November Double Header

Pizzas and Drinks will commence at 5:30 pm with content starting at 6

Talk 1: Practical experience of using RavenDB (NoSQL) in a SaaS product

RavenDB is a NoSQL database written in .NET Core that makes it naturally fit in .NET applications.
In this session, I'm sharing my experience of using RavenDB in a SaaS product, covering its pros and cons comparing to other NoSQL databases (CosmosDB, MongoDB, etc.).

Speaker: Alex Klaus

Alex has developed software for more than 20 years across a wide range of industries and development platforms. He has filled many roles including developer, team lead and project manager.

Talk 2: I ♥️ Refactoring: Accelerating Delivery in Legacy Codebases

As developers, we know that the world runs on software. We also know that critical pieces of the infrastructure that support our society are decades old. And yet, the general public expects the same speed, usability and reliability from legacy software as of the latest greenfield app.

As developers, we also end up with the dangerous responsibility to maintain legacy code, and even deliver new features on top of it. Most of us tend to avoid it, disgusted at the thought of monolithic, untested, incomprehensible software that is best left untouched.

But working with legacy code doesn’t have to be scary, or slow! In this talk, I will tell horror stories from LegacyLand and share some techniques you can use to speed-up delivery while gaining confidence to incrementally modify your legacy code.

Speaker: Dominique Rolin

Growing up in France, Dominique always had an interest in computers, but coming from an artistic family she didn't realise her favorite hobby could be a career. Instead of a CS degree, she studied graphic design and graduated around the time the Web became a thing.

Riding the early wave of the Internet-era she taught herself HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP and worked as what was then-called a "Webmaster". Over the course of 16 years she shifted more and more towards back-end programming, learning a bit more about proper software engineering at Thoughtworks and is now a senior developer with a passion for refactoring legacy code.