Dark Factory Considered Harmful: Balanced Directions for Agentic Software Engineering

ODSC AI West 2026

Oct 27, 2026 · Time to be announced

As the value of coding agents in practical software engineering becomes firmly established, many assume the logical conclusion is to go fully agentic. This culminates in a vision called the Dark Software Factory - we turn the lights off and never see the code again. This talk takes the opposite position: Dark Software Factory is flawed as a general recommendation, and being "more agentic" is not always better. My proposed alternative is The Show-Me Method. You should decide which parts of your application are "code worth writing" and which should be left to agents. Evolve over time in support of your business needs. Consider abstractions other than prompts to gain leverage with lower risk.

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Speakers and their event affiliations

• Ray Myers

  Affiliation at this event: The Coding Agency

Parent event

Hybrid · Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, Burlingame, California, United States

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