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Thor Henning Hetland

About

I'm Thor Henning Hetland -- most people call me Totto.

I've been building software professionally for over 30 years, starting with my Master in Software Development at NTNU (1996). Over those decades I've worked as a CTO, architect, lead developer, technology strategist, and trainer across international and domestic projects. I've shipped code in more programming languages than I care to count.

But the thing I keep coming back to is this: how do we build software better?

What I'm doing now

I founded eXOReaction to answer that question with today's tools. We're an AI-augmented software development consultancy based in Oslo, focused on helping teams work effectively with AI -- not as a gimmick, but as a genuine shift in how software gets built.

The core of our approach is Skill-Driven Development (SDD) -- a methodology I created for structured human-AI collaboration. SDD treats AI skills as composable, versioned building blocks that compound over time. It's been validated across four sectors (manufacturing, finance, renewable energy, AI security) with measured productivity gains of 25--66x compared to traditional approaches.

I also built Synthesis, an open-source, local-first knowledge infrastructure tool. It indexes thousands of files per second, provides sub-second search across entire codebases, and tracks cross-repository dependencies -- all without touching the cloud. It grew out of a real need: when SDD lets you generate 197,000 lines of code in 11 days, you need serious tooling to keep track of what you built.

Community

Community has always been central to what I do. I co-founded JavaZone in 2001 -- it's now Scandinavia's largest developer conference. I served as president of javaBin (the Norwegian Java User Group) for a decade. I was appointed Sun Java Champion in 2005, the first in Scandinavia.

Today I'm Chairman of IASA Norway (International Association of Software Architects), where we work on professionalizing the role of software architecture.

I've spoken at JavaZone, JavaOne, CommunityOne, NDC, Devoxx, and many others. I believe conferences and communities are where the real knowledge transfer happens -- not in vendor whitepapers.

The short version

  • Founder: eXOReaction AS (AI-augmented development)
  • Creator: Skill-Driven Development (SDD) methodology
  • Builder: Synthesis (open-source knowledge infrastructure)
  • Chairman: IASA Norway
  • Co-founder: JavaZone conference
  • Java Champion (since 2005)
  • Education: Master in Software Development, NTNU (1996)
  • Based in: Oslo, Norway
  • Contact: LinkedIn or totto@totto.org