GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

In this insightful discussion, Laura Tacho, CTO at DX and an expert in engineering leadership, shares her journey from engineering to executive roles. She highlights common leadership gaps in CTOs, especially in setting expectations without micromanaging. Laura introduces her innovative DX Core 4 framework for measuring developer productivity, emphasizing speed, effectiveness, quality, and impact. She discusses the importance of maintaining technical fluency as a leader, translating developer work into business value, and the thoughtful design of metrics to foster trust.

In this engaging discussion, Alex Ewerlöf, a Senior Staff Engineer at Volvo Cars and reliability engineering author, shares his journey from product engineering to the challenges of implementing Google's SRE practices. He highlights the gap between theoretical frameworks and real-world limitations, discussing the importance of aligning SLIs with business impact and the critical role of SLOs in setting expectations. Alex warns against cookie-cutter SLIs and emphasizes the need for tailored approaches based on service criticality, making reliability a strategic conversation in engineering.

Join Simon Peyton Jones, a Royal Society member and Haskell contributor, alongside Chelsea Troy, an MLOps Tech Lead at Mozilla. They delve into the spark that led Simon to invent the binary system during a school exercise, highlighting the importance of teaching problem-solving over simply providing answers. The duo discusses the role of concrete contexts in learning, from using Scratch to hands-on projects, and Simon shares insights from his work on the Verse programming language at Epic Games, emphasizing elegance in functional programming.

Andrew Harmel-Law, a Technical Principal at ThoughtWorks and author of 'Facilitating Software Architecture,' joins Marit van Dijk, a Java Champion and Developer Advocate at JetBrains. They delve into how traditional architectural approaches often create bottlenecks in agile teams. Andrew advocates for a facilitative approach, shifting architects from decision-makers to conversation enablers. They discuss the importance of collaborative decision-making, creating shared mental models in teams, and nurturing psychological safety for maintainable codebases.

In this engaging discussion, Russ Olsen, an author and software engineer known for his work on Lisp and functional programming, joins James Lewis, a director at Thoughtworks. They delve into the challenges of teaching functional programming, emphasizing the need for relatable examples over abstract math. Russ shares insights on Clojure's unique data-centric design and how it contrasts with traditional object-oriented approaches. The duo also discusses paradigm shifts in programming and how moments of shared purpose, like the Apollo moon landing, can inspire engineers.

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!