Build to Last

It has become cliché in both video games and movies for our hero or heroes to walk into the ancient temple, space station, or tomb and discover that although it has been abandoned for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, everything still works perfectly. The doors don’t stick, the batteries are still charged, and the poison darts are still deadly. We just assume this is how sophisticated technology works, whether possessed by ancient progenitors of mankind or unknowable aliens. How did they accomplish such marvels when our sample code from previous WWDCs won’t compile and one service can take down half the internet?

We’ll quickly review the history of software engineering, comparing and contrasting it with the history of other engineering practices. Along the way, we’ll consider some places we may have gone wrong and how to correct course. We’ll even explore whether want to. Or worse, the possibility that we may not be able to.

Ideally, attendees should take away a desire to explore alternate ways of working for themselves. To consider what changes they might make to build software that lasts.