Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman

What does it take to design a programming language from scratch when the target isn’t just CPUs, but GPUs, accelerators, and the entire AI stack? In this episode, I sit down with legendary language architect Chris Lattner to talk about Mojo — his ambitious attempt to rethink systems programming for the machine learning era. We trace the arc from LLVM and Clang to Swift and now Mojo, unpacking the lessons Chris has carried forward into this new language. Mojo aims to combine Python’s ergonomics with C-level performance, but the real story is deeper: memory ownership, heterogeneous compute, compile-time metaprogramming, and giving developers precise control over how AI workloads hit silicon. Chris shares the motivation behind Modular, why today’s AI infrastructure demands new abstractions, and how Mojo fits into a rapidly evolving ecosystem of ML frameworks and hardware backends. We also dig into developer experience, safety vs performance tradeoffs, and what it means to build a language that spans research notebooks all the way down to kernel-level execution.

There’s a new wave of AI tools that don’t just live in the cloud, don’t just autocomplete code, and don’t just sit in a browser tab. They reach into your local environment, understand your context, and act more like a thinking companion than a chatbot. In this episode, I talk with Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw, about the rise of “The Claw” and what it means to build AI that feels fast, personal, and deeply integrated into your workflow. We explore why OpenClaw is having a moment, how developer expectations are shifting from prompts to agents, and what it takes to design tools that balance power, safety, and usability. Peter shares the architectural choices behind OpenClaw, the tradeoffs between local and cloud inference, and his perspective on privacy, ownership, and latency in a world of ever-larger models. This is a conversation about control. Who owns your context? Where does your data live? And what happens when AI stops being a destination and starts becoming an ambient layer across everything you do?

AI is making developers dramatically more productive...so why is everyone so exhausted? In this episode, Scott talks with Steve Yegge, legendary blogger and creator of Gas Town, a multi-agent orchestrator he describes as "Kubernetes for coding agents." Steve shares his theory of the "AI Vampire," that working alongside AI drains human energy Colin Robinson-style (What We Do In The Shadows), even as output skyrockets. They dig into what happens when you're managing ten or twenty Claude Code instances at once, who actually captures the value of a 10x productivity boost, and why the most important thing developers can do right now might be to close the laptop and go for a walk.

Code reviews are one of the most powerful tools teams have for maintaining quality — but they're also one of the most emotionally charged parts of the development process. With AI coding agents generating more code than ever, the review bottleneck is growing fast. But what if AI-assisted reviews could not only keep up with the volume, but actually be kinder about it? Scott talks with Nnenna Ndukwe, Developer Relations Lead at Qodo, about how AI code review is evolving beyond glorified linting into something that understands context, catches what matters, and delivers feedback developers actually want to read. They explore what happens when the same AI writes and reviews its own code, and whether thoughtful AI review can make code review culture healthier for everyone...not just faster. https://www.qodo.ai/

Join Scott and Eric Lippert for a lively tour through Fabulous Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms, a fresh take on timeless topics that flips the script on how programmers think about core tools of the trade. Eric shares why he wrote a book that avoids the predictable interview-prep regurgitations, and instead dives into clever, lesser-known data structures and algorithmic ideas that he’s encountered over a long career in language design and tooling. You’ll hear how immutability can make data structures both simpler and faster, why backtracking shows up everywhere from tree search to puzzle solving, and how a deeper understanding of performance and abstraction can change the way you architect code. Along the way Eric reveals how to reconnect joy with problem solving, find surprising patterns that scale across domains, and build intuition that serves you long after the syntax fades from memory. https://www.manning.com/books/fabulous-adventures-in-data-structures-and-algorithms

In this partnership episode between Hanselminutes and the ACM Bytecast, Scott talks with Dr. Dawn Song, MacArthur Fellow and leading researcher in computer security and AI and co-director at the Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence about how privacy-preserving computation, fairness, and accountability can help us design intelligent systems we can actually trust. https://agenticai-learning.org

Marcus Fontoura has led engineering teams at IBM, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft...building the very systems that power our digital lives. Now, as the author of Human Agency in a Digital World, he’s asking a more profound question: how do we stay in charge of the technology we create? Scott and Marcus explore what it means to move from being passengers to pilots in an age of automation — through ethics, education, and intentional design. https://fontoura.org

What happens when code stops being useful and starts being art? Scott talks with artist and programmer Daniel Temkin about his new book Forty-Four Esolangs, a deep dive into the world of esoteric programming languages...systems designed not to ship software, but to provoke thought. They explore how absurdity, constraint, and humor reveal something profound about how we think in code. https://danieltemkin.com

Scott sits down with Camille Tomlin, Head of IT at Philadelphia International Airport, to explore the intersection of aviation, technology, and leadership. They discuss how airports are transforming digitally — with IoT, data analytics, and smart infrastructure — and how Camille leads a team that bridges city government, airlines, and millions of passengers every year.

In a world of Rust, Go, and Python, why does C++ still matter? Dr. Gabriel Dos Reis joins Scott to explain how C++ continues to shape everything from GPUs and browsers to AI infrastructure. They talk about performance, predictability, and the art of balancing power with safety...and how the language’s constant evolution keeps it relevant four decades in.

Postgres has quietly become the world’s favorite database...running startups, governments, and global clouds alike. Scott talks with Claire Giordano, long-time Postgres advocate and technologist, about the database’s unlikely rise from academic roots to modern dominance. They explore its design philosophy, the open-source community that fuels it, and why Postgres keeps winning even in the age of AI and hyperscale data. https://www.postgresql.org/

Scott talks with Stephen Jones of the new Interim Computing Museum, about the craft of bringing old computers back to life. From wire-wrapped boards to tape drives and terminals, this episode dives into why running the old systems — not just displaying them — matters for understanding how modern computing came to be. http://icm.museum

This week Scott talks to Kat who shares her tactical wisdom from her blog Katexcellence.io, where she decodes the early-career engineering experience with clarity and wit. From learning to build without motivation, to balancing depth and velocity, to navigating layoffs and early‑career uncertainty, Kat distills lessons from her own journey through Big Tech and beyond. She offers practical strategies for making an impact early, staying resilient, and turning challenging experiences into growth opportunities. https://katexcellence.io/

On this episode of Hanselminutes, Scott Hanselman talks with cloud migration and app modernization expert Mike Rousos about the challenges and opportunities of bringing decades-old applications into the modern era. They discuss practical strategies for app modernization, how AI and GitHub Copilot are reshaping developer workflows, and what it takes to transform legacy software into systems ready for the future.

On this episode of Hanselminutes, Scott talks with Bobby Lockhart, game designer and coauthor of The Game Designer’s Workbook. They explore the craft of game design, from turning ideas into playable experiences to balancing creativity with structure, and discuss how the principles in the workbook can help both aspiring and seasoned designers build better, more engaging games. https://www.gamedesignersworkbook.com

On this special episode of Hanselminutes, Scott reunites with .NET Principal Engineer Safia Abdalla, nearly 500 episodes and a decade after her first appearance on the show. They reflect on the arc of her career and the evolution of the developer landscape, discussing how building competence fuels confidence, how anxieties can compound in high-pressure environments, and what strategies help engineers sustain both technical excellence and personal growth over time.