When we think of craft, we often think of practicing until product is excellent on every endeavour. As such, it can seem quite ironic that setting the quality bar at the lowest acceptable level can help achieve this goal. In this talk we explore this contradiction and understand how, in complex technical systems that require long-term maintenance and operationalization, craftmanship and quality can be maximized by leveraging a deep understanding of minimum viable quality.
The systems we build today are fundamentally complex. As a software engineering discipline, we've bought into building complex distributed systems (applications) on top of complex distributed systems (microservices) on top of complex distributed systems (modern virtual infrastructure) on top of complex distributed systems (cloud services). In the immortal words of Socrates: "I drank what?"The only way to reason about these systems is to provide relatively simplistic abstractions at the right boundaries. In this talk, we'll talk about the ins and outs of the boundary selections for both developers and operators in a high-scale, high-performance, geo-distributed database. The audience will walk away with a line of questioning to help inform both boundary selection and problem selection in their own software engineering adventures.
Theo is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and technologist. He has founded six companies and served as the founding engineer for two product lines.
Theo has authored or contributed to three books on large scale technical systems and operations and has spoken at over 150 events over the last two decades.
As a dedicated volunteer in the computing industry, he has served for over a decade in various capacities for ACM.
Outside of technology, he is a father of three, owns a butcher shop, and a fledgling farm and lodge.
