GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

GOTO

The GOTO podcast seeks out the brightest and boldest ideas from language creators and the world's leading experts in software development in the form of interviews and conference talks. Tune in to get the inspiration you need to bring in new technologies or gain extra evidence to support your software development plan.

  1. -5 j

    Signals & Levers • Elisabeth Hendrickson, Joel Tosi & Charles Humble

    This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. http://gotopia.tech/bookclub Elisabeth Hendrickson - Advisor, Coach, Speaker & Co-Author of "Signals & Levers" Joel Tosi - Co-Founder & CTO at Dojo & Co & Co-Author of "Signals & Levers" Charles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & Consultant Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/episodes/448 RESOURCES Elisabeth https://ruby.social/@testobsessed https://github.com/testobsessed https://www.linkedin.com/in/testobsessed https://curiousduck.io Joel https://mastodon.social/@joeltosi https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-tosi-531a3b Charles https://bsky.app/profile/charleshumble.bsky.social https://linkedin.com/in/charleshumble https://mastodon.social/@charleshumble https://conissaunce.com Links https://ruthmalan.com http://www.ask-force.org/web/Discourse/Rittel-Dilemmas-General-Theory-Planning-1973.pdf DESCRIPTION Elisabeth Hendrickson and Joel Tosi open by explaining why systems thinking is having a moment right now: organizations that went all-in on Agile and DevOps are finding those returns plateauing, and the rise of AI is forcing engineering teams to reexamine where their real bottlenecks are. The book, Signals & Levers, gives software engineers a practical vocabulary and toolkit for that examination. A core insight is that most organizational dysfunction isn't caused by bad people or bad intentions, but by systems that produce bad outcomes predictably and structurally. The named archetypes in the book — over 20 of them, covering patterns like escalating technical debt, the "fixes that fail" loop, and the boiling frog — give teams a shared language to recognize and reason about those patterns without having to discover them from scratch. The most practically actionable section of the conversation covers signals versus levers: understanding the difference between information (a signal) and an intervention point (a lever) is the foundation for making changes that actually work rather than changes that feel productive and achieve nothing. On AI, both authors are cautious in the right ways: Elisabeth uses it daily as a thinking partner but keeps herself firmly at the steering wheel. Joel's warning is starker — AI amplifies whatever is already true about your organization, including dysfunction, and if it lets you ship faster than you can learn, the consequences may be severe. The book closes with an exercise for the reader: if AI doubles your delivery speed, what happens when you can ship faster than you can adapt? RECOMMENDED BOOKS Elisabeth Hendrickson & Joel Tosi • Signals & Levers • https://amzn.to/4g6Fb3C Diana Montalion • Learning Systems Thinking • https://amzn.to/3ZpycdJ Don Norman • The Design of Everyday Things • https://amzn.to/4fV6QVl Gene Kim • The Unicorn Project • https://amzn.to/3woXQDz Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford • The Phoenix Project • https://amzn.to/3X9cYxa Peter Degrace & Leslie Hulet Stahl • Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions • https://amzn.to/3ScP0D9 Frederick Brooks Jr. • The Mythical Man-Month • https://amzn.to/4gd10OV Gerald Weinberg • An Introduction to General Systems Thinking • https://amzn.to/4dZCsaO Donella H. Meadows • Thinking in Systems • https://amzn.to/3XtqYCV Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Signals & Levers • Elisabeth Hendrickson, Joel Tosi & Charles Humble
  2. 10 juil.

    The Architect's Guide to the AI Era • Luca Mezzalira & Teena Idnani

    This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted. https://gotopia.tech Luca Mezzalira - Solutions Architect, Consultant, International Speaker & Author of "Building Micro-Frontends" Teena Idnani - Senior Solutions Architect at Microsoft & Woman in Tech Leader Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/articles/447 RESOURCES Luca https://www.buildingmicrofrontends.com https://twitter.com/lucamezzalira https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucamezzalira https://linktr.ee/lucamezzalira https://lucamezzalira.com Teena https://www.linkedin.com/in/teenaidnani DESCRIPTION Luca Mezzalira and Teena Idnani open with a clear framing: AI is accelerating certain tasks architects do, but the fundamentals — understanding context, connecting technical decisions to business capability, designing for evolutionary systems — are unchanged and arguably more important than ever. Luca identifies what he calls the shift from a T-shaped to an "M-shaped" architect: broader and deeper simultaneously, using AI as a research accelerator that collapses days of trade-off analysis into hours. Both agree that the biggest current risk isn't that AI will replace architects, but that AI-generated code can look convincingly correct and pass initial testing while concealing edge-case failures that only surface under load, regulatory audit, or upstream change — particularly dangerous in regulated industries like finance. The conversation sharpens around what architects must double down on to stay relevant. Luca advocates for merging deterministic and probabilistic systems through harness engineering — combining linters, static analysis, and deterministic guardrails with AI code assistants to produce more predictable outcomes. More broadly, both conclude that empathy is now a core technical skill: the architect's real job is riding the "elevator" between the engine room and the C-suite, translating freely in both directions. Luca's rule of thumb has shifted from 70% people and context, 30% technical — to nearly 90/10 in the AI era. The competitive edge for architects, they agree, is not in generating code, but in knowing which problems are worth solving and why. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Luca Mezzalira • Building Micro-Frontends • https://amzn.to/4ekqV5Y Luca Mezzalira • Front-End Reactive Architectures • https://amzn.to/43a8VVJ Gregor Hohpe • The Software Architect Elevator • https://amzn.to/3F6d2ax Gregor Hohpe • Enterprise Integration Patterns, Vol 2 • https://amzn.to/3TNedQ3 Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    The Architect's Guide to the AI Era • Luca Mezzalira & Teena Idnani
  3. 3 juil.

