Felienne Hermans will be speaking at DDD Europe 2026
Felienne Hermans will be speaking at DDD Europe 2026. Felienne was at our first DDD Europe conference in Brussels and is now joining us again to celebrate our 10th edition in Antwerp. Her talk, "AI made me doubt everything about programming", promises to challenge how we think about our craft in the age of AI.
"AI made me doubt everything about programming"
What is AI? What is AI for, and what are its goals? Can we use AI for programming? The dominant discourse in 2025 makes it easy to believe in 2025 that AI is unequivocally good, and will make our lives much easier.
In this talk Felienne, professor of Computer Science education, will take you through an alternate history of AI, programming and its epistemological development. She will take you through over a century of alternative tech voices, and discuss what we can learn from that for the current state of programming and its future.
Speaking Background
Felienne has delivered keynotes and talks at major conferences including StrangeLoop, NDC, GOTO, and DDD Europe. Her 2019 StrangeLoop keynote "How to teach programming (and other things)?" challenged the programming community's assumptions about education.
She introduced a gradual programming language designed to make coding accessible to children worldwide.
She has spoken at conferences like GOTO Amsterdam, NewCrafts, ECOOP, and Craft, and has been featured at academic venues ranging from ICSE to ICER. Since 2016, she has been a host at SE Radio, one of the most popular software engineering podcasts on the web.
Groundbreaking Work in Programming Education
Felienne is a Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she heads the Programming Education Research Lab (PERL). Her research focuses on how people learn to program and how we can teach programming more effectively.
In 2020, she launched Hedy, a gradual programming language that teaches children to program step by step. Hedy is open source, runs in the browser, is free to use, and available in eighteen different languages. Since its creation almost 2 million Hedy programs have been created by children worldwide.
Publications and Recognition
Felienne is the author of "The Programmer's Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition," published by Manning. The book offers scientifically sound techniques that can radically improve the way you master new technology, comprehend code, and memorize syntax.
She also wrote the paper "A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design".
In 2021, Felienne was awarded the Dutch Prize for ICT research. She also won the SURF Education Award in 2017 and the Open Education Award for Excellence in 2018. She is a member of TC39, the committee that designs JavaScript.