SE Radio 711: Scott Hanselman on AI-Assisted Development Tools

SE Radio 711: Scott Hanselman on AI-Assisted Development Tools

Author: team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) March 11, 2026 Duration: 1:02:15

Scott Hanselman, the VP of Developer Community at Microsoft, speaks with host Jeremy Jung about AI-assisted coding. They start by considering how the tools are a progression from syntax highlighting and autocomplete. Scott describes the ambiguity and non-determinism of agentic loops, why vague high-level prompts usually don't give good results, and the need to express intent and steer the models. He explains how knowing fundamentals helps you create better plans and know what to ask the models, and how to treat agents differently based on your knowledge level. He discusses his experience porting Windows Live Writer to a modern .NET stack, and defining success and providing tools for models to verify their work. Finally, he explains why you need to read and understand generated code in production environments, plus methods for sandboxing agents.


For developers who build the world's most critical systems, Software Engineering Radio offers deep, substantive conversations that move beyond the hype cycle. This isn't about quick tips or news flashes; it's a dedicated audio library for career engineers seeking to solidify their foundational knowledge and explore advanced concepts. Each episode is crafted as an enduring resource, featuring either a comprehensive tutorial breaking down a specific technology or methodology, or a detailed interview with a leading practitioner shaping the field. You'll hear focused discussions on everything from low-level systems architecture and programming language design to team dynamics and project management, all through the lens of professional software creation. The content is exclusively produced for this podcast, ensuring thoughtful, in-depth analysis you won't find simply repackaged from conference talks. If your work demands a rigorous understanding of the craft, this is the podcast for you.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers
Podcast Episodes
SE Radio 728: Clare Liguori on AWS Strands SDK for AI Agents [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:39
Clare Liguori, a Senior Principal Engineer who works on developer tooling and agentic AI at Amazon Web Services, speaks with host Sri Panyam about the Amazon Strands Agents SDK. This episode explores the philosophy, desi…
SE Radio 727: Jeroen Janssens and Thijs Nieuwdorp on Using Polars [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:16
Jeroen Janssens, Head of Developer Relations at Posit, and Thijs Nieuwdorp, a developer relations engineer at Polars, speak with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about Polars, a Python package for transforming, analyzing, and…
SE Radio 726: Scott Kingsley on the Swagger Ecosystem [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:30
Scott Kingsley, a VP of Engineering at SmartBear, speaks with host Gregory Kapfhammer about the Swagger ecosystem. They discuss the user interface, editor, and Swagger CodeGen and how these tools support the creation and…
SE Radio 725: Danny Yang and Sam Goldman on the Pyrefly Type Checker [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:51
Danny Yang and Sam Goldman, both Software Engineers at Meta, speak with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about the Rust-based Pyrefly type checker for Python. After a look at the foundational concepts for annotating and checki…
SE Radio 723: Dave Airlie on Linux Kernel Maintenance [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:27
Dave Airlie, a Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about Linux kernel maintenance. After over-viewing the scale and structure of the Linux kernel, they dive deep into the review and…
SE Radio 721: Rob Moffat on Risk-First Software Development [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:31
In this episode, Rob Moffat, author of Risk-First Software Development and chief technical architect at the FinTech Open Source Software Foundation (FINOS), speaks with host Brijesh Ammanath about how all of software dev…
SE Radio 720: Martin Dilger on Understanding Eventsourcing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:36
Martin Dilger, founder and CEO of Nebuilt GmbH, speaks with host Giovanni Asproni about event sourcing -- a software architecture pattern in which, rather than storing just the current state of your data, you store a seq…
SE Radio 719: Birol Yildiz on Building an Agentic AI SRE [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:57
Birol Yildiz, CEO and co-founder of iLert, joins host Kanchan Shringi to explore how iLert built an AI SRE — an autonomous agent for handling production incidents — and what the experience revealed about building AI agen…