Lessons Learned Scaling Front-end Architecture at Explorys

"From a Single Java Application to a Service-Oriented Architecture: Lessons Learned Scaling Software at Explorys"

Schedule

6:00-7pm - Kata / Pairing / Networking
7:00-? - Nick Dragan's presentation

• there will be space available if you're interested in Kata / Pairing / Networking for the entire event.

This talk will tell the story of how Explorys has evolved its front-end web architecture over the course of 4 years from a single monolithic GWT (Google Web Toolkit) Java-based application to a suite of independently deployable Ruby on Rails apps supplemented by Javascript and supported by 5 in-house built gems, 24 discrete RESTful Java Services, and an automated Cucumber test suite with thousands of acceptance criteria. Having been brought on in 2010 as one of Explorys’ first junior software engineers and having watched the company grow to almost 150 people, I will share some of the lessons we learned in rapidly scaling software while striving to keep it maintainable, well-tested, and most importantly, performant.

Nick's Bio:
Nick Dragan has obtained his B.S. degree from Kent State University in Computer Science in 2007, and his M.S. degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. In 2007, he interned at Yoosic, a small startup in Dresden, Germany, where he built automated tools to import and organize music metadata. While working on his Masters at UNC, he has held positions as a teaching assistant for undergraduate Computer Science courses, and as a research assistant working in the Wide Area Visuals Lab. While at Explorys, he has shipped numerous features within Explorys’ product portfolio, organized QA efforts and product releases, and assisted in R&D efforts that led to the adoption of the Cucumber test infrastructure and the transition to Ruby On Rails as the framework of choice for new product development. In addition to his passion for building web applications, some of his interests include 3D graphics, data mining, soccer, and traveling.

Parking is free at the LeanDog lot, at the Burke Airport, to the left of the guard booth near the USS COD submarine.