Kevlin Henney at myConf 2025

Ye Cannae Change the Laws of Physics
Software is executable fiction. Software development is about constructing narratives, drawing from a broad palette of paradigms and technologies, married to our understanding of the needs and wants for a system. Abstraction allows us to simplify and reify the complexity of the world into a formal description that we continually update. Abstraction allows us to ignore things about the world and about computer systems that are irrelevant or inconvenient.

But there are limits to the enchantment of code and our ability to maintain illusions. When the rubber hits the road and the packet hits the network we find universal limits are there to keep it real. Nothing can be instantaneous or infinite. Not all computations can be reversed. Not everything is computable. Not everything can be known. Every computation costs time and energy.

In this talk we'll explore the metaphors and realities of the physical world and how they play out in our software systems.

About Kevlin
Kevlin is an independent consultant, trainer, speaker and writer. His development interests and work with companies cover programming, practice and people. He has contributed to open- and closed-source codebases, been a columnist for a number of magazines and sites, and been on far too many committees (it has been said that "a committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled").

Kevlin is also co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, and co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know.

Get to know Kevlin even more at:
https://kevlin.tel
or on his LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevlin/

This presentation was recorded on 26 May 2025 at the myConf conference in Varberg, Sweden.

factor10:
Website: https://factor10.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/factor10-solutions-ab/

myConf:
Website: https://myconf.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/myconf/