Episode 229, Kevlin Henney, Consultant, Speaker and Writer

Fireside with Voxgig

Today, we’re speaking to Kevlin Henney, who, if you scroll back far enough, you’ll see was one of our earliest guests on the podcast. We’re thrilled to have Kevlin back for a discussion on microservices, agile development and how developers can avoid the “factory line” work style.
Kevlin talks to us about how there isn’t one service or language that has “the answer”, and the approach to tools should be broad and open to change. When developing a system, you’re creating something new - it’s not manufacturing, there is always an element of novelty to what you’re making, and that should be understood and accounted for.
We also get into the subject of legacy code and systems, and how to interact with and manage them. The accommodations required to run such a system can often result in it making more decisions than the developers working on it. A code base that’s a decade old with multiple component systems fighting each other can present problems, but if everyone’s too afraid to change things up, then the maintenance costs will continue to rack up.
It was a pleasure to have Kevlin back and we can’t wait to see what he’s up to, 200 more episodes down the line!
Reach out to Kevlin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevlin/
Check out his website: https://about.me/kevlin
Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast
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