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World Congress 2026 Europe - Virtual Stage • Jun 30, 2026 • Session details

Old tools, new tricks

Benjamin Bischoff

Are shiny new frameworks slowing your team down with unknown failures? Discover why pairing battle-tested legacy tools with modern LLMs provides a massive strategic advantage.

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#1 about 3 min

Navigating the influx of new software technologies

The rapid emergence of new tools forces developers into dilemmas around what learning investments are truly worthwhile.

#2 about 4 min

Overcoming cognitive biases in software tool evaluation

Common psychological traps like the tutorial dilemma, sunk cost fallacy, and Maslow's hammer lead to poor technology adoption decisions.

#3 about 2 min

Managing team risk and the bus factor

Adopting single-expert tools introduces critical knowledge bottlenecks and team skepticism based on ambiguity bias.

#4 about 3 min

Comparing unknowns between new and established technologies

While all software contains uncertainties, shiny new technologies possess a significantly larger magnitude of unpredictable edge cases.

#5 about 2 min

Applying the Lindy effect to software reliability

Unexciting older tools are often more reliable and cost-effective because their lifetime expectancy correlates with their age and their failure modes are well-documented.

#6 about 3 min

Selecting Selenium for browser automation and testing

Establishing a basic website test scenario underscores the reality that older libraries like Selenium exist strictly to drive browsers rather than act as full testing frameworks.

#7 about 3 min

Implementing basic website interaction tests with Selenium

Initializing a Chrome driver and sequentially finding and asserting website elements demonstrates typical real-world execution speeds without artificial delays.

#8 about 5 min

Refactoring test code dependencies with Maven and JUnit

Wrapping standalone scripts into structured JUnit test lifecycles managed by Maven standardizes executions and narrows possible configuration errors.

#9 about 4 min

Controlling browser configurations via simple Bash scripts

Extending Java tests with system properties allows basic shell scripts to dynamically allocate driver configurations like Firefox or Edge based on user input.

#10 about 5 min

Abstracting build and test operations with Make

Utilizing Makefiles as top-level proxies standardizes developer commands across differing projects regardless of the underlying language or framework implementations.

#11 about 4 min

Leveraging AI code generation for older software tools

Large language models generate highly accurate code for decades-old tools due to extensive historical training data and resolved edge cases.

Matching moments

8:22 min

Navigating legacy systems and unconventional software testing practices

Philipp-Alexander Blum · LIVE

2:47 min

Diagnosing the persistence of legacy runtime code architectures

Alfonso Graziano Alfonso Graziano · Coffee With Developers

2:30 min

Overcoming the human challenges of software maintenance

Robby Russell · Coffee With Developers

5:50 min

Evaluating tools and avoiding the sunk cost fallacy

PJ Hagerty PJ Hagerty · WWC Europe 2026

3:28 min

Managing technical debt in legacy web applications

Robby Russell · Coffee With Developers

3:59 min

Recognizing the symptoms of a broken legacy web project

Peter Kröner Peter Kröner · WWC 2023

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