BrabantJUG @ the/experts

On June 11th we will be hosting another BrabantJUG meetup. Our host the/experts in Breda will be opening its doors for us.
With Rick Ossendrijver and Soham Dasgupta we have two awesome speakers who will share their knowledge!

Timetable:
17:00 Doors open
18:00 Food
18:50 Introduction
19:00 Boosting developer effectiveness with a Java platform team by Rick Ossendrijver
19:45 Break
20:00 RAG-atouille by Soham Dasgupta
20:45 Drinks

Boosting developer effectiveness with a Java platform team
Maintaining a high-quality and uniform codebase poses significant challenges at scale, as ever-growing technical debt, inconsistencies, and weak dependency management slip in too easily. This talk delves into how a dedicated Java Platform can tackle all these challenges by providing a centralized solution!

Picnic's Java Platform approach empowers a community of 300+ developers with a robust suite of tools and shared libraries. Instead of teams having to reinvent the wheel, developers can use out-of-the-box libraries for cross-cutting concerns such as logging, observability and security. This facilitates adherence to guidelines and enforces best practices. As a result, developers can sidestep the burden of creating repetitive and mundane implementations and focus on writing actual business logic.

Learn how to harness the power of automation to achieve consistency and standardization with continuous enhancement. We will discuss our tooling setup and practices. Gain insights into an approach of providing shared libraries, centralized Maven configuration, developer tools, and CI/CD practices. Come and learn how Picnic's developers are empowered to build Java services with efficiency, quality, and confidence.

About Rick
Rick Ossendrijver is a Software Engineer at Picnic, a fast-growing online supermarket. He is part of the Java Platform team, which supports over 300 engineers within the company. Rick is a committer and enthusiast of the Error Prone project. Moreover, he is passionate about improving software quality through static analysis and automation, and works on Picnic's open-source Error Prone Support project.

RAG-atouille
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), similar to the artistry of Remy’s Ratatouille, combines the brilliance of Large Language Models (LLMs) with the precision of information retrieval. Just as Remy layers flavors in his dish, RAG-fusion seamlessly blends vectorized documents, images, audio, and video to craft nuanced responses in AI-powered applications. The RAG-multi index, like Gusteau’s secret spice blend, optimizes data organization, allowing LLMs to access a rich pantry of knowledge. And much like Anton Ego’s discerning palate, RAG-search ranking ensures that the most relevant insights rise to the top. Vector DB, our culinary laboratory, refines this recipe for a delectable user experience.

About Soham
I am a technology enthusiast working at Microsoft as a Solution Architect, with over 18 years of experience in software programming, designing, and architecture which includes on-prem, cloud-native applications, and web-based conversational application design.