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Daniel Terhorst-North

Daniel Terhorst-North

Founder & Principal Consultant

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AT A GLANCE

Role

Founder & Principal Consultant

Organisation

Goalwards

Category

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Daniel Terhorst-North invented [Behaviour-Driven Development](/introducing-bdd), co-invented the [build pipeline](https://www.academia.edu/6158670/The_Deployment_Production_Line), and pioneered many of the [Continuous Delivery](https://continuousdelivery.com) practices that software teams now take for granted. These were born out of necessity, on real projects, which is why the ideas stuck. In his thirty-five year career, Daniel has moved from programmer to technical leader to trusted CxO adviser, bridging the worlds of technology and business operations. Since 2012, he has been an independent consultant to organizations from start-ups to household names. A popular keynote speaker at major technology and business conferences worldwide, he has contributed to *The RSpec Book* and *97 Things Every Programmer Should Know*, and blogs at [https://dannorth.net/blog](/blog).

TALK

Am I holding this right?

Oh look, another session about AI! Your social media feeds are already flooded with agentic this and spec-driven that; one-shot rewrites and everyone-is-a-programmer-now. I want to share some models and metaphors that are helping me make sense of this new world: why Ward Cunningham hates printers, how riding a fixie isn’t really cycling, why Claude is just a mercenary contractor, how test-first is the new TDD. Beyond the hype, we should still care about iterative development, bounded contexts, decent tests, intention-revealing names. And AI is not going to replace junior developers any time soon, instead it is something... other. I don’t use genAI to go faster or produce more, at least not primarily. Instead it is helping me do 'adjacent' things, allowing me to focus where I want to rather than where I otherwise would have to. My goal is to give you a more nuanced take on generative AI, to help you cut through all the noise and get actual work done.

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Speakers, program drops and much more of the community.

A 2-day sweet spot conference for the entire dev team to stay future-proof in the age of AI.

© 2026 code.talks · alphalist GmbH · Hamburg

Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

Speakers, program drops and much more of the community.

A 2-day sweet spot conference for the entire dev team to stay future-proof in the age of AI.

© 2026 code.talks · alphalist GmbH · Hamburg