GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club.
http://gotopia.tech/bookclub

Ekaterina Gorshkova - Apache Kafka Engineer at SOFTEC & Author of "Kafka for Architects"
Viktor Gamov - Principal Developer Advocate at Confluent & Co-Author of "Kafka in Action"

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/440

RESOURCES
Ekaterina
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterina-gorshkova-978bb6
https://medium.com/@katyagorshkova

Viktor
https://bsky.app/profile/gamussa.dev
https://x.com/gAmUssA
https://github.com/gamussa
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikgamov
https://gamov.io

Links
45% off discount code (expires on 25 May 2026): GOTOKGKafka
Affiliate link: https://hubs.la/Q044HgTv
https://current.confluent.io/london

DESCRIPTION
Apache Kafka has evolved far beyond a simple message broker — it has become a foundational layer for modern enterprise software. In this GOTO Book Club episode, Ekaterina Gorshkova, author of "Kafka for Architects", shares how her decade-long journey with Kafka — starting in a Czech bank's integration team in 2015 — shaped her understanding of what it really takes to design Kafka-based systems at scale. The conversation covers core architectural decisions, real-world patterns for enterprise integration, the role of Kafka Streams, and how to avoid the classic pitfalls of building systems that "only three engineers understand".

The episode also looks forward: Ekaterina and host Viktor Gamov explore how Kafka is increasingly becoming the connective tissue for AI-driven systems, acting as an orchestration layer between intelligent agents, real-time data, and business workflows. Her book's central argument is that while AI and tooling change fast, the fundamental knowledge of how to design robust, event-driven systems is durable and career-proof. Kafka for Architects is framed not just as a technical manual, but as a roadmap for architects who want to get Kafka right from day one — requirements, design, testing, and all.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Ekaterina Gorshkova • Kafka for Architects • https://amzn.to/42mDarU
Dylan Scott, Viktor Gamov & Dave Klein • Kafka in Action • https://amzn.to/4vJ3Kcj
Viktor Gamov, Tartakovsky, Rasputnis & Fain • Enterprise Web Development • https://amzn.to/3CezL0R
Shapira, Palino, Sivaram & Petty • Kafka: The Definitive Guide • https://amzn.to/3RPtdLP
Bill Bejeck • Kafka Streams in Action • https://amzn.to/3CGJiiM
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This conversation was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2025.
https://gotocph.com

Sam Aaron - Live Coding Musician & Creator of Sonic Pi
James Lewis - Principal Consultant & Technical Director at Thoughtworks

RESOURCES
Sam
https://www.patreon.com/samaaron
https://bsky.app/profile/samaaron.bsky.social
https://twitter.com/samaaron
https://github.com/samaaron
https://linkedin.com/in/samaaron

James
https://bsky.app/profile/boicy.bovon.org
https://twitter.com/boicy
https://linkedin.com/in/james-lewis-microservices

Links
https://sonic-pi.net
https://twitter.com/sonic_pi
https://github.com/sonic-pi-net/sonic-pi
https://www.ableton.com/en/link
https://hydra.ojack.xyz

DESCRIPTION
Programming isn't just lines of code, it's a gateway to creating music & art. Legends such as Ada Lovelace are proof of that. With the aim to reshape the perception of coding which has traditionally been complex and intimidating, Sam Aaron created Sonic Pi, an open-source, free-to-use platform that empowers users to create music through code.

What began as a humble endeavor has grown exponentially with more than millions of downloads globally and a large number of schools integrating the tool as part of their computing curriculum to teach children how to program.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Sam Aaron & Russell Barnes • Code Music with Sonic Pi • https://amzn.to/4hBRYtC
Hans Gruendel • Making Music with Sonic Pi • https://amzn.to/3oVxGV7
Hans Gruendel • Learn to Program with Sonic PI • https://amzn.to/3qCrLEO
Simon Monk • Raspberry Pi Cookbook • https://amzn.to/43AGPRX
Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais • Team Topologies • http://amzn.to/3sVLyLQ
Forsgren, Humble & Kim • Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps • https://amzn.to/3tCz1xO
Bluesky
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This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.
https://gotopia.tech

