Software should work, and talking about it needn't be boring

OPINION DVD is one of those technologies that dominated for barely a generation yet left a permanent cultural mark.

It made high-quality video cheap enough for mass distribution, popularized the TV series boxed set, and encouraged its gluttonous consequence: binge viewing.

Streaming and capacious storage have since pushed optical media toward irrelevance.

There may no longer be a box, but the boxed-set mentality remains, and we still binge like Roman emperors.

It is a genuinely new way of absorbing large quantities of information.

Now it is time to recognize a further evolution: the bingeable tech conference.

Streamed conferences are nothing new, but few reward being watched from beginning to end.

They offer too many talks on too narrow a subject, too much marketing flimflam, or too much variation in quality.

The Goldilocks zone of quality, range, relevance, and intelligence is rare, but worth seeking out.

This July delivered a near-perfect example: Software Should Work 2026.

The name supplies the plot arc.

Software Should Work is about reliability in its broadest sense, because reliable software requires much more than making code that runs.

It encompasses abstraction and formal methods, managing complexity, making the most of tools and processes, individual innovation, team culture, and the nuts and bolts of telling computers what to do.

In just 13 videos, SSW creates a widescreen, high-definition, thought-provoking picture of the field today.