software engineering Archives

Father & Son into IT – Podcast

Every time I look at you. I see myself. I’m so proud of you. For you help make me what I am. A better man. I’m just so proud of you. ~ Lyrics by Alain Clark A special episode comes with a special opening. In February we had an extraordinary occasion during our onboarding. Father and Son in the same ‘virtual room. Father started as Software Engineer in the bol.com security department and son started as… Software Engineer in the security department, doing his final intern assignment. We have got…

TypeScript, where we love strict

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 22-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Development Front-End software engineering JavaScript programminglanguage Typescript

Introduction It sparked in the episode Interactive heavy applications we should record a podcast episode on TypeScript. Around the same time, we came in contact with Hackages. A company focusing on learning tech. Time to bring the engineers together and dive deeper into TypeScript. Typescript is mentioned amongst the 5 most promising languages in 2020. We talk about: What is typescript and how do you benefit? What are good implementation strategies? Bol.com examples Examples from Hackages Maturity in the usage of Typescript Guests Niels van Midden; Front End software engineer…

GraphQL – start but start small

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 13-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Development software engineering API GraphQL Rest Definition

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…

BAPC2020 – Olympic spirit or serious business?

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…