TTW Extra #5 🔥: Must-watch 2024 QCon talks
As we approach the middle of the year, I’ve picked some of the most interesting talks from QCon London and San Francisco that have been published in 2024.
Happy Tuesday 👋!
I find the talks presented at QCon to be packed with interesting insights from various tech companies. As we approach the middle of 2024, I’ve picked some of the most interesting ones from London and San Francisco editions that have been published this year so far.
The list is unordered and contains 35 talks that span through the entire spectrum of software engineering, including backend, frontend, fullstack, AI/ML, DevOps, mobile dev, and leadership.
This is a really tough one, but if I were to pick the top 5, I’d go with:
"How Netflix Really Uses Java" ⸱ Feb 26, 2024 ⸱ 00h 50m 30s
Paul Bakker discusses Netflix’s use of Java, emphasizing the use of microservices, RxJava, Hystrix and Spring Cloud.
"Several Components are Rendering: Client Performance at Slack-Scale" ⸱ Apr 25, 2024 ⸱ 00h 42m 07s
Jenna Zeigen discusses front-end performance issues encountered by Slack as they continue to grow and evolve the desktop app.
"Amazon DynamoDB Distributed Transactions at Scale" ⸱ Jan 19, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 07s
Akshat Vig explains how transactions were added to Amazon DynamoDB using a timestamp-based ordering protocol to achieve low latency for both transactional and non-transactional operations.
"Improve Feature Freshness in Large Scale ML Data Processing" ⸱ Jan 25, 2024 ⸱ 00h 28m 59s
Zhongliang Liang covers the impact of feature freshness on model performance, discussing various strategies and techniques that can be used to improve feature freshness.
"Managing 238M Memberships at Netflix" ⸱ Feb 05, 2024 ⸱ 00h 50m 04s
Surabhi Diwan discusses how the Netflix’ membership team outgrew many of its technology and architectural choices as memberships went from a few hundred thousand to 200 million.
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Without further ado, here's the full list:
"How Netflix Ensures Highly-Reliable Online Stateful Systems" ⸱ Feb 12, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 31s
Joseph Lynch discusses the architecture of Netflix's stateful caches and databases, including how they capacity plan, bulkhead, and deploy software to their global, full-active, data topology.
"Building Sub-Second Latency Video Infrastructure at Cloudflare" ⸱ Feb 27, 2024 ⸱ 00h 32m 41s
Renan Dincer provides insight on how Cloudflare has deployed a sub-second latency live streaming system at scale, focusing on protocols used: HLS, DASH, RTMPS, SRT and WebRTC.
"Orchestrating Resilience: Building Modern Asynchronous Systems" ⸱ Feb 19, 2024 ⸱ 00h 44m 06s
Sai Pragna Etikyala discusses her journey at Twilio, sharing practical examples from their projects, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them.
"Optimizing JVM for the Cloud: Strategies for Success" ⸱ May 10, 2024 ⸱ 00h 46m 54s
Tobi Ajila discusses the challenges and innovations in JVM performance for cloud deployments, highlighting the integration of these JVM features with container technologies.
"Banking on Thousands of Microservices" ⸱ Jan 03, 2024 ⸱ 00h 34m 39s
Suhail Patel covers lessons learned from building a bank, starting from technological choices like using Cassandra and Kubernetes in the early days to how Monzo has maintained its speed of execution through platform engineering and developer experience.
"Sleeping at Scale - Delivering 10k Timers per Second per Node with Rust, Tokio, Kafka, and Scylla" ⸱ Apr 26, 2024 ⸱ 00h 48m 39s
Lily Mara and Hunter Laine walk through the design of a system, its performance characteristics, and how they scaled it.
"Platform and Features MLEs, a Scalable and Product-Centric Approach for High Performing Data Products" ⸱ Apr 11, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 10s
Massimo Belloni discusses the lessons learnt in the last couple of years around organizing a Data Science Team and the Machine Learning Engineering efforts at Bumble Inc.
