KEYNOTE: What am I doing?
09-24, 09:15–10:15 (Europe/Lisbon), Auditorium

As a programmer, I often ask myself: what am I doing?!


That’s a question and an experience shared by other professionals whose craft is also sometimes difficult and technically puzzling - for example, chefs or opera singers.

But while chefs rarely ask “what is cooking?”, and opera singers rarely ask “what is singing?”, programmers are forever raising the question: “what is programming?”

What am doing, as a programmer? What is the nature of my craft?

Video: https://youtu.be/gjutf_Af9HQ

I'm a Director of Engineering at Canonical, where I am working to transform documentation practice across 40-plus engineering teams. I love Django, DjangoCons and documentation (I am the author of the Diátaxis documentation framework.

I think it would be better to humanise software than softwarise humans.