A software conference that advocates for quality

Excitement and expectations for the conference

• Several commenters are enthusiastic about the headline speakers and plan to watch the stream.
• Some expect content similar to classic essays and talks on secure/high‑quality systems design and “handmade”/low‑level programming.
• Others are disappointed that the site tagline and talk list don’t clearly explain what “quality” means in this context.

AI, speed, and long‑term code health

• Multiple people report that current AI coding tools feel magical but still generate “sloppy” solutions: lots of duplication, special‑cases, and long‑term maintenance hazards.
• There’s interest in how the conference will reconcile “move fast with AI” expectations with a quality focus; some argue that “being seen to use AI” is itself an empty business goal.
• A few suggest a two‑mode workflow (exploratory then cleanup/review) for both humans and AI.

Quality vs. economics and incentives

• A recurring theme: quality is often framed to business as “slow & expensive vs fast,” but several argue it’s really “slow and expensive vs fast and more expensive later.”
• Many insist that long‑term costs of tech debt, instability, and slow feature delivery are underestimated; others counter that in practice companies optimize for short‑term time‑to‑market and careers, not ideal engineering.
• There’s debate over whether a “high‑quality team” can deliver both better and faster, versus the higher up‑front cost of assembling such teams.
• Some note that without HR and organizational incentives (or unions) aligned to quality, conferences and books rarely change outcomes.

Handmade / performance‑centric “quality”

• Several comments tie the event to the “handmade”/game‑dev sphere: focus on performance, responsiveness, and minimal bloat.
• There is extended debate over whether performance regressions are evidence of a broader decay in engineering discipline versus simply rational economic trade‑offs.
• One side sees performance as an objective proxy for unnecessary complexity; the other stresses that software is an economic activity where “fast enough” varies by domain.

Testing, QA structures, and definitions of quality

• Experiences range from highly successful, separate QA orgs with veto power to dysfunctional bug ping‑pong and outsourced QA.
• Opinions on unit tests are polarized: some see them as essential for confidence and modularity; others feel over‑testing wastes time and fuels a “clean code” cottage industry.
• A subthread argues that “quality” should be quantitatively measured (e.g., defects, time‑to‑fix), while others maintain it is fundamentally context‑ and experience‑dependent.

Conference presentation, website, and culture

• Multiple commenters criticize the website as low‑quality (hard to read, poor mobile UX), calling this ironic for a quality‑focused event.
• The invite‑only, unspecified “small Swedish town” and minimal organizer information strike some as needlessly opaque or exclusionary.
• Some view the event as a successor to previous “handmade” gatherings and perceive it as culturally reactionary; others welcome its distance from diversity/identity politics.