In this talk we take a humorous but critical self examination at modern application development - technology, practices and tools; to try to understand why building and evolving applications is so difficult and expensive. Why is technical debt of epidemic proportions given how great everything is? Where does all the effort and expense really go? We argue it is time to look at the application development value chain to obtain a sensible and balanced way forward so we can leverage new new tools while using the best of old old.

Everyone is aware of the features and benefits of these technologies and practices but is the glass half full or half empty? Can we learn anything from the generations of developers before us? How discerning are we about the next new thing from GOTOCON or vendor X? Are the problems due to skills or latent accidental technical complexity? Are we using the right tools/practices for the right things? Is the iPhone the only place where App development is cool!? Can we help make application development in general much more enjoyable rather than blue collar programming with scrums?

Dave has repeatedly demonstrated how to deliver quality software on time and on budget. He is best known as the founder and past CEO of Object Technology International Inc. where he led the commercial introduction of object and component technology. The company is often cited as the ideal model of a software technology company and was a pioneer in Agile Product Development with a process called Just-In-Time Software. Dave has a unique ability to translate research breakthroughs into competitive products. He was the principal visionary and architect for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk and Java tools and virtual machines including the popular open-source, multi-language Eclipse.org IDE. OTI pioneered the use of virtual machines in embedded systems with Tektronix shipping the first commercial products in 1988. He is a popular, humorous, albeit opinionated keynote speaker with a unique breadth of business experience and technical depth. He is widely published in software engineering literature. Dave remains active in various roles within the technical community including ECOOP, AOSD, JAOO, Agile Development Conference, OOPSLA Onward, ENASE and Dynamic Language Symposium. He is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and the Queensland University of Technology as well as a founding director of the Agile Alliance, an ACM Distinguished Engineer, President of AITO and an advisor for IEEE Software. He also writes an expert column in the Journal Of Object Technology.