A software conference that advocates for quality

They probably just manage to realize that being seen to be "moving fast with AI" simply isn't a goal unto itself, that it has to deliver something of value beyond itself.

In DJB's paper on software quality he identifies actionable strategies for code quality and code security that were born out of frustration to sendmail's exploit after exploit. Very accessible and fun read: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf

I would expect this conf to expand on those types of concepts and strategies.

> Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good

I would guess the same way humans do.

Put brain in creative mode, bang out something that works

Put brain in rules compliance mode and tidy everything up.

Then send for code review.

>Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality

Why would they need to do that? Is that even a goal or something that this conference is addressing at all?

Well, a couple years ago this stuff all sucked (well, a lot more). Yeah it's in many cases somewhat borderline now, but still - this is frickin magic compared to what I thought was possible just a little while ago.

My question is how far does it go - are the gains going to peter out, or does it keep going or even accelerate? Seems like one of the latter two thus far.

There are plenty of alternative software needs that do not need to be AI based nor do they need to change tactics due to the current obsession with AI.

Yeah it's interesting, unless I lean hard on them, AI coding agents will tend to solve problems with a lot of "hedging" by splitting into cases or duplicating code. It is totally fine with infinity special cases and unless you push for it, they will solve most problems with special cases and not generalise or consolidate (gemini, claude code at least both seem to have this behaviour).

I feel like this comes about because it's the optimal strategy for doing robust one-shot "point fixes", but it comes at the cost of long-term codebase heath.

I have noticed this bias towards lots of duplication eventually creates a kind of "ai code soup" that you can only really "fix" or keep working on with AI from that point out.

With the right guidance and hints you can get it to refactor and generalise - and it does it well - but the default style definitely trends to "slop" in my experience so far.

"I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense"

Get a grip.

You know as well as I do that you are simply marking and correcting your agent's work. I hope it works for you but why not be more rigorous in the first place when you do stuff?

> which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame

This is not at _all_ my interpretation of Casey and JBlow's views. How did you arrive at this conclusion?

> They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.

They're definitely very concerned about efficiency, but user experience? Are you referring to DevX? They definitely don't prize any kind of UX above correctness.

I really wish that Casey & co could be more excited to show off stuff than they are excited to say how wrong everyone else is.

Gimme an in without calling me an idiot for what I’ve been doing up until now!

The have a list of the presentations in the original link. That should at least give you some idea what they're going to talk about.

Bill Hall "Ginger Bill", the creator Odin, is a speaker on day 1.

When I saw the title of the conference I immediately thought of him so I'm not surprised he's headlining!

Now that you mention it, I'll never see the symbol of the Galactic Empire the same way again.