Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense.
Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
Seems like a waste of time to me, especially in this age of AI slop somehow passing as quality. Just another excuse to drink/network/party on company’s dime.
However, I would be interested in establishing a union for technologists across the nation. Drive quality from the bottom up, form local chapters, collectively bargain.
For a non-engineer (business) person the case "engineering quality vs move fast break things" sounds more like "slow & expensive VS fast". The choice is obvious.
It seems to be socially associated with the Handmade Hero and Jon Blow Jai crowd, which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame. They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.
I'm disillusioned because it never happens, but purveyors of conferences and books are happy to sell the promised land™ of how "it's really going to be different this time."
Processes, tools, and diligence vigilantly seem the most apparent path. Perhaps rehash the 50 year old debate of professionalization while AI vibes coding is barking at the door, because what could possibly go wrong with even less experience doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
I’ve seen one company in my 30 year career with effective quality control.
The QE engineers and the development engineers were in entirely separate branches of the org chart. They had different incentive structures. The interface documentation was the source of truth.
The release cadence was slow. QE had absolute authority to stop a release. QE wrote more code than development engineers did with their tests and test automation.
This thing feels pretty weird to me. I'm guessing it's an attempt at organizing some sort of european Handmade event, and trying to keep it small.
But between the sparse website, invite-only and anonymous organizers, it just feels like it's emphasizing the reactionary vibes around the Handmade/casey/jblow sphere. Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything.
Glad to see they got Sweden's own Eskil Steenberg though. Tuning in for that at least.
> Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything
You write this like this is a bad thing.
I just came to a conference to learn some cool new tech, but instead got lectured about my transphobia, that my database is systemic discrimination and my HDD being named „slave“ means I burn crosses in my free time, even though I have zero family relations to anything America.
What is needed is more evidence based software engineering. Statistical methods applied to datasets correlating issue trackers with code ASTs to show us exactly which ways of coding are correlated with longer issue times, frequent bugs etc.
I sometimes wonder if there could be an optimal number of microservices. As far as I know no one has connected issue data to the number of microservices before. Maybe there‘s an optimal number like „8“ which leads to lower number of bugs and faster resolution times.
Depending on who you ask the answer is either "It depends completely on the task, and it is in any case much more important that you divide your application in the right places than exactly how many bits you end up with", or "1".
If you ask Amazon then the more the merrier, because the number of microservices is effectively a multiplier on the bill.
I think I’ve finally figured out just what is that annoys me about the “software quality” crowd.
Quality is a measurement. That’s how it works in hardware land, anyway. Product defects - and, crucially, their associated cost to the company - are quantified
Quality is not some abstract, feel good concept like “developer experience”. It’s a real, hard number of how much money the company loses to product defects.
Almost every professional software developer I’ve ever met is completely and vehemently opposed to any part of their workflow being quantified. It’s dismissed as “micromanagement” and “bean counting”.
Bruh. You can’t talk about quality with any seriousness while simultaneously refusing metrics. Those two points are antithetical to one another.
No it isn't, as in it literally isn't. Quantification is the process of judging something numerically, objectively and in measurement. Qualification is just the opposite, judging something by its nature, essence or kind.
Software quality, like all kinds of quality, is always a subjective and experiential feature. Just like, when someone says, this piece of furniture is a high quality, handmade chair, in all likelihood they haven't performed a numerical analysis of the properties of the chair, they're expressing a subjective, direct sentiment.
The handmade movement in software, was exactly about this, putting focus on the personal, lived judgement of experienced practitioners as opposed to trying to quantify software by some objective metric, that's why individual people feature so heavily in it.
I hate talk titles of this form: "Most of your projects are stupid. Please make some actual games.". So annoying. I know it's not personal but I'm sure a better title exists for all talks that choose this form. Why do you have to insult the audience?
For an actual game you need a great story or a great concept, and for that you need to be an artist, it's not just a problem of formalized business logic and correctness. How do I draw sprites? I can draw geometric sprites, but I can't draw artistic sprites. I can make maps, but what should be on those maps? How do I even music?
Sounds good, but unless it advocates for HR practices that retain talent, and corporate practices that incentivize Quality, it probably won't result in any changes.
