Madelyn Olson discusses the evolution of Valkey's data structures, moving away from "textbook" pointer-chasing HashMaps to more cache-aware designs. She explains the implementation of "Swedish" tables to maximize memory density. She shares insights on systems intuition, memory prefetching, and the rigorous testing needed for mission-critical caches.

Franka Passing discusses the architectural shift of Duolingo’s 500+ backend services to Kubernetes. She explains the move toward GitOps with Argo CD, the transition to IPv6-only pods, and the "cellular architecture" used to isolate environments. She shares "reports from the trenches" on managing developer trust, navigating AWS rate limits, and productionizing early adopter services.

Andrew Harmel-Law and a panel of expert architects discuss the shifting practice of architecture in 2025. They explain strategies for communicating technical debt to stakeholders, the benefits of decentralized decision-making through ADRs, and the career paths of modern leaders. The panel shares insights on bridging the gap between mobile and backend teams to ensure a holistic system.

Adrian Cockcroft explains the transition from cloud-native to AI-native development. He shares his "director-level" approach to managing swarms of autonomous agents using tools like Cursor and Claude Flow. Discussing real-world experiments in BDD, MCP servers, and language porting, he discusses why the future of engineering lies in building platforms that orchestrate AI-driven development.