A defence of technical excellence for lovers and haters of LLMs

The discipline of software development is changing faster than ever while management expectations, already excessive, are reaching dizzying new heights of absurdity. Developer reactions to this frothy landscape range from 'I'm quitting to farm goats' through to 'I am a literal god with (n++) agents bending to my will'.

Facing these new pressures, how do we maintain a sense of self and purpose? How do we know if we're taking the right approach? If we are being responsible stewards of the systems in our care?

The reassuring news is that there are fundamental truths that have not changed.

Learning to think rigorously, critically & systemically can help cut through the conflicting noise. Taking the time to peek "under the hood" of the tools we use can help make sense of variable and unpredictable outcomes. And most importantly, recognising that software development is still a team activity is the key to connection over isolation.

In the original Defence of Technical Excellence talk, Chris used these techniques to break the iron triangle and the speed/quality trade-off fallacy. Join this session to hear how he's now using them to make sense of this strange new world of LLM-based agentic development.

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Chris is a technology coach and advisor helping technology teams drive business success. His focus is on helping startups realise their vision and new CTOs flourish in their roles. He also supports executives & boards with strategic technology advice, and engineering teams with training, mentoring and consulting in architecture, quality, domain-driven design and test-driven development.

He is a regular meetup & conference speaker and to support teams using Domain-Driven Design, he recently launched Contextive & co-founded the DDD Australia meetup and the ADAConf conference.

Presented by IcePanel 🧊