Will McGugan - Creator of Toad & the Python Packages, Rich, Textual & PyFilesystem
Olimpiu Pop - Technologist & Tech Journalist

ORIGINAL TALK TITLE
The Python Dev Who Built Rich, Textual & now Toad Just Redesigned How You Talk to AI

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/437

RESOURCES
Will
https://mastodon.social/@willmcgugan
https://x.com/willmcgugan
https://bsky.app/profile/willmcgugan.bsky.social
https://github.com/willmcgugan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willmcgugan
https://willmcgugan.github.io

Olimpiu
https://x.com/olimpiupop
https://github.com/zroll
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olimpiupop

Links
https://www.textualize.io
https://www.batrachian.ai
https://github.com/textualize/rich
https://github.com/Textualize/textual
https://zed.dev
https://willmcgugan.github.io/toad-released
https://willmcgugan.github.io/announcing-toad

DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Unscripted episode, Olimpiu Pop sits down with Will McGugan — Python PSF Fellow and creator of Rich (4+ billion downloads) and Textual — to demo his sabbatical project: Toad, a slick terminal-based universal frontend for AI coding agents.
Will's frustration was simple and justified: every major AI coding tool (Claude Code, Gemini, Codex) was built on top-tier models but wrapped in a UI that looked like it was designed in 2004. Toad fixes that by using the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) as a standardized plug-in layer, giving users elegant prompt editing, proper streaming markdown rendering, beautiful tables, syntax highlighting, and a hybrid shell-plus-AI interface — all in the terminal, where developers already live.

The conversation gets sharply honest when the topic turns to AI and developer craft. Will — a 30-year coding veteran who admits it's not instinctive for him to reach for AI — shares a clear-eyed view of its strengths and limits: AI is extraordinarily fast at anything well-defined and unambiguous, but still struggles with genuinely novel problems.

His conclusion?
Most of what software developers do day-to-day isn't actually novel — it's pattern assembly — and that's precisely where AI shines. The future of coding isn't replacement; it's liberation from the mechanical grind. Oh, and the podcast host literally reading out "music intro here" because stage directions ended up in the transcript? That one's a cautionary tale for the ages.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Will McGugan • Beginning Python Games Development 2nd ed. • https://amzn.to/4ebBfxu
Will McGugan • Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame • https://amzn.to/4cyVdB3
Sam Keen • Clean Architecture with Python • https://amzn.to/4pBT5g0
Eric Evans • Domain-Driven Design • https://amzn.to/3tnGhwm
Naomi Ceder • The Quick Python Book • https://amzn.to/3zwdDOa
Bluesky
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This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club.
http://gotopia.tech/bookclub

Ian F. Darwin - Java, Android & Unix Developer, Trainer, Mentor & Author of "Java Cookbook"
Jeanne Boyarsky - Oracle Java Champion, Co-Author of "Real-World Java" & "OCP 21 Java Cert Book"

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/438

RESOURCES
Ian
https://fosstodon.org/@IanDarwin
https://x.com/Ian_Darwin
https://github.com/IanDarwin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/idarwin
https://www.darwinsys.com

Jeanne
https://bsky.app/profile/jeanneboyarsky.bsky.social
https://mastodon.social/@jeanneboyarsky
https://x.com/jeanneboyarsky
https://github.com/boyarsky
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanne-boyarsky
https://sites.google.com/view/jeanneboyarsky
https://www.selikoff.net

Links
https://javacookbook.org
https://dev.java/community/jcs

DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Book Club, Java Champion Jeanne Boyarsky interviews Ian F. Darwin — author of one of Java's most enduring reference books, Java Cookbook, now in its fifth edition covering up to Java 25. The conversation traces Ian's extraordinary journey: from writing Java's first commercial training course outside of Sun Microsystems, to meeting Tim O'Reilly at a Unix conference and handing him a chapter on lint, to delivering a class in Houston where the entire room had just been laid off and were using the course as their golden handshake into a new career. Ian talks about the philosophy behind the book — culling a peak 900-page beast down to a tight 600 pages, anchoring tool choices on proven, battle-tested picks like JUnit, Mockito, and logging — and shares his three favourite chapters: Regular Expressions, Object-Oriented Techniques, and Reflection.

