GOTO Conferences

AI is bringing spec-driven development back. Sort of. In this #GOTOPodcast episode, Gojko Adzic and Daniel Terhorst-North discuss what is working with AI-assisted development right now. Their conclusion is not "describe your app and let the AI build it." We've tried versions of that before. What seems to work is a tighter loop where AI handles the more predictable parts of the job, while humans stay responsible for domain knowledge, architecture, and deciding whether the thing being built is correct. One practical takeaway: If you want guardrails, don't write them in a markdown file. Turn them into automated checks that run in CI. Humans and AI agents both get the same rules, and neither gets a free pass. 🎧 Listen in: gotopia.tech/podcast

On June 22, Mike Amundsen is running a full-day masterclass at Accelerate Chicago on AI-assisted API design. You’ll work through how to use tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to: • extract API vocabulary from user stories • generate OpenAPI specs with less manual pain • turn specs into documentation • spot API security risks earlier • generate and validate test scripts • fit AI automation into your API workflow without handing it the steering wheel Best for software engineers, API developers, architects and product people working with API-driven systems. Grab your seat for Mike's full-day masterclass. We'll link it in the comments.

What can software teams learn from Dungeons & Dragons? Quite a lot, actually. In this fun and surprisingly insightful talk from YOW! Conferences, 🧙🏻♂️ Matt Brunt explores how D&D mirrors real-world software development: ⚔️ Collaboration under uncertainty 🧠 Creative problem-solving 🎭 Team dynamics & communication 🎲 Leadership and adaptability 🔥 Building psychologically safe teams Whether you play tabletop RPGs or not, this talk is packed with lessons for engineers, managers, and tech leads alike. Watch here: https://lnkd.in/eneGEVXr

At GOTO Copenhagen 2026, we’ll talk about the architecture choices that last: • what you depend on • how you contain failure • how you ship AI safely • how your platforms help teams move • how your systems behave when reality hits Featuring talks from Alex Ewerlöf, Ixchel Ruiz, Daniel Bryant, Jim Webber, Marie-Alice Blete, Kasper Borg Nissen or Sam Newman. Swipe through the track. Then come join us at GOTO Copenhagen 2026. Link in the comments.

Accelerate Chicago is built around the work many teams are doing right now: • making sense of AI • keeping the fundamentals sharp • building systems that survive contact with production • helping teams move faster without pretending everything is fine Serena H. Huang, Ph.D., Gayle Silverman, Jessie Shternshus and Rafał T. fit the theme pretty damn well. They’ll cover some of the parts of software work that rarely fit into a framework diagram. Come learn from them. June 22–24 • Convene Willis Tower

Most companies say “customer first.” But how many really mean it? In this #GOTOPodcast Q&A, Ken Hughes talks about something surprisingly simple: People simply remember how you made them feel. The conversation goes into employee experience, AI-driven personalization, and why “ROI” can become a very strange lens for measuring human experience. 🎧 Listen in: gotopia.tech/podcast

According to the DORA report, 80% of developers using AI say they gain a productivity advantage. Of those, 70% say they don’t distrust the output. Dave Farley’s response: "I don’t understand people that aren’t more scared of that." In this GOTO talk, Dave Farley and Abby Bangser make a compelling case: #ContinuousDelivery doesn’t become less relevant in an AI-driven world — it becomes the load-bearing wall. The core principles don’t change. Work in small, verifiable steps. Test everything. Be able to revert. The context changes — mobile looks different from SaaS, AI-generated code looks different from human-written code — but the discipline of incremental, verified progress is what keeps software systems trustworthy. They also dig into the genuinely hard questions: How do you stop AI from writing code that "cheats" on its own tests? What does quality verification look like when you’re the second set of eyes on AI output? And is AI actually a second shot at finally getting XP practices adopted? Dave’s hot take: probably yes. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eQny3JNz #DevOps #AI #SoftwareEngineering #XP #TDD #DORAReport

AI agents, Go, agile, AWS. Quite a week, honestly. A few things that came up across this week’s talks: • why AI coding tools work better in “explore mode” • what CDK, Amplify and AppSync actually look like in one full-stack workflow • where AI is heading beyond just scaling bigger models • why Go and Java make very different trade-offs • why automating broken processes rarely fixes them Featuring talks by Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Ekaterina Sirazitdinova, Barry Feigenbaum, Shon Saliga, Erik Hanchett and Rasmus Lystrøm. Links are in the comments. 

Java keeps “dying” while half the internet quietly runs on it. #GOTOpodcast: Ben Evans takes a closer look at where Java stands in 2026. • server-side Java workloads have roughly doubled in 7 years • Java has stayed in the top 4 languages for more than a decade • a huge part of today’s cloud-native stack still runs on the JVM 🎧 Listen to the episode: gotopia.tech/podcast

Go is simpler than Java. Smaller binaries, faster startup, less ceremony — and for containerized microservices, it's increasingly the smarter choice. But making the switch after years of #Java isn't trivial. The mental model is different: no inheritance, no checked exceptions, #goroutines instead of threads, and interfaces that are implicit rather than declared. Barry Feigenbaum — IBM and Amazon veteran with a PhD in Computer Engineering — made that transition himself, and then wrote the definitive guide for Java programmers making the move: Go for Java Programmers. In this GOTO Book Club episode with Shon Saliga, he breaks down: 🔹 Go vs. Java: philosophy, compilation, and execution model 🔹 Why Go uses return codes for errors and reserves panics for truly exceptional situations 🔹 Goroutines vs threads: Go’s lightweight, channel-based concurrency model 🔹 Implicit interfaces: why you don’t have to declare what you implement 🔹 Pointers are back — and why that’s actually fine 🔹 When to migrate a Java server to Go, and when not to If you’ve been Go-curious but never quite made the leap, this is your on-ramp. 👉 https://lnkd.in/e4AzPjGy #Go #Golang #Programming #SoftwareEngineering