Assembled around AssemblyScript

We heard you - this month we're trying the virtual thing. Stream details coming soon.

Agenda (SF TZ, GMT-7):

5:00pm: as-pects of great testing software, Joshua Tenner
5:45: Break
6:00: Making Commerce Extensible with WebAssembly, Mitch Dickinson
6:45: Wrap up!

About the talks:

as-pects of great testing software

In this talk Joshua will provide an introduction to AssemblyScript and an overview of his project as-pect, a testing package for AssemblyScript.

Making Commerce Extensible with WebAssembly

Over the past 15 years, Shopify has built a globally distributed, commerce platform. We have one of the largest Rails monoliths on earth. A core mandate is to keep this codebase simple, only building what most merchants need most of the time. To support additional requirements, we need advanced customization tools pluggable by third parties. These customizations need to be synchronous, secure and lightning fast.

To solve this problem, we have turned to WebAssembly on the server. Our team is building a synchronous customization platform on top of WebAssembly. We are building a developer SDK using AssemblyScript and Lucet that will allow partners to write synchronous plugins to our commerce platform. This talk will cover the architecture of this solution and it will go deep on how WebAssembly has enabled us to run untrusted code in a fast and secure way. This involved building a layer around Lucet that allows us to represent and transmit higher level data types to and from WASM modules. With WASM we are able to run these plugins securely and guarantee a result in just a few milliseconds.

And with good developer tools and enough hooks on top of our monolith, we will be able to allow third parties to extend our commerce platform

About the speakers:

Joshua is a Senior Web Developer at the Connecticut Dental Health Partnership and their only full stack developer. He's the developer of as-pect, as2d & libtelnet-ts. You can find Joshua at github.com/jtenner.

Mitch is an Engineering Manager at Shopify, where he's worked for 18 months in Waterloo, Canada. Most recently, he has been leading the effort on using WebAssembly to make a more extensible commerce platform for all Shopify merchants.

Prior to joining Shopify, Mitch helped build several startups in the Waterloo region. He loves working on scrappy teams and solving tough customer problems with innovative use of technology. You can find Mitch at @MitchDickinson & linkedin.com/in/mitchdickinson.