Redesigning vs. Refactoring: The WixStores case study

On the 25/3 we will share the technology behind WixStores: touching issues like microservices, CQRS, event sourced, Test Driven Development and much more.

Doron and Igal, the Client and Server-Side R&D leads, will share their architecture decisions, speak of the technological stack they chose, and share war stories from redesigning a product in a 60 million user scale environment.

As always, beers and finger-food will be provided courtesy of Wix Engineering :).

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/e/d/7/600_434248375.jpeg

Here is the timeline:

19:00 - Gathering

19:15 - Revamping a new Server Architecture / Doron Rosenstock

Abstract:

We recently decided to redesign - not refactor - one of our must successful products.

In this lecture I will present the reasoning behind this brave decision, while quickly presenting the previous system and its pains; such as a monolithic server, the inability to scale as the product grew, and suffering from a low dev velocity.

Then, I will share our arduous thinking and planning process, and the solutions we came up with such as the use of micro services, CQRS and event sourcing.

I will further share my challenges as the R&D Lead of this redesign and what I've learned during the process. Come and hear how it all ended.

Bio: Doron got his first computer at age 10, dismantling it within a week. Soon after he ventured in to learning Pascal, which made computers an official hobby of his.

A decade or so later, Doron has been part of the Wix engineering crew from its early days. Growing through the ranks, Doron's current position as Wix Stores R&D Lead. Architecture and Server side logics fill his weekdays, while biking and hiking are his weekend likes.

20:00 - Break (more beer!)

20:15 - Choosing a Front End strategy / Igal Steklov

Abstract:

Not always a team of FEDs have the opportunity to rebuild a product from scratch with no limitations. Just do it the best way you can. This was the case for WixStores.

I will mainly share our process, the technological stack we’ve chosen, as well as some of the challenges we’ve faced with and how we solved them. Also, I will share with you our teams structures we’ve tried.

Some of the buzzwords that will be in my presentation are AngularJS, TDD, TypeScript, SASS, SVG and Icons Font, Bower and more. Also I will try to explain why we choose that technology/framework/library, and how we’ve used it.

Bio: Starting to code at 16 out of curiosity, Igal is your typical generation Y web development monster. Swimming through a sea of JavaScript frameworks, CSS tricks and semantic HTML5, is what makes Igal feel safe and protected.

He is now flourishing as the Client Side Lead at the WixStores start up, growing a team of talents, and attending every client event he can.

21:15 - Estimated end