RigaDevDays2017 Recap

A few days have passed since our colleagues Edgaras and Linas came back from the biggest tech conference in the Baltic states – RigaDevDays2017. The conference took place in the largest Cinema theater in Latvia, and all of the conference sessions were recorded and will be available online.

Let’s dive in and run over what our teammates liked the most!

Apart from our own exhibition, discussions, and work that had to be done, our co-workers Linas and Edgaras found some spare time to catch a few sessions, like the one from Yegor Bugayenko who made a clear and well-rounded case from his point of view on the future of software developers. A helpful insight into what it was like in 2000 how developers are perceived in today’s world and what it will look like in the future.

Here’s a presentation of his speech available if you’re interested and a small preview of Yegor in action.

Another interesting topic was covered by Nikita Prokopov, where he outlined web application problems of passing data between a server and a browser.

Client-server communication is a complex multi-dimensional problem with a lot of requirements, limitations, pitfalls, and tradeoffs. For example, the request-response model is simple to understand but poorly equipped for correct and error-prone communication. Server push through SSE/WebSocket is more modern but too low-level for any serious job to be done… Want to learn more? Explore his illustrative presentation online!

The day ended with an after-party and networking event which took place in the Vertigo bar.

“The Why Behind DevOps, Containers, and Microservices: Delivering Value Faster, Better and More Reliably” by Edson Yanaga kicked off day two of the RigaDevDays2017 outlining the aspects of faster, better and more reliable way to deliver software.

Shortening development and deployment cycles and shrinking feature release sets actually help improving software and deployment quality by creating faster and more accurate feedback loops.

Linas and Edgaras pointed out a speech about blockchains by Nick Zeeb as one caught their attention during the second day. Nick explained how blockchains work and what becomes possible with modern blockchains that are creating turing-complete decentralized virtual machines.

Anyone thinking that blockchains are all about cryptocurrency should have changed their mind as Nick unveiled the potential of how it can be used to re-engineer any social, financial, or political system.

RigaDevDays2017 was indeed an excellent conference to attend. We would love to meet you next year, so make sure to either attend or submit an abstract in 2018!!