Designing Software for Agentic Development

Room 11Wed 28 Oct • 14:30–15:30AI & AgentsIntroductory and overview
Oh boy, another AI talk! No, really! Let's focus on architecture and coding decisions that lead to systems that are better-suited to extension and maintenance by AI agents. Many of you have experienced the speed with which agents can spin up small greenfield applications, while simultaneously noting how this is often not the case with existing legacy software. Why? What is it about legacy software that makes it so difficult for agents to move as quickly there as they do when creating a proof-of-concept web app? In this session we'll answer these questions and identify pragmatic and concrete actions we can take to improve the maintainability of our apps with an eye toward making them more malleable by AI agents. And, it turns out, this also makes the systems more maintainable by human programmers, too.

About the speaker

Ardalis .

Ardalis (Steve Smith) is an entrepreneur and software developer with a passion for building quality software as effectively as possible. Ardalis has published DOZENS of courses on Pluralsight and Dometrain, covering DDD, SOLID, design patterns, and software architecture. He's a Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, a frequent speaker at developer conferences, an author, and a trainer. Ardalis works with companies through NimblePros, the boutique consulting company he runs with his wife, Michelle. They help teams who want to avoid the trap of technical debt to deliver better software, faster. Ardalis and NimblePros have been described by clients as a "force multiplier", amplifying the value of existing development teams. Follow ardalis on BlueSky, YouTube, and ardalis.com.