#351: Combating Complexity: Fad, Fashion, and Failure in Software Development

There is little in our lives that does not rely on software. That has been the reality for quite some time, and it will be even more true as self-driving cars and similar technologies become an even greater part of our lives. But as our reliance on software grows, so does the potential for disaster as software becomes increasingly complex. In September 2017 The Atlantic magazine featured "The Coming Software Apocalypse," an article by James Somers, that offers a fascinating and sobering look at how rampant code complexity has caused massive failures in critical software systems, like the 2014 incident that left the entire state of Washington without 911 emergency call-in services until the problem was traced to software running on a server in Colorado. One of the people interviewed in that Atlantic article was Chris Newcombe, an expert in dealing with software complexity. Chris, an architect on the Oracle Bare Metal infrastructure as a service team,  is one of the panelists for the discussion you are about to hear. Chris is joined by Java Champion and microservices expert Chris Richardson, Java Champion Adam Bein, and Oracle ACE Director and Developer Champion Lucas Jellema. The conversation focuses on what developers can do to combat complexity.