GraphQL – start but start small

Introduction We want to share our approach to IT to learn and entertain you. In this episode, we are happy to have an external guest at the table discussing with our internal guest. GraphQL stands for Graph Query Language and is used for interacting with services from the frontend. We are talking about API’s here. Explore with us the possibilities this approach has to offer and how it could even help you to speeds up innovation in the front-end. Like our guest mentions: GraphQL is a specification not an implementation…

BAPC2020 – Olympic spirit or serious business?

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 4-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Culture software engineering Engineering Culture Young Professional Program YP Championship competition BAPC

Introduction No rhythm like algorithms. We have been talking in the podcast about programming contest before. For example, about our own Spaces Championship and Advent of code, which also takes place at the end of the year. Today we’ll be talking to some participants in the BAPC – The Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest. Like stated on the website of BAPC, it is a contest in which about 90 teams from leading universities in Luxemburg, Belgium and The Netherlands participate. The teams have to solve a series of algorithmic problems and…

Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 24-09-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: Innovation teams software engineering customer centric Sociotechnical Architecture Software Architect velocity

In this episode, we touch a field that we don’t explore that much, Architecture. To be more precise: Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact. In a way, it’s strange since Peter Paul has worked as an architect for quite a while. On the website of our guest, esilva.net, it’s called “co-design organizational and technical systems to maximize impact”. We think there is so much to explore in these words Sociotechnical Architecture so we asked Eduardo to join this show. <picture source> We discuss what it is and also, why it is…

Python for Tools, Data Science and more

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 15-04-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience software engineering python programminglanguage Tools

Let’s look at another programming language we use at bol.com: Python. At bol.com we use Python for Tools, Data Science and more. It has been around since 1991. It was created by a Dutch guy: Guido van Rossum. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. The language’s core philosophy is summarized in the document The Zen of Python (PEP 20), which includes aphorisms such as: Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Readability counts. All well, but what…

The Spaces Championship – our code competition

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 23-01-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: Community game skills gamification software engineering Algorithms Problem solving

It was briefly mentioned in our episode on Advent of Code. We also started an internal Coding Championship. Spaces Championship. Let’s dive into this and find out what it is all about. From our personal experience, we know that is easier to train and improve when we are in a competition. Could it be that the same mechanism is here at work too? Let us know when you think we should open-up this competition externally as well, goto Linkedin, mailto: techlab@bol.com or twitter us: @bol_com_Techlab Guests Harmen Prins – Software…

The Spaces Championship – our code competition

10 takeaways from KotlinConf

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 8-01-2020
Category: Podcast Tags: skills Kotlin software engineering Podcast KotlinConf

A group of Kotlin enthusiast joined KotlinConf back in December last year in Copenhagen. We invited this group to share their learnings for this conference. Two of the participants are sharing their takeaways from KotlinConf with you. Our first podcast was about the adoption of Kotlin at bol.com. Hope you will also enjoy this episode and our second season. Guests Cas Plattel; Software Engineer in the Fintech domain Oscar Spruit; Software Engineer in the Apps domain Hosts Peter Brouwers Peter Paul van de Beek Shownotes KotlinConf KotlinConf 2019 on youtube

Advent of Code 2019

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 19-12-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Java Software skills gamification software engineering Algorithms Problem solving

The subject of this podcast episode is totally in line with the holiday season. Time for the advent calendars in many different formats. One of these formats is the Advent of Code 2019! The bol.com Tech Community is participating in this event. In this episode, we talk with 2 participants and discover what it is all about. We explore what it could do. Our software engineers see it as a good way to sharpen their problem solving and a good exercise for the upcoming bol.com spaces programming championship. Some become really competitive. Guests Erik…

Spaces Summit – Launching for the 3rd edition

Niels Kuiper, on 7-06-2019
Category: Culture, Development, Events Tags: Event Development software engineering Spaces Summit

On June 13th, we organize the third edition of Spaces Summit: an internal tech conference for and by bol.com IT. From the start of the idea three years ago at a “borrel” (Friday afternoon drinks), Spaces Summit has become the biggest event inside bol.com IT to get inspired, learn, share knowledge, show off and get together as a community . This third edition will again be bigger than last year: a total of 500 attendees (150 more than last year!), an unusual afternoon keynote, inspiring talks on a variety of subjects, good…

Spaces Summit – Launching for the 3rd edition

From zero to PRO: Using GO @ bol.com

Peter Brouwers, on 7-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Open source Golang go Development cloud software engineering Podcast

In this episode we talk about GO. Go is not a language that is used the most at bol.com. That’s is Java, together with Kotlin. In 2014 it was introduced for the first time and reached a steady but not so big user group. Recently, along with the move to the cloud, we experience a second wave of adoption. When you listen to the stories our two enthusiastic guests share in this episode, you might even believe Go is the future. Guests Rogier Lommers Tom Stoepker Hosts Peter Brouwers Peter…

No more crystal ball for forecasting, data science it is

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 7-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: BigData DataScience software engineering Artificial Intelligence Podcast

As long as retail exists, people tried to predict the future. An accurate forecast makes it much easier to buy the correct amount of products from suppliers, know what you need to keep on stock and even know what the sales will do with specific promotions. Over the last couple of years, this domain changed dramatically because of the introduction of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, we chat about this changing playing field to share our experiences with you. Guests Harmen Prins Erick Webbe Hosts Peter Brouwers…

No more crystal ball for forecasting, data science it is

Our Kotlin adoption journey

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 2-05-2019
Category: Podcast Tags: Development Kotlin software engineering Podcast Technology

Kotlin was first used by our teams a couple of years ago. It had an interesting start that shows how we adopt technology in general. In different feature teams a group of software engineers explored their own use cases for Kotlin. Some very enthusiastic, some a bit more skeptical and eventually they found each other. A new community in bol.com was born, the Kotlin community. In this episode we talk about this journey, the use cases, the adaption and the impact on frameworks that we use in our feature teams. Guests…

A developer friendly GraphQL client

Jasper van Heijst, on 21-12-2018
Category: Blog, Development Tags: Java software engineering GraphQL

At bol.com we use GraphQL in our IT landscape, and we’ve found a convenient way of working with these API’s we would like to share. By generating our GraphQL queries from Java objects by using annotations, developers don’t need to worry about the query, and don’t need to maintain both a query and a domain object anymore.

IT internship at bol.com

Boyd Hogerheijde, on 5-04-2018
Category: Blog, Culture, Development Tags: Young Professional software engineering internship

Boyd was an intern at bol.com from September 2017 until January 2018. This blog is a conversation between him and his intern mentor, Maurice Zeijen (Software Architect @ bol.com), about his experiences as an intern.

Hackathon delivers again

Maarten Dirkse, on 18-10-2017
Category: Blog, Diversity, Culture, Development, Events Tags: hackathon Development software engineering frontend kubernetes selenium

The 9th edition of the bol.com internal hackathon was held on Friday, October 6th, and participants were able to present their projects to the colleagues last Thursday.