"Combating AI-Generated Fake Images with JavaScript Libraries" ⸱ Apr 24, 2024 ⸱ 00h 42m 21s
Kate Sills discusses JavaScript libraries to use for cryptographic hashes, digital signatures and timestamping, the traditional archival process, and how cryptographic hashes can prevent tampering.
"Setting Goals as a Staff+ Engineer" ⸱ Jan 10, 2024 ⸱ 00h 31m 00s
Sabrina Leandro discusses how to define your development journey as a staff+ engineer, figuring out what you should be working on, how to set your goals, and how to define your backlog of work. Sabrina's intent is to help folks realize you should be intentional about your work.
"Virtual Threads for Lightweight Concurrency and Other JVM Enhancements" ⸱ Jan 09, 2024 ⸱ 00h 47m 59s
Ron Pressler presents how and why Java abstracted its existing thread construct to provide an alternative user-mode implementation of threads as opposed to offering a new concurrency construct. Ron also briefly mentions other transformative features recently added to the JVM in the areas of garbage collection and observability/profiling.
"Million Dollar Lines of Code: an Engineering Perspective on Cloud Cost Optimization" ⸱ Mar 09, 2024 ⸱ 00h 32m 16s
Erik Peterson discusses the right timing and approach for engineering cost optimization and how to use cost efficiency metrics as powerful constraints that drive innovation, and engineer profit.
"Streaming Databases: Embracing the Convergence of Stream Processing and Databases" ⸱ May 17, 2024 ⸱ 00h 46m 05s
Yingjun Wu discusses the evolution of streaming databases, and the features and design principles that set streaming databases apart from conventional database systems and stream processing engines.
"Use Engineering Strategy to Reduce Friction and Improve Developer Experience" ⸱ May 15, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 21s
Will Larson discusses what problems engineering strategy solves, examples of real engineering strategies, how to rollout engineering strategy, troubleshooting why your strategy rollout isn’t working.
"Improve Feature Freshness in Large Scale ML Data Processing" ⸱ Jan 25, 2024 ⸱ 00h 28m 59s
Zhongliang Liang covers the impact of feature freshness on model performance, discussing various strategies and techniques that can be used to improve feature freshness.
"Server Driven UI - Streamlining Mobile Development and Release" ⸱ May 03, 2024 ⸱ 00h 50m 20s
Thomas Chao discusses server driven UI frameworks for mobile development, what they are, why they are starting to become more prevalent, and the spectrum of possible options one can consider when looking into an SDUI framework.
"Several Components are Rendering: Client Performance at Slack-Scale" ⸱ Apr 25, 2024 ⸱ 00h 42m 07s
Jenna Zeigen discusses front-end performance issues encountered by Slack as they continue to grow and evolve the desktop app.
"Protecting APIs in Financial Services with Zero Trust Overlay Mesh Networks" ⸱ Apr 18, 2024 ⸱ 00h 38m 48s
Clint Dovholuk reviews the three components of OpenZiti's architecture: controller, edge routers, and SDKs, in addition to diving into the internal physical and logical architecture of OpenZiti.
"Generative AI: Shaping a New Future for Fraud Prevention" ⸱ Apr 17, 2024 ⸱ 00h 47m 29s
Neha Narkhede discusses a vision for fraud and risk management that leverages the advancements in generative AI.
"Effective Performance Engineering at Twitter-Scale" ⸱ Apr 12, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 45s
Yao Yue recapitulates scaling a project at Twitter while summarizing some key lessons learned about effective performance engineering.
"Understanding Platforms: What They Are, Why They Work, When to Use Them, How to Build Them" ⸱ Mar 20, 2024 ⸱ 00h 46m 14s
Hazel Weakly discusses platforms and platform engineering, and what it means to learn, and how collective thought scales across a team, an organization and an industry.
"Multi-Region Data Streaming with Redpanda" ⸱ Mar 06, 2024 ⸱ 00h 41m 44s
Michał Maślanka introduces the design of Redpanda’s Multi-Region feature, and describes how they leveraged Raft’s properties, a constraint solver, automatic data balancing, and tiered storage.
