Ryan Hamilton

With over 40 years as a coder, Ryan Hamilton is a senior software engineer on the AI Team at CircleCI, where he participates heavily in research and development efforts to understand how AI is actually transforming software delivery — beyond the hype. Spending most afternoons after school at his father's software store in the early 80's, he started writing code in second grade on an Apple II in BASIC, and has been coding in countless capacities ever since. Now he codes (mostly in English) on M4 MacBook Pros, while conducting extensive interviews with engineering teams navigating the AI revolution. For him, "software delivery" has meant everything from shipping floppy disks in cardboard boxes to watching teams YOLO AI-generated apps into production on vibes — and then (at best) measuring what actually happens. He believes certain timeless SDLC principles remain intact through it all, and that honest conversations about what's working (and what isn't) matter more than another hype cycle.