The conversation gets sharply honest about AI and the future of the industry. Ian — who uses Claude as his coding assistant and does vibe code — warns that his greatest fear isn't AI taking over the world, but something subtler and more dangerous: companies stopping junior hires because AI can do the work, leaving no one to grow into the deep expertise that retires with the current generation. The parallel risk for books is equally candid: AI was trained on older editions, so the fifth edition is genuinely new and un-scraped territory.

His advice for anyone who has learned the basics of Java?
Don't ask an AI — buy the cookbook, save yourself years of trial and error, and for goodness' sake, read the code before you deploy it. "It's like building an airplane and putting passengers on it without flight testing."

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Ian F. Darwin • Java Cookbook 5th ed. • https://amzn.to/3QH0NZy
Ian F. Darwin • Java Cookbook 1st ed. • https://amzn.to/4sUpPlL
Ian F. Darwin • Checking C Programs with Lint • https://amzn.to/3Q2C69Y
Victor Grazi & Jeanne Boyarsky • Real-World Java • https://amzn.to/4oCEeBR
Jeanne Boyarsky & Scott Selikoff • OCP 21 Java Cert Book • https://amzn.to/4lF8OIC
Bluesky
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This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.
https://gotopia.tech

Marcin Grzejszczak - Software Engineer at HeroDevs & Java Champion
Jakub Pilimon - Software Architect at jPilo & Software Consultant at Bottega IT Minds

ORIGINAL TALK TITLE
The Typo That Broke Production — And Accidentally Created Spring Cloud Contract

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/435

RESOURCES
Marcin
https://bsky.app/profile/toomuchcoding.com
https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]
https://twitter.com/MGrzejszczak
https://github.com/marcingrzejszczak
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-grzejszczak-15565119
https://toomuchcoding.com

Jakub
https://twitter.com/JakubPilimon
https://github.com/pilloPl
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakub-pilimon-449b7984
http://pillopl.github.io

Links
https://toomuchcoding.com/post
https://martinfowler.com/articles/consumerDrivenContracts.html
https://www.tomakehurst.com

DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Unscripted episode, Jakub Pilimon sits down with Marcin Grzejszczak — Java Champion, Spring Cloud Contract contributor, author, mentor, and founder of a rural housewives' circle (yes, really) — to trace a 15+ year career that went from C++ on the Côte d'Azur to becoming one of the key architects of Spring Cloud Contract and the Micrometer Observation API. Marcin shares how real production pain — a junior dev fixing a typo in an API that silently broke every client — gave birth to what would become Spring Cloud Contract, and how he's never shy about calling out his own embarrassing code (complete with a Javadoc that opens with "I'm sorry").

The conversation pivots sharply into 2025 territory, with Marcin sketching out an AI-powered future for contract testing: instead of manually writing contracts (which developers routinely abandon), capture live production traffic, let AI generate the contracts, and let humans do what they're actually good at — reviewing and approving. Wrapping up with observability, Marcin argues the most underrated pillar isn't logs, metrics, or traces — it's context. Without knowing why something happened (a deployment, a business event), raw telemetry data is just noise. Practical, honest, and occasionally self-deprecating: a thoroughly human conversation in the age of AI.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Marcin Grzejszczak • Mockito Cookbook • https://amzn.to/4rXOrtf
Marcin Grzejszczak • Instant Mockito • https://amzn.to/4lV2ePQ
Sam Newman • Building Microservices • https://amzn.to/3dMPbOs
Sam Newman • Monolith to Microservices • https://amzn.to/2Nml96E
Roy Osherove • The Art of Unit Testing • https://bit.ly/3obiKNB
Charity Majors, Liz Fong-Jones & George Miranda • Observability Engineering • https://amzn.to/38scbma
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook

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Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
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Looking for a unique learning experience?
Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.tech

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted daily!