The software development industry is often the home of grandiose claims, that framework X will change how we all write software, that process Y will solve all of our software development woes, that technology Z will change the world, and others. Sometimes these claims are true. Other times they aren’t. How do you tell which is which? It’s not the only answer, but one thing that certainly helps is experience. I definitely don’t know everything about software development, but in my nearly 20 years of professional software development experience I’ve learned about some things that are mostly true and beneficial, as well as a few things that seem to be mostly not true.

In this presentation I’ll share some of the things that I’ve found to be useful and some of the things that I’ve learned to be wary of. You might agree with some of my assertions. You might disagree with others. You might decide I’m a crazy old coot shaking his fist at the cloud. But either way, you’ll hopefully have some more tools to think more critically about other’s (or perhaps your own) grandiose claims about the software development world.