When the Baby App Crashed: Coding for Chaos (and Parenthood) - Laura Meng

As a first-time parent and a developer, I relied on an app to log sleep and feedings. If I was going to lose sleep, at least I’d have data.
But one night, the app crashed right when I needed it most. Half-awake and fully frustrated, I decided to build my own version: one that could survive offline and my occasional parental meltdowns.

This talk explores how everyday chaos (whether in parenting or in production) can inspire better engineering. I’ll share how concepts like caching and feature flags turned a midnight side project into a small, reliable system.

Attendees will walk away with practical ideas for making their own applications more dependable under real-world conditions. Basic programming experience is helpful, but the talk is accessible to anyone interested in software reliability, distributed systems, or stories from the trenches of sleepless nights.