As developers, engineers, nerds, geeks, coders or whatever you want to call us, it's easy to think that it's all about the tech. Our skill with a language, a tool, a stack—that's what makes us valuable. That there are techies and normies and that the geeks shall inherit the Earth.

Within tech, we argue about what is best—static or dynamic, object-oriented or functional, tabs or spaces. We seek best practices. We embrace what is new and throw out what is old—calling it tech debt. But the world isn't black and white—it isn't all ones and zeros—and most things are a gray smear. It always depends. New does not mean best.

Over my decades as a developer—and a human—I've learned many lessons and ignored many more. In this talk, I'll share these lessons and more—seven in total. I'll bind all them together with a rather odd theme—astrology. A theme that, in itself, is another lesson about what you choose to learn.

You won’t just walk away from this talk with seven quirky lessons or some new idea to noodle upon—although those will be there. You’ll also begin to see beyond the binary itself and apply that insight to both technology and the humans who make it.