In April I presented at the UAIC Spring School 2026 in Iași, where I delivered a session titled The Renaissance Developer: A Manifesto for Evolution in the Age of AI. The talk was inspired by Dr. Werner Vogels’ AWS re:Invent 2025 keynote and explored what it means to be a developer in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
The session addressed the anxiety many students and developers feel about AI replacing their jobs, and reframed it as an opportunity for evolution rather than obsolescence. Drawing parallels between the original Renaissance of the 15th century and the current moment in technology, I talked about how the printing press and the telescope expanded human capability, and how AI coding assistants and cloud infrastructure are doing the same for developers today. I covered key attributes of the Renaissance Developer: being curious and embracing the learning zone, thinking in systems using concepts like feedback loops and leverage points, and experimenting fearlessly – from Da Vinci’s flying machine that never flew but informed aviation centuries later, to Amazon’s evolution from monolith to microservices.
It was great to return to UAIC Spring School for the second year in a row. The energy and curiosity in the room were inspiring, and the questions afterwards showed just how engaged the next generation of developers is with these topics.
My slides covering the presentation can be found here.