We, as developers love to think we are purely logical beings, making decisions based on clean architecture; lessons learned from previous experiences; best practices; and cold, hard facts.

But let’s be honest—how many of our tech choices are solely based on reason? Why do we cling to bad code like it’s a beloved pet? Why do we chase the latest frameworks like they’re Pokemon? And why does every developer have an irrational hatred for at least one programming language?

This talk dives into the hidden psychology of software development, revealing how cognitive biases, fear of failure, and pure developer stubbornness influence our choices more than we’d like to admit.

From the Sunk Cost Fallacy (aka “I spent two weeks on this refactor, so we have to use it”) to Loss Aversion (aka “I know this function is useless, but what if we need it someday?”), we’ll explore the surprisingly human side of coding.

Expect real-world examples, and hard-hitting truths about why we write, delete, and rewrite code the way we do.

By the end, you’ll walk away with maybe, just maybe, the courage to delete that ancient, commented-out function from 2017, finally!