Title: Making good choices with software (and other impossible things) (Closing Keynote)

Description:

Once upon a time there was a LAMP stack, and a data center, and making reasonably good technical decisions was a thing that ordinary mortals could do. Over the last few years we've seen an explosion of complexity -- composable infrastructure, polyglot persistence, and third-party platforms or services who claim they can solve your problems for you (sometimes this is even true!).

What does this mean for you and me? It means that good technical judgment is both more challenging and more important than ever before. In this talk we will cover things like about when to use boring technology, versus when to take a flyer on something new and shiny. We'll also talk about how to resist software sprawl, gating new technologies into production, and how to balance speed of development vs operational impact over time. So don't despair! With just a little bit of discipline, we can still build systems that ordinary humans can understand and maintain, even in the face of skyrocketing complexity and problems of scale.