Governor. They discuss the importance of integrating security as a feature in developer workflows, the challenges developers face with traditional security tools, and the need for innovation in this space. David shares insights on how Arcjet aims to make security seamless and developer-fri...

In this RedMonk conversation, Jack Bridger, host of Scaling Devtools and Developer Experience at Layercode, chats with Kate Holterhoff about founders. Jack shares insights from his interviews with founders on the importance of understanding users, overcoming fear in business, and challenges faced in the startup ecosystem. They also discuss marketing strategies around the role of differentiation, a...

In this RedMonk conversation, Deb Nicholson, Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation, discusses the PSF's responsibilities, recent challenges with a government grant proposal, and the community's strong support with Kate Holterhoff. The conversation highlights the importance of cybersecurity in open source, the role of PyPI, and the evolving landscape of programming languages. Deb emp...

In this RedMonk Conversation from IBM's TechXchange conference, Matt Rodkey speaks about and demos Bob, IBM's newly announced agentic IDE, with RedMonk senior analyst Kate Holterhoff. Currently in private preview, Bob is designed to help enterprise developers navigate complex codebases and modernization challenges. Rodkey emphasizes that Bob's differentiation lies in addressing enterprise deployme...

What happens when you build an ultra low-latency compute platform and then realize the round trips are going to kill you? Absent changing physics or your cap table: you partner! This RedMonk Conversation explores how Fermyon - a platform that compiles serverless compute into Wasm - partnered with Akamai - a company that started out as a CDN and has evolved into a full-fledged alternative cloud - t...

In this RedMonk conversation, Austin Parker, Director of Open Source at Honeycomb and a maintainer of the OpenTelemetry project, chats AI, Olly, and OTel with Kate Holterhoff. They explore the implications of AI on SREs and observability practitioners, the development of honeycomb's MCP server, and the challenges vendors face in adapting to changes in the observability space. The discussion also t...

In this RedMonk Conversation on the Road at IBM TechXchange 2025, RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady chats with Kate Soule, IBM's Director of Technical Product Management for Granite about the newly announced Granite 4.0 family of large language models. Soule explains IBM's strategic focus on small, efficient models that are open sourced under Apache 2, highlighting how these models achieve better performa...

In this RedMonk conversation, Pascal Martin, principal software engineer at Bedrock Streaming, and Valentin Clavreul, principal backend engineer at Bedrock Streaming, discuss the evolution of streaming architectures and their partnership with Fastly as a crucial element in optimizing performance with RedMonk's James Governor. They explore the challenges of scaling streaming services, the transitio...

In this conversation, Rachel Stephens (Research Director at RedMonk) and Mike Milinkovich (Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation) discuss the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Mike explains the law, its implications for the software industry – particularly open source software – and the responsibilities it places on manufacturers. This episode covers: the evolution of the CRA from a “near-death expe...