Dave Thomas

Author of The Pragmatic Programmer

GOTO Copenhagen 2026 GOTO Amsterdam 2023 GOTO Chicago 2023 YOW! Sydney 2022 YOW! Melbourne 2022 YOW! Brisbane 2022 GOTOpia Europe 2020 GOTO Unscripted

Dave Thomas

Author of The Pragmatic Programmer

Dave Thomas is a programmer and entrepreneur known for his contributions to the software development industry. He has been involved in the creation of several successful software products and has been a leader in the agile software development movement. Co-author of the best selling reference book The Pragmatic Programmer.

Dave is an author and also editor. He runs The Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company. Dave coined the phrases 'Code Kata' and 'DRY' (Don't Repeat Yourself), and was an original signatory and author of The Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Check out the latest GOTO Book Club episode "Anniversary Edition of the Pragmatic Programmer" featuring Dave and Andy here.

Topic focus: Programming

Check out some of Dave's past talks:

GOTO Amsterdam 2015 - Agile is Dead Snippets
GOTO Amsterdam 2015 - Agile is Dead

A few of Dave's books:

Upcoming conference sessions featuring Dave Thomas

Plus c'est la même chose

"It doesn't matter: The only thing that'll read this code is another AI."

I hear people say it all the time. And they might be correct that their code will only ever be consumed by Claude or Codex. But that definitely doesn't mean the code's quality is irrelevant. Just about every good practice we've settled on over the last 50 years still applies when machines write our code. In fact, I believe that many of these principles are even more important, because (not surprisingly) AIs are making the same mistakes we make. They're just doing it faster.

Let me show you some ways to hold your AI coding buddy to a higher standard.

Wednesday Sep 30 @ 15:45 @ GOTO Copenhagen 2026

Get conference pass