GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

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

CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join

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!

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

Lukasz Dynowski - Independent Consultant & Co-Author of "Learning API Styles"
Sam Newman - Author of "Building Microservices" & "Monolith to Microservices"

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/436

RESOURCES
Lukasz
https://github.com/ludyn-leo
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ldynia
https://learningapistyles.com

Sam
https://twitter.com/samnewman
https://github.com/snewman
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samnewman
http://samnewman.io
http://samnewman.io/blog

Links
https://www.youtube.com/@ldynia1
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRkB-vSK4koOHYIhpKXuXpipVpByEKuPu
https://learningapistyles.com
https://github.com/ldynia/learning-api-styles
https://nordicapis.com/the-bezos-api-mandate-amazons-manifesto-for-externalization
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1176617.1176622

DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Book Club episode, Sam Newman — author of "Building Microservices" — sits down with Lukasz Dynowski, co-author of "Learning API Styles", for a refreshingly low-level deep dive into a subject most developers think they already understand. The book deliberately starts from the network layer up — transmission modes, TCP, protocol stacks — rather than jumping straight to REST and GraphQL, because, as Lukasz explains, most API problems only become visible when you understand the substrate beneath them. The conversation covers the full spectrum: public vs internal APIs, the Bezos API Mandate moment, why treating your API as a product is non-negotiable, and why the choice between binary and textual protocols is never as obvious as performance benchmarks suggest.

The real gold comes in two moments. First, Lukasz lays out a crisp checklist for what makes a good API — audience-awareness, maintainability, efficiency, intuitiveness, resilience, security, testability, and documentation that actually matches behavior. Second, Sam shares a war story about a credit derivative system where the only way to figure out who was accessing the database was to turn off the credentials and wait for angry phone calls.
The lesson: context shapes every trade-off, there's no universal right answer between REST, gRPC, WebSockets, or messaging, and the best API decision is the one that fits your situation — not the one that fits the conference talk.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Lukasz Dynowski • Learning API Styles • https://amzn.to/3PFembK
Sam Newman • Building Resilient Distributed Systems • https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/building-resilient-distributed/9781098163532
Sam Newman • Monolith to Microservices • https://amzn.to/2Nml96E
Sam Newman • Building Microservices • https://amzn.to/3dMPbOs
Ronnie Mitra & Irakli Nadareishvili • Microservices: Up and Running• https://amzn.to/3c4HmmL
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook

CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join

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!

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

Jay Wengrow - Author of “A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering” & CEO of Actualize
Kris Jenkins - Lifelong Computer Geek and Podcast Host

RESOURCES
Jay
https://x.com/jaywengrow
https://github.com/jaywengrow
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaywengrow
https://www.commonsensedev.com

Kris
https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social
https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins
https://github.com/krisajenkins
http://blog.jenkster.com

DESCRIPTION
In this GOTO Book Club episode, host Kris Jenkins sits down with Jay Wengrow — founder of coding bootcamp Actualize and author of the bestselling Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms — to dig into his latest book, A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering. Jay demystifies how AI agents actually work: at heart, they're a clever hack where your code intercepts an LLM's text output, watches for special notation, and triggers real functions when it spots them. From there, the conversation expands into guardrails (regex, judge LLMs, and specialist ML models), multi-agent architectures for complex tasks, and a hands-on example of a 150-line podcast-generating app built entirely from scratch — no framework required.

The real throughline is a pragmatic, sceptical take on the current AI tooling landscape. Jay argues that frameworks can lock you into patterns that haven't been proven yet, and that the field is too new to know which abstractions are genuinely worth having. His rule of thumb: reach for a framework only when it will do something meaningfully better than you can — not just faster. The book was deliberately written around fundamentals rather than specific tools, so it ages well even as the ecosystem moves at breakneck speed. The conclusion is refreshingly grounded: understand the LLM's inherent limitations, build the middle layer thoughtfully, and don't outsource your system prompts to anyone — or anything.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering • https://pragprog.com/titles/jwpaieng
Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms • https://amzn.to/4bPiTjd
Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures & Algorithms in Python • https://amzn.to/3PpwtlT
Jay Wengrow • A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms in JavaScript • https://amzn.to/4dDSZBl
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook

CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join

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!

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.
https://gotopia.tech

Jodie Burchell - Senior Data Science Developer Advocate at JetBrains
Michelle Frost - AI Advocate at JetBrains

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/431

RESOURCES
Jodie
https://bsky.app/profile/t-redactyl.bsky.social
https://fosstodon.org/@t_redactyl
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodieburchell
https://github.com/t-redactyl
https://t-redactyl.io

Michelle
https://bsky.app/profile/aiwithmichelle.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-frost-dev
https://aiwithmichelle.com

Links
https://www.youtube.com/@Asianometry
https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547
https://softwareengineeringproductivity.stanford.edu

DESCRIPTION
Michelle Frost and Jodie Burchell - both developer advocates at JetBrains — sit down for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about the state of AI. Drawing on Jodie's unusual path from clinical psychology to biostatistics to NLP, and Michelle's background in machine learning fairness and AI ethics consulting, the two offer a measured, research-grounded perspective on generative AI's real capabilities and limitations. They trace historical parallels between today's AI boom and earlier 'AI summers,' unpack the contested definitions of AI and AGI, make the case for why foundational machine learning knowledge still matters, and examine what the evidence actually says about AI's impact on developer productivity.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Mark Coeckelbergh • AI Ethics • https://amzn.to/3SuXUbY
Debbie Sue Jancis • AI Ethics • https://amzn.to/44yuEbR
Alex Castrounis • AI for People and Business • https://amzn.to/3NYKKTo
Phil Winder • Reinforcement Learning • https://amzn.to/3t1S1VZ
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook

CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join

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!

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

Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/432

Hannah Foxwell - Independent Consultant & Founder of "AI for the rest of us"
Charles Humble - Freelance Techie, Podcaster, Editor, Author & Consultant

RESOURCES
Charles
https://bsky.app/profile/charleshumble.bsky.social
https://linkedin.com/in/charleshumble
https://mastodon.social/@charleshumble
https://conissaunce.com

Hannah
https://bsky.app/profile/hannahfoxwell.net
https://medium.com/@hannahfoxwell
https://x.com/HannahFoxwell
https://github.com/hannahfoxwell
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-foxwell

Links
https://conissaunce.com/services.html
https://www.aifortherestofus.co/newsletter
https://conissaunce.com/music.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd0ynenr1eno

DESCRIPTION
Hannah Foxwell sits down with Charles Humble - speaker, advisor, podcast host, and author - to explore his e-book "Kubernetes at the Edge". They cover what "edge computing" actually means, why it matters across industries from precision agriculture to healthcare and retail, how to approach vendor selection and day-two operations, and why sustainability must be central to how we build and deploy technology. The conversation closes with a frank and thoughtful discussion about the responsibilities of the tech industry in the age of generative AI.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Charles Humble • Kubernetes at the Edge • https://www.conissaunce.com/kubernetes-edge-ebook
Charles Humble • Professional Skills for Software Engineers • https://conissaunce.com/professional-skills-shortcut
Charles Humble • The Developer's Guide to Cloud Infrastructure, Efficiency & Sustainability • https://conissaunce.com/sustainability-ebook
Bluesky
Instagram
LinkedIn
Facebook

CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS
Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join

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!