"Making the Decision to Be an Individual Contributor or a People Leader" ⸱ Mar 05, 2024 ⸱ 00h 41m 54s
Michael Winslow explains the factors he considered when choosing between being an individual contributor and a leader, including his personal strengths and interests, and organizational opportunities.
"JavaScript: Empowered by Rust" ⸱ Mar 04, 2024 ⸱ 00h 48m 48s
Chris Biscardi explores what Rust is being used for on the front-end and introduces the language from the perspective of a JavaScript developer.
"NIST 800-207A: Implementing Zero Trust Architecture" ⸱ Mar 02, 2024 ⸱ 00h 45m 06s
Zack Butcher discusses the forthcoming Special Publication 800-207A on a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) model for access control in cloud native applications in multi-location environments.
"In-Process Analytical Data Management with DuckDB" ⸱ Feb 28, 2024 ⸱ 00h 28m 11s
Hannes Mühleisen discusses DuckDB, an analytical data management system that is built for an in-process use case. DuckDB speaks SQL, is integrated as a library, and uses query processing techniques.
"How Netflix Really Uses Java" ⸱ Feb 26, 2024 ⸱ 00h 50m 30s
Paul Bakker discusses Netflix’s use of Java, emphasizing the use of microservices, RxJava, Hystrix and Spring Cloud.
"Beyond Micro Frontends: Effective Composable Decoupled Applications on Cloud Native Infrastructure" ⸱ Feb 21, 2024 ⸱ 00h 46m 47s
Natalia Venditto discusses supporting infrastructure and how cloud-native and the Web Platform APIs are paving the way to push the boundaries of what was once known as the Jamstack and micro-frontends.
"AWS Lambda Under the Hood" ⸱ Feb 17, 2024 ⸱ 00h 51m 11s
Mike Danilov covers how Lambda is built and how they had to modify the architecture to support 10GiB payloads.
"How DoorDash Ensures Velocity and Reliability through Policy Automation" ⸱ Feb 15, 2024 ⸱ 00h 47m 37s
Lin Du discusses the details of their approach at DoorDash, and how they enabled their engineers to self-serve infrastructure through policy automation while ensuring both reliability and high velocity.
"Bridging Silos and Overcoming Collaboration Antipatterns in Multidisciplinary Organizations" ⸱ Feb 13, 2024 ⸱ 00h 48m 03s
Emily Webber explores some common anti-patterns and the problems that those anti-patterns create, then shares some approaches and techniques to break those silos down to work together better.
"Managing 238M Memberships at Netflix" ⸱ Feb 05, 2024 ⸱ 00h 50m 04s
Surabhi Diwan discusses how the Netflix’ membership team outgrew many of its technology and architectural choices as memberships went from a few hundred thousand to 200 million.
"Maximizing Performance and Efficiency in Financial Trading Systems through Vertical Scalability and Effective Testing" ⸱ Feb 01, 2024 ⸱ 00h 46m 14s
Peter Lawrey discusses achieving vertical scalability by minimizing accidental complexity and using an event-driven architecture.
"Perils, Pitfalls and Pratfalls of Platform Engineering" ⸱ Jan 30, 2024 ⸱ 00h 41m 42s
Charity Majors discusses how platform engineering teams are different from other engineering teams, and presents some of the ways they run into traps and other troubles.
"Amazon DynamoDB Distributed Transactions at Scale" ⸱ Jan 19, 2024 ⸱ 00h 49m 07s
Akshat Vig explains how transactions were added to Amazon DynamoDB using a timestamp-based ordering protocol to achieve low latency for both transactional and non-transactional operations.
"Reliable Architectures through Observability" ⸱ Jan 11, 2024 ⸱ 00h 48m 59s
Kent Quirk shows an overview of observability tools and techniques, and specific recommendations for how to fit observability into their system designs and day-to-day development process.