On 18.08.2025 I held my talk „Thoughts on (Modern?) Software Development – Observations From a 20-Year Journey” at the joint event of Softwerkskammer Cologne and REWE digital Events Cologne (in person and in German).
The talk’s sources can be found here, the Meetup event pages can be found here:
https://www.meetup.com/softwerkskammer-koln/events/309359339
https://www.meetup.com/rewe-digital-events-cologne/events/309583766
The event location was:
REWE Digital
Schanzenstraße 6-20
Gebäude Kupferwerk 2.20, 1 OG
Köln
Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=50.964565%2C%207.014446


In the ensuing discussion some additional sources were mentioned:
- Talk by „Richard Sheridan“ about „Joy, Inc.“ + thread related to the book
- Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister in „Peopleware“ (re-visited): „The High-Tech Illusion“
- Baldur Bjarnason: „The Intelligence Illusion”
- Baldur Bjarnason: „Out of the Software Crisis“
- Joseph Weizenbaum documentary: „Plug & Pray”
- Toot about the XP „Circle Of Life“
- Uwe Friedrichsen: Thoughts on AI and Software Development
- Dave Thomas: „Simplicity”
- Matt Beane: „The Skill Code”
- Gunter Dueck’s re:publica 2015 talk about „swarm stupidity“
- John Allspaw: “How Your Systems Keep Running Day After Day“ (very good talk, e.g.: „What happens when your senior developers start to communicate their mental model?”)
- James Somers: “The Coming Software Apocalypse“ (bad title, great content)
- James Somers: „The Friendship That Made Google Huge“ (about THE central senior pair programming team at Google)
- Arlo Belshee: „Promiscuous Pairing – What Really Makes Pairing (and Mobbing) Work”
- Neil Postman: Technopoly
- Alex’s “featured hashtags“
