Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman

Scott talks with Skyla Loomis, General Manager of IBM Z Software, about the ongoing relevance of mainframes in 2026. They discuss the enduring power of mainframes, how generative AI is transforming COBOL modernization, and why enterprise infrastructure still runs on IBM Z. Skyla shares insights on developer experience, compliance challenges, and the misconceptions about mainframe technology in a cloud-native world.

Greg Hinkle, co-founder of Nimbalyst and former VP of Software Engineering at Salesforce, joins Scott to discuss the future of AI-assisted development. They explore the challenges of managing multiple AI coding agents, finding flow state in an agentic world, and why visual workspaces matter. Greg shares Nimbalyst's opinionated approach to integrating tools like Excalidraw, task management, and session organization directly into the developer workflow.

https://nimbalyst.com

Kelly Shortridge, author of "Security Chaos Engineering: Sustaining Resilience in Software and Systems" and CPO at Fastly, joins Scott for an ACM ByteCast joint episode about why security should be designed for failure rather than prevention. From airplane coffee makers causing critical failures to squirrels being the real "advanced persistent threat" to power grids, Kelly makes the case that no system is perfectly secure — and the teams that feel most in control are often the least prepared. The conversation covers metrics theater, the cost-resilience tradeoff, why software has unique advantages for simulation that we're not leveraging, and where LLMs fit (and don't fit) in security workflows.

Tori Westerhoff joins Scott to explore the intersection of AI, human psychology, and personal growth. As people increasingly use LLMs for introspection and decision-making, Tori argues that we're missing the diversity of thought that comes from community, even particularly random encounters with strangers. She reveals her own practice: a daily noon reminder to talk to strangers. "If you sycophant yourself, you're never going to grow," she explains. The conversation delves into how LLMs can create echo chambers of thought, and why the randomness of human connection, even just someone on the same bus, helps us update our mental frames and break out of programmed decision-making paradigms.

In this episode, in association with the ACM ByteCast, Scott talks with Eric Allman, one of the foundational figures of the early internet. Best known for creating Sendmail, the mail transfer agent that powered a large portion of global email infrastructure through the formative years of the network, Allman helped shape how messages move across the internet. Their conversation explores the origins of internet email, the messy realities of building software that must operate at planetary scale, and what lessons today’s engineers can learn from the systems and design decisions that quietly underpin modern computing.