Benjie De Groot
Benjie is the co-founder of Shipyard and co-hosts the Kubelist podcast. Previously, he built out CI/CD pipelines for companies ranging in size from seed to Fortune 50. He enjoys automating the mundane and releasing code that he knows has been tested and validated! When not working, he likes hanging out with his pug and family.
Session
Back in 1976, the Makefile made it easy to compile C programs. In 2025, it’s used for automating just about everything, from shell scripts to build workflows to CI/CD pipelines.
Over 49 years, a lot has obviously changed about the way we design and build software. However, the fundamentals (esp. design patterns, algorithms, and architectures) have stayed more or less the same. We can learn a lot from the Makefile, from its design to how it has remained relevant in such a quickly evolving space. In this ignite, Benjie will talk about what patterns made the Makefile a mainstay in software development and deployment. He’ll also cover why good software is timeless.