Kevlin Henney

Independent consultant, speaker, writer and trainer

YOW! Sydney 2025 YOW! Brisbane 2025 YOW! Melbourne 2025 GOTO Copenhagen 2025 GOTO Copenhagen 2024 GOTO Amsterdam 2022 GOTO Copenhagen 2021 GOTO Book Club Live GOTO Amsterdam 2020 GOTOpia Europe 2020 GOTO Unscripted GOTO Chicago 2018 GOTO Amsterdam 2017

Kevlin Henney

Independent consultant, speaker, writer and trainer

#author

Kevlin Henney is a GOTO legend with more than 500k views on the GOTO Youtube channel. He will deliver an honest session about success and failure.

He's an independent consultant, trainer, reviewer and writer best known for being the author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series and editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know.

Kevlin's development interests are in programming, people and practice. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, a contributor to open source software and a member of more committees than is probably healthy (it has been said that "a committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled"). Kevlin also boasts over 500K views on the GOTO Conferences YouTube channel.

He has written on the subject of computer programming and development practice for many magazines and sites, including Better Software, The Register, C/C++ Users Journal, Application Development Advisor, JavaSpektrum, C++ Report, Java Report, EXE and Overload.

One of our favorite quotes by Kevlin: "Less code = less bugs"

Topic focus: Programming, people and practice

Check out some of Kevlin’s past talks:

GOTO Chicago 2018 - Old Is the New New
GOTO Amsterdam 2017 - Code as Risk
GOTO Copenhagen 2016 - Small Is Beautiful

A few of Kevlin’s books:

Upcoming masterclasses featuring Kevlin Henney

Keeping It Simple

We are often urged to keep code, design and architecture simple. What, however, is the motivation for this? And what does this mean in practice? Is it just an aesthetic or does simplicity also have social, economic and technical implications? In this masterclass, we'll look at typical sources of complexity in our coding habits and development processes, from working with incomplete knowledge to trying to future-proof our systems, from deadline pressure to technical neglect, from noisy code to paradigm. To keep it real, we'll also look at some examples of complexity and their simpler counterparts, with code examples in a variety of programming languages.

Tuesday Sep 30 @ 09:00 | Copenhagen, Denmark

Reserve your spot now

Upcoming conference sessions featuring Kevlin Henney

🔒 Reserved for later announcement

Thursday Oct 2 @ 16:15 @ GOTO Copenhagen 2025

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On our live stage, magic happens

Speakers interview each other on topics that matter to them.

The Program Committee brings special guests in front of the camera — with you as the audience. Some interviews will be planned, others completely spontaneous. All of them will be magnificent, no doubt about it.

Expect the unexpected.

Wednesday Oct 1 @ 14:15 @ GOTO Copenhagen 2025

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