    Model-Based Systems Eng. & Requirements Definition • Dennis Hansen & Jorge Orellana

    This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. http://gotopia.tech/bookclub Dennis Hansen - Air Force Veteran, Chief Systems Engineer & Author of "Model-Based Systems Engineering and Requirements Definition" Jorge Orellana - Model Based Systems Engineer at IERUS Technologies & CEO & Founder at SCATTERBRAINS Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/episodes/445 RESOURCES Jorge https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-orellana-0b729129 DESCRIPTION Dennis Hansen brings over six decades of systems engineering experience to this GOTO Book Club conversation — from Air Force airborne navigation technician to Chief Systems Engineer at L3Harris on programs including the complete rebuild of the GOES-R ground system for NOAA and NASA. His book argues that the fundamental failure mode in complex system development is the same every time: requirements are defined too loosely, too late, or across multiple model layers simultaneously. He structures the approach using an onion model — a layering framework he was taught by a Motorola engineer in 1961 — where each layer (mission, capabilities, activities, technical requirements, specifications) must be completed before the next is begun. Skipping layers or trying to do two at once invariably produces excess or faulty requirements that surface as expensive failures during system testing, or worse, after deployment. The second half of the conversation focuses on why modeling tools are databases, not drawing programs — a distinction Dennis considers critical. Every element in the model carries its associated requirements and the reasoning behind design decisions, which means that when you return to work after a weekend, you don't lose hours reconstructing your thinking. More importantly, when change requests arrive — and they always do — a maintained model lets you trace the impact backwards through the system and understand exactly what has to be modified, rather than slapping on a fix that creates five new problems. Dennis's closing advice is the thread that runs through the entire book: collaborate at every stage, every discipline working together rather than in silos, and define things properly upfront. Everything else follows from that. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Dennis Hansen • Model-Based Systems Engineering and Requirements Definition • https://amzn.to/4e6IiqJ Kossiakoff, Seymour, Flanigan & Biemer • Systems Engineering Principles and Practice • https://amzn.to/4a7Elj9 Dr. Bruce Powel Douglass • Agile Model-Based Systems Engineering Cookbook • https://amzn.to/4wYnj12 Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Model-Based Systems Eng. & Requirements Definition • Dennis Hansen & Jorge Orellana
  4. 26 juin

    Sovereign Cloud: Who Really Owns Your Infrastructure? • Jake Warner & Charles Humble

    This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted in May 2026. https://gotopia.tech Read the full transcription of this interview here: https://gotopia.tech/articles/445 Jake Warner - Co-Founder & CEO at Cycle  @JakeWarner  Charles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & Consultant RESOURCES Jake https://bsky.app/profile/jakewarner.com https://x.com/jakewarner https://github.com/JakeWarner https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakewarner https://jakewarner.com Charles https://bsky.app/profile/charleshumble.bsky.social https://linkedin.com/in/charleshumble https://mastodon.social/@charleshumble https://conissaunce.com DESCRIPTION Jake Warner, co-founder and CEO of Cycle.io, traces a pattern he's watched repeat itself since his OpenStack days: a new orchestration technology arrives, developers adopt it enthusiastically, it grows in complexity, and organizations eventually ask whether managing it is really a core competency. He made a decade-long bet that Kubernetes would follow the same arc — and built Cycle as the answer: a distributed control plane that lets companies own their own infrastructure and compute while still getting a clean, platform-like experience on top of it. The key design principle is a high ceiling without sacrificing simplicity — companies shouldn't have to re-platform every time they grow, and they shouldn't have to give up infrastructure ownership to get ease of use. The conversation then pivots to Sovereign Cloud, which Jake frames not as a niche regulatory concern but as a fundamental trust and ownership question. He draws attention to a risk many organizations underestimate: the control plane itself. Unlike many platforms where the control plane is a single point of failure and a blackbox, Cycle's architecture ensures that even if the control plane goes down, customer infrastructure keeps running — servers maintain their own manifests and restart containers independently. Looking ahead, Jake expects more regions and countries to build their own cloud equivalents, driven by privacy concerns, data residency laws, and geopolitical pressures that are accelerating faster than the technology is. His conclusion: the organizations that handed AWS all the keys are beginning to realize the cost — and the industry is correcting. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Alan Hamilton • Sovereign Cloud Operations • https://amzn.to/4dqYAe4 Leonard J. Horta • The Cloud Exit Strategy • https://amzn.to/4dXqeiN Charles Curry & Tanessa Curry • Cooling the Cloud • https://amzn.to/4a0d4iA Liz Rice • Container Security • https://amzn.to/3oU4iJe Liz Rice • Kubernetes Security • https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/kubernetes-security/9781492039075 Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Sovereign Cloud: Who Really Owns Your Infrastructure? • Jake Warner & Charles Humble
  5. 23 juin

