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World Congress 2026 Europe - Virtual Stage • Jul 2, 2026 • Session details

Software Development is (not) getting easier

Rene Kokott

Better tools haven't made software development easier. They’ve merely displaced complexity into your macro-architecture, fueling explosive scopes and driving impossible expectations for today's engineering teams.

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#1 about 6 min

Measuring software team growth through video games

How comparing credits from early and modern games reveals the massive exponential increase in team sizes.

#2 about 2 min

The rebound effect in software engineering teams

Why making development faster and cheaper paradoxically leads to larger teams and more complex projects.

#3 about 4 min

How market competition drives application feature bloat

How businesses avoid market cannibalization and free alternative products by continuously cramming more features into single broad applications.

#4 about 5 min

Pioneer phases versus mature gatekept technology markets

The cyclical transition from open experimental hobbyist spaces to strict corporate standards requiring formalized education.

#5 about 4 min

The impact of inflated productivity expectations over time

How continuous incremental improvements eventually establish unsustainable baseline expectations for an individual developer's daily output.

#6 about 3 min

Creative optimization around strict hardware system limits

How historical constraints forced innovative problem-solving mentalities that modern endless computing power often bypasses entirely.

#7 about 3 min

How new technological solutions generate entirely new problems

Why seemingly perfect answers like asynchronous parallel code or decentralized blockchain often lead to distinct new architectural blind spots.

#8 about 8 min

Moving architectural complexity instead of genuinely reducing it

How organizational patterns like microservices merely shift mental loads and necessitate highly specialized internal team hierarchies.

#9 about 5 min

Outsourcing developer mental load to external software frameworks

The trade-offs of heavily relying on third-party abstractions including unavoidable vendor lock-in and navigating deep technology layers.

#10 about 3 min

The real-world constraints capping continuous software complexity

How practical project constraints of budget margins, release cycles, and user comprehension naturally restrict the infinite scaling of technical difficulty.

Matching moments

3:40 min

Identifying core challenges in modern software development

Markus Eisele Markus Eisele · World Congress 2024

1:44 min

Understanding the complex landscape of software development

Luís Ventura Luís Ventura · World Congress 2024

4:10 min

Preventing developer burnout by avoiding toxic productivity trends

Katja Träumner

3:31 min

Translating internal software complexity to external perspectives

Hendrik Lösch Hendrik Lösch · World Congress 2025

2:18 min

Designing poor software architectures by ignoring Conway's law

Marlene Roth Marlene Roth +1 · World Congress 2025

2:45 min

Balancing developer productivity with modern demands

Markus Eisele Markus Eisele · World Congress 2025

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