GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

In this discussion, Jessica Kerr, an engineering manager at Honeycomb.io, and Diana Montalion, a systems architect and author of "Learning Systems Thinking," dive into the reality of AI-assisted development. They highlight how AI excels in tedious tasks like typing and error handling but struggles with nuanced developer thinking. The duo advocates for a balanced relationship with AI, emphasizing the importance of human oversight. They explore AI's effectiveness in rapid prototyping and its potential to enhance learning for new developers, all while urging careful management of AI-generated code risks.

Meri Williams, an accomplished CTO and technology leader at Pleo, shares her transformative journey from hardware hacker to executive. She discusses essential leadership qualities and the importance of matching team members' strengths with their roles. Meri emphasizes the necessity of effective onboarding to enhance productivity and the pitfalls of blindly emulating big tech practices. With a focus on diversity and inclusion, she highlights how representation drives product quality, making for an enlightening conversation on navigating tech leadership.

Victor Grazi and Jeanne Boyarsky, Oracle Java Champions and co-authors, dive into their book, discussing the gap between learning Java and navigating the enterprise ecosystem. They emphasize the importance of IDE skills over algorithms as a measure of experience. The duo covers topics like CI/CD, logging, and performance, while also addressing typical pitfalls in Java development. With insights on AI's influence and underappreciated challenges, this conversation is a treasure trove for developers eager to thrive in the Java landscape.

In this engaging discussion, Andreas Zeller, a prominent computer science researcher and author of The Debugging Book, shares his insights on the often-overlooked art of debugging. He highlights the pressing need for systematic debugging skills and modern tools, stressing that debugging consumes half of development time yet remains underfunded in programming education. Zeller discusses the innovative use of Jupyter notebooks for interactive learning and explains how delta debugging can streamline error identification. He emphasizes debugging's critical role in software quality and business risk.

Join Alessandro Colla, Head of Development at Evoluzione, and Alberto Acerbis, Software Architect, as they delve into the intricacies of Domain-Driven Refactoring. They emphasize the importance of understanding business problems before refactoring and champion incremental improvements over grand migrations. Discover tips on event storming to uncover lost knowledge in legacy systems, the advantages of modular monoliths, and readiness for microservices. Plus, they explore the role of AI in accelerating domain understanding, making this conversation a treasure trove for developers!

Daniel Terhorst-North, a pioneer of Behavior Driven Development, joins forces with Kevlin Henney, a renowned consultant and writer. They delve into the origins of BDD and the power of sharing ideas within the tech community. The duo discusses programming language evolution, analyzing Go’s simplicity and the need for languages to align with modern hardware. They even speculate on future tech like AR lenses and the balance between using multiple languages in development. Their insights blend humor with deep technical knowledge, making for a captivating listen.

Flavia Circiumaru, a software engineer at FundApps, shares insights from her experience establishing a structured support system after rapid company growth. She discusses the challenges of the previous model, emphasizing the importance of reducing context switching and improving collaboration between support and development teams. Flavia explains their goal of making support seamless and discusses actionable strategies for enhancing efficiency. Together with Hannes Lowette, they explore how effective communication and clear priorities can bridge the gap between clients and engineers.

Evan Czaplicki, the creator of the Elm programming language, delves into Elm's journey and the complexities of open-source economics. He shares his insights on the challenges of sustainability and the implications of monetization. Czaplicki advocates for type safety across programming stacks and explores the future of functional programming. He reflects on the political dynamics in open source and how they affect creators. Additionally, he discusses why Rust has gained traction and offers advice to new developers in the open-source space.

In this discussion, Liz Fong-Jones, Field CTO at Honeycomb with expertise in observability and SRE, and Lesley Cordero, Staff Software Engineer at The New York Times, dive into the intricacies of platform engineering. They explore the evolution from DevOps roots, emphasizing the need for psychological safety and effective documentation. Topics include the balance between centralized platform teams and developer autonomy, the relevance of open source, and the pitfalls of conflating Kubernetes with developer platforms. Their insights are vital for fostering a healthy developer experience.

In this conversation, Kief Morris, a Distinguished Engineer at ThoughtWorks and author of "Infrastructure as Code," shares insights alongside Abby Bangser, Principal Engineer at Syntasso. They explore the evolution of infrastructure over the last decade, discussing shifts from server configuration to complex cloud architectures. Kief emphasizes the need for aligning infrastructure with business goals, the role of abstraction layers, and the potential impacts of AI on troubleshooting and decision-making in infrastructure development.