In the 1850s, a major cholera outbreak in London changed the course of medicine. In 1986, the Challenger exploded live on TV. Both of these events have lessons that we, as software developers, need to learn and incorporate in our professional lives.

In this talk, we’ll look at two different events that happened in two different professions and see parallels with our own profession. For example, how do you handle the push to get “that one last feature” in before the release? How do you approach a situation in which a critical bug is about to be released and nobody cares? We’ll explore those topics and more as we look at professionalism in the software community.