    Dungeons, Dragons & Developers • Matt Brunt

    This presentation was recorded at YOW! 2025. https://yowcon.com Matt Brunt - Dungeon Master & Team Tinkerer RESOURCES https://bsky.app/profile/brunty.me https://mastodon.social/@brunty https://github.com/Brunty https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbrunt https://brunty.me ABSTRACT You enter the dungeon, as the echoes of your footsteps sound around you, something catches your eye - is that… oh, oh no. You grab your trusty sword and with your fellow adventurers, you seek to overcome the mighty challenge that lays ahead of you: building software. This talk is a look at some of the parallels between Dungeons and Dragons, and software development. We’ll see how lessons learned through delving into dungeons and fighting monsters with a party of adventurers can help teams of developers when building software in the real world. Are you ready to join me in a mighty quest for better software? [...] Download slides and read the full abstract here: https://yowcon.com/brisbane-2025/sessions/3641 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Heidi Helfand • Dynamic Reteaming • https://amzn.to/3Fvu5BA Heidi Helfand • How to Change Your Teams • https://leanpub.com/DRTGuide Carl Larson & Frank M J LaFasto • Teamwork • https://amzn.to/4cFWseQ Gene Kim & Steve Spear • Wiring the Winning Organization • https://amzn.to/3QJcfBp Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Dungeons, Dragons & Developers • Matt Brunt
  6. 19 juin

    Continuous Delivery in a World of Constant Change • Abby Bangser & Dave Farley

    This presentation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025. https://gotocph.com Abby Bangser - Principal Engineer at Syntasso & Team Topologies Advocate Dave Farley - Bestselling Author, Founder & Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd. RESOURCES Abby https://bsky.app/profile/abangser.bsky.social https://twitter.com/a_bangser https://github.com/abangser https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbybangser https://www.syntasso.io/members-area/abby/profile Dave https://bsky.app/profile/davefarley77.bsky.social https://www.continuous-delivery.co.uk https://linkedin.com/in/dave-farley-a67927 https://twitter.com/davefarley77 http://www.davefarley.net DESCRIPTION Dave Farley and Abby Bangser open with a clear statement: Continuous Delivery isn't a relic of the pre-AI era — it's the foundation that makes the AI era survivable. Dave's definition is simple but consequential: software should always be in a releasable state, verified after every small change. That's not just a workflow preference; it's the same incremental, hypothesis-driven approach that underpins science and engineering. In an AI-assisted world where code can be generated far faster than humans can reason about it, the discipline of small, safe, verifiable steps becomes more critical, not less. The danger isn't AI writing bad code — it's AI writing a lot of code very fast that nobody is properly checking. The conversation turns to a genuinely alarming DORA report statistic: 70% of developers using AI tools don't distrust the output. Abby draws a parallel to the long-running debate over whether developers can be trusted to test their own code — they usually can't, without a deliberate change in perspective. The same challenge applies to AI-generated code: you need to consciously shift from "prompter" mode to "verifier" mode, and most developers aren't making that switch. Dave closes with a surprising note of optimism: AI may be the industry's best-ever opportunity to finally get XP practices — small increments, automated tests, continuous feedback — embedded into how teams actually work. Not because anyone chose to adopt them ideologically, but because working without them while using AI is visibly, measurably risky. Read the full abstract here: https://gotocph.com/2025/sessions/3779 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Kief Morris • Infrastructure as Code • https://amzn.to/4e6EBQc Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais • Team Topologies • http://amzn.to/3sVLyLQ Dave Thomas • simplicity • https://amzn.to/43FghBJ Dave Farley & Jez Humble • Continuous Delivery • https://amzn.to/3ocIHwd David Farley • Modern Software Engineering • https://amzn.to/3GI468M Dave Farley • Continuous Delivery Pipelines • https://amzn.to/3rjetdi Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Continuous Delivery in a World of Constant Change • Abby Bangser & Dave Farley
  7. 16 juin