Personal Quality Coding practices have been around for as long as software has been a thing. Way back when, Watts Humphrey, Steve McConnell, and Steve Maguire wrote books on how to maximize personal Quality. Many of their techniques still hold true, today.
But as long as there are bad people managers and short-sighted execs, you'll have shit quality; regardless of who does the work.
So far this has been great, Casey Muratori's talk about the history of OOP aspects of programming has been quite insightful. Will need to revisit when it's on YT.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 67.3 ms ] threadAnyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
All I found is a Twitch tagline that reads "Software is getting worse. We're here to make it better."
However, I would be interested in establishing a union for technologists across the nation. Drive quality from the bottom up, form local chapters, collectively bargain.
It seems to be socially associated with the Handmade Hero and Jon Blow Jai crowd, which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame. They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.
Processes, tools, and diligence vigilantly seem the most apparent path. Perhaps rehash the 50 year old debate of professionalization while AI vibes coding is barking at the door, because what could possibly go wrong with even less experience doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
I am going to keep saying this, if your main tagline/ethos is broken by your website you have failed.
* On mobile the topics are hidden without scroll over. You also can't read multiple of the topics without scrolling right as you read.
* The background is very distracting and disrupts readability.
* None of your speakers have links to their socials/what they are known for.
* > Who are the organizers? Sam, Sander and Charlie.
* * Ah yes, my favourite people.... At least hyperlink their socials.
The QE engineers and the development engineers were in entirely separate branches of the org chart. They had different incentive structures. The interface documentation was the source of truth.
The release cadence was slow. QE had absolute authority to stop a release. QE wrote more code than development engineers did with their tests and test automation.
In 2025 I think the only thing that makes sense is having SDETs embedded in development teams.
> In a charming small town
But between the sparse website, invite-only and anonymous organizers, it just feels like it's emphasizing the reactionary vibes around the Handmade/casey/jblow sphere. Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything.
Glad to see they got Sweden's own Eskil Steenberg though. Tuning in for that at least.
You write this like this is a bad thing.
I just came to a conference to learn some cool new tech, but instead got lectured about my transphobia, that my database is systemic discrimination and my HDD being named „slave“ means I burn crosses in my free time, even though I have zero family relations to anything America.
I mean this screams fun right from the get go.
This reads like "Oh some people are meeting, so this must actually be about ME".
I sometimes wonder if there could be an optimal number of microservices. As far as I know no one has connected issue data to the number of microservices before. Maybe there‘s an optimal number like „8“ which leads to lower number of bugs and faster resolution times.
If you ask Amazon then the more the merrier, because the number of microservices is effectively a multiplier on the bill.
Quality is a measurement. That’s how it works in hardware land, anyway. Product defects - and, crucially, their associated cost to the company - are quantified
Quality is not some abstract, feel good concept like “developer experience”. It’s a real, hard number of how much money the company loses to product defects.
Almost every professional software developer I’ve ever met is completely and vehemently opposed to any part of their workflow being quantified. It’s dismissed as “micromanagement” and “bean counting”.
Bruh. You can’t talk about quality with any seriousness while simultaneously refusing metrics. Those two points are antithetical to one another.
No it isn't, as in it literally isn't. Quantification is the process of judging something numerically, objectively and in measurement. Qualification is just the opposite, judging something by its nature, essence or kind.
Software quality, like all kinds of quality, is always a subjective and experiential feature. Just like, when someone says, this piece of furniture is a high quality, handmade chair, in all likelihood they haven't performed a numerical analysis of the properties of the chair, they're expressing a subjective, direct sentiment.
The handmade movement in software, was exactly about this, putting focus on the personal, lived judgement of experienced practitioners as opposed to trying to quantify software by some objective metric, that's why individual people feature so heavily in it.
I don't see how anyone can be "for" quality and not talk about how quality can be assessed. Where are the talks about that?
Personal Quality Coding practices have been around for as long as software has been a thing. Way back when, Watts Humphrey, Steve McConnell, and Steve Maguire wrote books on how to maximize personal Quality. Many of their techniques still hold true, today.
But as long as there are bad people managers and short-sighted execs, you'll have shit quality; regardless of who does the work.
Not even a section of where and when to find the talks offline.