Themes of DDD North 2024

This last weekend, I was excited to get to speak at the DDD North conference again.

As a one-day, five-track conference there was a lot going on and a lot of varied content.

Of the sessions I attended and the discussions I had with other attendees, I noticed lots of mentions of:

• AI
• Testing (in a positive light)
• General good development practices rather than talk about specific tools or technologies.

Yes, I recognise that the talk I gave about the importance of documentation and testing as we use more AI tooling while developing software likely skewed my thinking and what I was more inclined to notice. It was just nice to not be the only person saying positive things about testing software. (Although at least two speakers did make jokes about writing tests so there's still a long way to go.)

The increased focus on generally applicable "good" practices was also good to see. While learning about a new framework or technology is useful in the short-terms or for specific tasks, spending time on things that will be valuable whatever the future holds feels like a better use of time.

While I'm still waiting for the official feedback from my talk (sorry, no video) upon reflection, I'm glad I did it and it was a good thing for me to do. I don't want to give a talk that anyone could give and so basing it on my experiences (& stories) is good rather than reading official descriptions of technologies, describing APIs, or showing trivial demos. I also want to do in-person events in ways that benefit from being "in person". This talk wouldn't have worked the same way as a recording and I wouldn't have got as much from it either. If I could just record myself talking about the subject and released it as audio or a video I'd have done that but it wouldn't be the same or as good. Although, it might have been less work. Maybe I'll do that in the future though.

 Here's me during the talk in front of a perfectly timed slide ;)