    Go for Java Programmers • Barry Feigenbaum & Shon Saliga

    This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. http://gotopia.tech/bookclub Barry Feigenbaum - Retired Sr. Principal Software Engineer & Author of "Go for Java Programmers" Shon Saliga - IBM Storage Evangelist Check out more here: https://gotopia.tech/episodes/444 RESOURCES Barry https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryfeigenbaum Shon https://www.linkedin.com/in/shon-saliga-32336b2 DESCRIPTION Dr. Barry Feigenbaum — an IBM, Amazon and Dell veteran with a PhD in Computer Engineering and decades of Java experience — spent time working with Go on microservices and liked it enough to write the book he wished had existed when he made the switch. In this GOTO Book Club episode with longtime colleague Shon Saliga, he walks through the core contrasts: Go is a compiled language that targets a narrower domain than Java — primarily command-line tools and web servers — but excels there with smaller binaries, faster startup, and dramatically lower container overhead. Concurrency is the headline difference: Go's goroutines are far lighter than Java threads, and its channel-based communication model sidesteps many of the problems that make concurrent Java code hard to reason about. The error handling conversation is particularly illuminating. Java's exception mechanism, while powerful, encourages developers to overuse it for ordinary error reporting — Go simply doesn't allow that by design. Errors in Go are return values, not throws; panics are reserved for truly catastrophic situations. Similarly, Go's implicit interfaces (if you implement the methods, you implement the interface — no declaration required) give the language a flexibility that feels alien to Java developers at first but becomes a strength quickly. Barry's conclusion is clear: for greenfield servers and containerized microservices, Go is worth serious consideration — and for Java developers willing to reset a few mental models, the transition is more tractable than it looks. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Barry Feigenbaum • Go for Java Programmers • https://amzn.to/4uRL3li Ken Christopher, Barry Feigenbaum, Shon Salig • DOS 5: The Basic • https://amzn.to/4tKDVGs A N M Bazlur Rahman • Modern Concurrency in Java • https://amzn.to/42w8cOk Ben Evans & Jim Gough • Optimizing Cloud Native Java • https://amzn.to/41nivD9 Ian F. Darwin • Java Cookbook 5th ed. • https://amzn.to/3QH0NZy Victor Grazi & Jeanne Boyarsky • Real-World Java • https://amzn.to/4oCEeBR Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Go for Java Programmers • Barry Feigenbaum & Shon Saliga
  8. 12 juin

    Engineering Leadership in Turbulent Times • Sarah Wells, Pat Kua & Daniel Terhorst-North

    This conversation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025. https://gotocph.com Sarah Wells - Independent Consultant & Author of "Enabling Microservice Success" Patrick Kua - Founder of the Tech Lead Academy Daniel Terhorst-North - Originator of Behavior Driven Development (BDD) & Principal at Dan North & Associates RESOURCES Sarah https://bsky.app/profile/sarahjwells.bsky.social https://linkedin.com/in/sarahjwells1 https://www.sarahwells.dev Patrick https://hachyderm.io/@patkua https://twitter.com/patkua https://www.linkedin.com/in/patkua https://github.com/thekua https://patkua.com Daniel https://bsky.app/profile/tastapod.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/tastapod https://github.com/tastapod https://mastodon.social/@tastapod http://dannorth.net/blog DESCRIPTION Engineering leadership becomes significantly more complex in times of uncertainty. This conversation highlights how leaders must shift from rigid plans to adaptable thinking—balancing delivery, team well-being, and long-term direction while navigating constant change. A key takeaway is that great leadership isn’t about having all the answers, but about creating clarity, trust, and resilience within teams. The speakers emphasize communication, context-awareness, and empowering engineers as the foundation for thriving—even when everything feels unstable. RECOMMENDED BOOKS Sarah Wells • Enabling Microservice Success • https://amzn.to/4aa8xrv Patrick Kua • Talking with Tech Leads • https://amzn.to/3ECO3xB Patrick Kua • The Retrospective Handbook • https://amzn.to/4jpxxQN Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons & Patrick Kua • Building Evolutionary Architectures • https://amzn.to/42qXJV2 Mary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising • Fearless Change • https://amzn.to/49uuune Mary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising • More Fearless Change • https://amzn.to/4tX6GAR Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn Facebook CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!

    Engineering Leadership in Turbulent Times • Sarah Wells, Pat Kua & Daniel Terhorst-North

À propos

The GOTO podcast seeks out the brightest and boldest ideas from language creators and the world's leading experts in software development in the form of interviews and conference talks. Tune in to get the inspiration you need to bring in new technologies or gain extra evidence to support your software development plan.

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