Announcing 8th DevClub.lv

At 8th DevClub.lv we will have following presentations:

  • Eduards Sizovs from 4finance will talk about "SOLID principles"
    (Language – English)
    SOLID is a mnemonic acronym introduced by Michael Feathers for the "first five principles" identified by Robert C. Martin in the early 2000s that stands for five basic principles of object-oriented programming and design. The principles when applied together intend to make it more likely that a programmer will create a system that is easy to maintain and extend over time. Join to hear what SOLID is about and make it indispensable part of your daily toolbox.
    Tags: SOLID, Clean Code, Craftsmanship, OOAD

    Eduards Sizovs – Software Architect at 4finance is responsible for building a premier kick-ass financial platform speaking Java, running in the form of various products around the globe.

  • Girts Laudaks from Mykoob will talk about Team, Technology and Product
    (Language – English)
    Which is a bigger challenge in development process – working with technology or working with people? Lessons learned throughout development of Mykoob. How team and technology influence the product. What happens when human boundaries are reached and technology is failing?
    Tags: Team, Technology, Product, Collaboration

    Girts Laudaks – Co-founder of Mykoob. Go-to guy. Friend. Boss. In the middle of technology and people.

  • Maksims Rebrovs from Skype will talk about "NoSQL datastorage – myths and truths"
    (Language – English)
    Main points: What is NoSQL? What's the difference between using NoSQL and your old reliable SQL DB? When to use NoSQL? When not to use it? What problems you will be facing migrating from SQL to NoSQL? What NoSQL solutions exist out there? How to chose one?
    Tags: NoSQL, DB, Cloud, Scalability

    Maksims Rebrovs is a Senior Software Developer Engineer at Skype, member of Skype Calling team, developing and maintaining all Skype call-related features and components, including client-side logic, server-side components, DBs, gateways, cloud services etc. NoSQL datastorage is a crucial part of the cloud services his team is working on.

Don't forget to win Nokia Lumia 920 at Skype Challenge, it will be active until 4th March. And did you heard about C.T.Co's invitation for a tasty cup of coffee?

We would also like to thank our sponsors: Devtraining, 4FINANCE Group, C.T.Co. and Skype.

Skype Challenge Nr.2

We are currently looking for talented individuals to join our amazing team developing products that touch the lives of millions people around the world. Showcase your puzzle solving abilities together with coding prowess by completing one of our timed challenges. Its very straight forward – if your code passes then we will be in contact to arrange an interview* and the best code will win a Nokia Lumia 920!

Everyone can participate in this challenge (including those who participated at 1st one) http://www.skypechallenge.com – it will be active until 4th March.

Please contact Triin or Alexa within Skype Staffing for any questions.

Announcing Special edition Mobile DevClub.lv

At Special edition Mobile DevClub.lv we together with C.T.Co invite you to enjoy following presentations:

  • Aivars Ritovs from NFC team will talk about "How to start-up"
    (Language – Latvian)
    Stories and main points for IT guys: How to start-up your thought? Best latvian and world stories, NFC team and Aivar’s individual experience about products, platforms, team and start-ups development.
    Tags: Start-up, apps, solutions, NFC, NFC team, MyNfcteam

    Aivars Ritovs is the team leader for a Baltic start-up company „NFC team” that is out to build a world’s first NFC infrastructure for business and consumer solutions. His previous experience with NFC includes working solution with international cleaning service based on Nokia Phones and consulting several big operators on their NFC-enabled services. Currently, the NFC team is the partner for major consumer Electronics Company in launching the word’s first low-cost NFC phone. NFC team has several NFC products and platforms for B2B market.

  • Gusts Linkevičs from If P&C Insurance AS will talk about "Live tiles and Lock screen on Windows Phone 8"
    (Language – Latvian)
    Live tiles and Lock screen are one of the biggest advantages of WP8. You will learn what types of Live tiles exist and how to work with them from your application to achieve fantastic customization. Have you ever wanted customizable Lock screen with data you want? It is possible on WP8 and I will show you how.
    Tags: Windows Phone 8, Live Tiles, Lock Screen, ScheduledTasks, Background Agents

    Gusts Linkevičs is member of dotnet user group, Microsoft Student Partner and is passionate about WP8.

  • Aleksandrs Pliska from DPA will talk about "Mobile application development"
    (Language – Latvian)
    Nowadays the usage and development of mobile applications is fast growing and important part of whole IT market. Implementation of mobile applications in different business areas and solutions is becoming more and more integrant. This talk will be about DPA experience of mobile applications development in Android, iOS and Windows Phone environments. During the presentation I will introduce three DPA developed mobile applications (one from each environment) and will speak about the development process, key challenges and lessons learnt.
    Tags: Mobile Applications, Development, Android, iOS, Windows Phone

    Aleksandrs Pliska is project manager assistant at DPA Solutions Department. He has experience in mobile applications analysis and testing in DPA projects.

