Software development has been often compared to sport, and in particular to the Olympic games. Similarly to athletes, developers are supposed to be continuously training themselves, resilient and goal-focused. However, the perpetual drive towards the Faster, Hgher, and Stronger does not come for free: neither for the athletes nor for software developers. In this talk we will reflect on the ongoing need for speed, amplified by the push towards AI-based development, its impact on software developers, and sketch the space for future research.

Alexander Serebrenik is a full professor of social software engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. His research goal is to facilitate evolution of software by taking into account social aspects of software development. His work tends to involve theories and methods both from within computer science (e.g., theory of socio-technical coordination; methods from natural language processing, machine learning) and from outside of computer science (e.g., organisational psychology). The underlying idea of his work is that of empiricism, i.e., that addressing software engineering challenges should be grounded in observation and experimentation, and requires a combination of the social and the technical perspectives. Alexander has co-authored a book “Evolving Software Systems” (Springer Verlag, 2014), “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering: Best Practices and Insights” (APress, 2024) and more than 250 scientific papers and articles. He is actively involved in organisation of scientific conferences and is member of the editorial board of several journals. He has won multiple best paper and distinguished reviewer awards. Alexander is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM. Contact him at a.serebrenik@tue.nl.