The Problem with Little Programs

The world runs on code. Here in 2020, you can’t watch a movie, book a train ticket, or see a doctor without your details passing through all sorts of programs and services. From websites, to email, to cloud databases and mobile apps, code has become a vital part of the infrastructure that runs our society. Maintaining and managing these vast, complex codebases is a huge challenge for our industry - but whenever we talk about innovation in the field of software development, we talk about writing new code, new platforms, new frameworks. Courses, exams, and interviews are all about writing code - about writing small, standalone programs to demonstrate a particular algorithm or pattern - and then developers land their first professional role and suddenly they’re expected to maintain a few hundred thousand lines of code they’ve never seen before. Join Dylan Beattie for an enlightening discussion about the problem of managing legacy code, the role of education in the world of modern software development – and the very nature of what it means to be a software engineer.