  • Dmitry Ivanov from C.T.Co will talk about "Difference in Cross-platform mobile development – native vs hybrid vs HTML5"
    (Language – Russian)
    Every developer thinking about doing something for mobile platforms, wants to maximize potential reach and cover as many platforms as possible. Cross-platform development seems to be an answer and HTML5 is the de-facto standard for that approach. What are the potential caveats of going cross-platform with HTML5? Why Facebook decided to go native with its apps for iOS and Android after trying HTML5 first?
    Tags: Mobile Development, HTML5, cross-platform

    Dmitry Ivanov is the Lead Mobile Developer in C.T.Co interested in various aspects of cross platform development with experience in a number of platforms, including iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

  • Lottery of iPad mini provided by C.T.Co

Please pay attention – this time we start at 17:00 and event will take place at Rīgas Tehniskā universitāte (RTU), 2nd floor, Mazā zāle, Kaļķu iela 1.

We would also like to thank our sponsors: Devtraining and C.T.Co.

Results of 1st Skype Challenge

Message from Skype:

A big thanks to all who participated in the recent Skype DevClub Challenge. We hope that you all enjoyed taking part and attempting to code your way to owning a new Windows 8 smartphone. After reviewing all submissions (several times as it was extremely close!) we are happy to announce that our 1st DevClub Code Master is Oleg Tsernetsov from Tallinn. Congratulations Oleg, we will contact you separately to arrange receipt of your brand new device. For those wishing to take part in future challenges we will be running DevClub challenges each month with completely new brain teasers each time. Good luck!

Team Skype

Skype Site Leader - Tiit Paananen and Skype Challenge winner Oleg Tsernetsov
Skype Site Leader – Tiit Paananen and Skype Challenge winner Oleg Tsernetsov

Oksana Topor - Skype Recruiter, Skype Challenge winner Oleg Tsernetsov, Staffing Associate Triin Kaljuvee
Oksana Topor, Oleg Tsernetsov, Triin Kaljuvee

Announcing 7th DevClub.lv

It's time for 7th DevClub.lv!

Here's the speaker lineup:

  • Ivars Kalniņš from Select Solution will talk about "Life with Microsoft Dynamics NAV"
    (Language – Latvian )
    Ever heard someone other than a skilled salesperson presenting an ERP system like Dynamics NAV? Here is the chance – the facts and stories from an IT guy to fellow IT guys. Where’s the worth, actually? What’s there for developers? How it compares and where it’s heading?
    Tags: Dynamics, NAV, Microsoft, Navision, Development

    Ivars Kalniņš is a seasoned Dynamics NAV implementer, mostly passionate about the development part of the job. Co-founder at Select Solutions, providing e-commerce solutions for Dynamics NAV.

  • Rolands Mekšs from 4Finance will talk about "Infrastructure as Code"
    (Language – English or Latvian)
    At all times development and operations have been different animals. However it has proven that we can (and should) treat infrastructure configuration in the same way as code and apply all development standard practices as version control, testing, continuous integration, development environments (testing/staging/production,etc) and so on. During presentation I will share some common ideas on topic, introduce Puppet – configuration management tool and it's declarative language as well as development workflow using Puppet + Vagrant + VirtualBox.
    Tags: DevOps, Configuration Management, Puppet, Vagrant

    Rolands Mekšs has worked both in Development and Operations positions, has many years experience of Linux systems administration and Java development.

  • Antons Kranga from Accenture also will talk about “Infrastructure as Code”
    (Language – English, Latvian or Russian)
    This talk will not be developers vs operations, or let’s claudify everything. We will go through some infrastructure automation practices with Chef. Chef is the configuration management tool that can be used to once bootstrap your infrastructure, periodically, to revisit your infrastructure services or for deployment or release activities automation. We will talk about infrastructure as a code from perspective of Chef.
    Tags: DevOps, Configuration Management, Infrastructure Architecture, Chef

    Antons Kranga Technology Architect in Accenture, has been part of Architecture Innovation group. Working with infrastructure for Enterprise Systems. His last project has been to define Infrastructure Architectures for scalable, cloud based solutions.

  • Skype Challenge!
    We are currently looking for talented individuals to join our amazing team developing products that touch the lives of millions people around the world. Showcase your puzzle solving abilities together with coding prowess by completing one of our timed challenges. Its very straight forward – if your code passes then we will be in contact to arrange an interview* and the best code will win a HTC Windows phone x8!
    Full information will be provided on the event. http://www.skypechallenge.com – it will be active from 20th of December

We would also like to thank our sponsors: Devtraining, 4FINANCE Group, C.T.Co. and Skype.

Review of 6th DevCub.lv

JavaScript Trends

Maris has presented JavaScript trends. This lecture started with the history of JavaScript, its usage in the very beginning and the way it has developed. The main goal of the presentation was to show that starting from the language for the annoying popups and alerts a JavaScript turned to the language that is very powerful. New technologies and frameworks are introduced which make JavaScript really powerful. Ajax requests, hardware acceleration, native mobile applications even server code is something that can be used with JavaScript nowadays. And the most amazing thing is that presentation was prepared with JavaScript framework help. Slides: http://www.rvl.io/zemgalis/javascript-trends

TDD – Why and How?

Raimonds in his presentation introduced the public with the Test Driven Development (TDD) which is a software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: first the developer writes an initially failing automated test case that defines a desired improvement or new function, then produces the minimum amount of code to pass that test and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards. Raimonds clearly described the benefits of using this approach and the problems which typically arise if software development and testing are done by separate individuals or teams. Presentation included practical demo of writing software on the spot implementing TDD approach. Source code for the demo with step by step guide are available from his GitHub public repository. Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/rsim/tdd-why-and-how