AI/ES/25/11 Code/CODE/21 Fri/1505 The Infinite Software Crisis

• 3:05pm - 3:24pm Talk: The Infinite Software Crisis Person/Jake Nations

  • Talk: The Infinite Software Crisis

    • In 1968, the term ""Software Crisis"" emerged when systems grew beyond what developers could manage. Every generation since has ""solved"" it with more powerful tools, only to create even bigger problems.
    • Today, AI accelerates the pattern into the Infinite Software Crisis. AI-generated codebases mirror the meandering conversations that created them. Every clarification and pivot gets baked into your architecture. We're vibecoding our way to disaster.
    • The solution: choose simple over easy. One long conversation is easy. Separate phases with clean boundaries are simple.
    • This talk presents a three-phase methodology:
      • Research to understand the existing system
      • Planning to design the approach
      • Implementation with clean context
    • While everyone races to generate code at machine speed, the engineers who thrive will be those who know when a system is getting tangled. In the age of infinite code generation, human judgment applied at the right moments becomes your competitive advantage.