I had the opportunity to visit the AWS Summit 2026, my first ever tech conference and I was very excited to see what lay before me.
I learnt quite a few things dare I say and my imposter syndrome has never been higher than while I was here amongst these mega giant companies and even mega giant developers.
Here's my two cents on what I learnt and experienced.
AI is a multiplier: I saw this as an opening slide in one of the talks, which in todays agentic world is almost gospel. AI is a multiplier so good code and standards will lead to a simple multiplication of good practises and on the other side of the spectrum poorly written code will exponentially deteoriate.
Spec driven development as a way to combat vibe coding. Having the human involved in all the key decisions instead of handing the keys to your castle to your model.
Emphasis on L-shift testing: I didn't know this until today myself but it makes so much sense.
Shift from the traditional SDLC to AI Driven Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC)
Using another AI to find out what the current latest version is of {xyz} technology so AI doesn't default to using {xyz} technology that it's trained on, so kind of like setting a thief to catch a thief.
Every company's ethos is now gone from we help you solve {xyz} problem to we now use AI to solve {xyz} problem better, faster, and best in class. Every booth used the word AI agent, if I took a shot everytime I heard the word agent I would be hammered in under 10 minutes.
The next generation of builders are Renaissance Developers: modern-day polymaths who blend multiple disciplines, think systematically, and take full ownership of what they create.
In a strange way, tech is pushing us back toward something very old, Polymaths: like the original Renaissance thinkers, notably Leonardo Davinci, who moved fluidly between Art, Science, Engineering, and Philosophy.
All in all, it was a very pleasant experience, I do wish I had spoken to more engineers though, but it is a day that demands a lot of social battery and putting on your best friendly face so that you're kind to the large plethora of people trying to showcase why their product is best in the bizz which kind of gets exhausting after a while, or I could have just been hungry.