Speaker Jordan Miller Abstract We will demonstrate value of your database being a value— it's immutable, it's composable, and time aware. Dive into Datomic’s value-oriented architecture, designed to empower programmers to tackle complexity and build robust systems. Enabling the largest independent bank in the world to run 3000+ Datomic databases, 4000 microservices, and process over 70 billion Kafka events/day. We help 100M+ daily users—all built by ~3000 engineers using Clojure on the JVM and Datomic as a database. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Jesus Espino Abstract For years, I have been exploring the source code of projects like the Go runtime and compiler, navigating its intricacies, and uncovering its internal workings. Recently, I have started leveraging AI to accelerate and enhance this exploration. This talk will showcase my experience using AI-assisted tools to analyze and interpret the Go runtime and compiler source code. Attendees will learn how AI can help demystify complex code, provide intuitive explanations, and generate visual representations to accelerate understanding. This session will be valuable for any engineer eager to harness AI for source code analysis. In this talk, I will present my experience using aider, an AI tool, to analyze and interpret Go’s internals more effectively. I will cover the following key topics: Challenges in understanding the Go runtime and compiler: Why traditional approaches can be slow and difficult. Using AI for code analysis: How AI tools can assist in breaking down complex structures and generating explanations. Visualizing internals with AI: Creating diagrams to better grasp execution flows and data structures. Interrogating the codebase with AI: Using AI-driven queries to extract meaningful insights. Lessons learned and best practices: Practical strategies for leveraging AI in software research. Attendees will leave with actionable techniques to explore large-scale codebases using AI tools. This talk aims to inspire developers to embrace AI in their workflow, making it easier to navigate and understand intricate codebases. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Gabriele Brambilla Abstract Dow Jones has developed a content recommendation system leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand the subtle connections between the vast array of articles it publishes (e.g. from the Wall Street Journal) and the diverse interests of its user base. This presentation will delve into the specific NLP methodologies employed to achieve this nuanced understanding. We will explore the models used to extract semantic meaning from textual content, enabling the system to go beyond simple keyword matching and identify conceptually related articles. Furthermore, the presentation will address a common challenge in recommendation systems: the tendency towards homogeneity and a lack of novel suggestions. We will detail our approach to mitigate this issue by strategically combining data-driven techniques with informed editorial oversight. This balanced strategy ensures that while user preferences are accurately reflected, it also introduces users to a broader spectrum of relevant and potentially surprising content, fostering discovery and exploration. Finally, we will provide a comprehensive overview of the lean and efficient data pipeline we have built to support these advanced recommendation techniques. This will include a discussion of the various data sources that are collected, processed, and integrated into the system. The presentation will conclude with evidence of the system's effectiveness, demonstrating the significant positive impact on user engagement metrics resulting from this enhanced semantic understanding and more diverse recommendation strategy. Attendees will gain valuable insights into building and deploying an efficient NLP-driven content recommendation system successfully balancing tradeoffs to improve user experience and drive engagement. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Laurent Doguin Abstract Couchbase started its life as a merge of two open source projects: CouchDB and Membase. This gave us a distributed key/value store with support for map/reduce querying if the value was a JSON document. As many open source projects it has evolved quite a bit in 14 years. We have added support for new data models, new query capabilities or ways of replicating data from cloud to cloud or to the edge. In this 20 minutes we will chronologically go through some of its features, see how sometimes they replaced old ones, or how they enabled new use cases. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Isra Chahrazed Abstract Why do we see fewer women in tech, and how can we change this? This talk explores the journey of women in STEM, from young girls fascinated by science and technology to building successful IT careers. We will discuss the barriers women face, such as cultural stereotypes and lack of support, that cause the "leaking bucket" effect where women leave the tech pipeline at various stages. Through real-life stories and data, we'll highlight the unique contributions women bring to the tech industry and the importance of their presence. Most importantly, we’ll explore actionable strategies to support and retain women in tech, including mentorship programs, inclusive workplace policies, and community initiatives. Understand the what, why, and how of empowering women in tech and learn how we can all play a part in fixing the leaks in the bucket, ensuring more women not only enter but thrive in the world of IT. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Milen Dyankov Abstract AI is undeniably a buzzword, but it is here to stay. What does this mean for Java developers? Can we design and build applications that harness the power of AI? Most importantly, where do we start? This session focuses on inference—using pre-trained models directly from your code. Instead of relying on proprietary APIs, it'll demystify the "magic" by breaking the AI buzzword down into familiar concepts and components. This will enable you to use AI models as naturally as you would work with databases or workflows. Through live demos, you'll learn to leverage basic embedding models, explore vector databases, and use tools like LangChain4J. By the end, you'll have a practical roadmap to kickstart your journey into Java-powered AI. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Richard Brough Abstract At Blue Beck, we were the first to publish re-aligned versions of DeepSeek’s R1 on Hugging Face, aligning the R1-Distil models with Meta’s Llama 3.x. Since then Perplexity AI have courted controversy upon the release of their R1-1776 model with statements about censorship in the original DeepSeek R1. This talk will focus on what it takes to re-align a language model to have a different bias to the original, without losing its capabilities, which is highly relevant in the polarised political environment while rapid advances in language models are occurring. There is a commonly held belief that whoever controls the models also controls the political bias of the output, and while that may hold true for proprietary APIs such as GPT4o & Claude, the emergence of powerful open source models that can be have their bias shifted with a relatively modest amount of compute upends that somewhat. The talk will look at some of the variants of open source models that have appeared, from the academic experiments with RightWingGPT and LeftWingGPT to some of the more disturbing examples that really highlight the risks. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Luis Majano Abstract BoxLang is a new modern dynamic JVM language that can be deployed on multiple runtimes: operating system (Windows/Mac/*nix/Embedded), web server, lambda, iOS, android, web assembly, and more. BoxLang combines features from different programming languages, including Java, CFML, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP, to provide developers with a modern, functional, and expressive syntax. Interoperability at its Core With 100% interoperability with Java, BoxLang seamlessly bridges the gap between traditional and modern development paradigms, unlocking new possibilities for innovation and collaboration. Framework Capabilities BoxLang is a language and a development framework with a single purpose: to make you productive. It provides out-of-the-box features like scheduled tasks, in-memory applications, event-driven programming, async computing, scripting, queues, modules, and more. Scripting BoxLang has also been designed as a scripting language for any OS. No more convoluted bash or shell scripts. Script in a dynamic language that can be Operating System and Shell agnostic. Multi-Language We have also created the capability to load other language runtimes as modules so you can leverage Python, PHP, JavaScript, Groovy code that can execute within the BoxLang runtime. https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Karina Gibert Abstract The recent advances on generative AI are changing very rapidly not only the innovation flows and technological society but the software development paradigm itself The talk addresses the reason of this boom in AI, the impacts and the risks and also provides insights on how the ethics from design can avoid some risks and vulnerabilities https://www.devbcn.com

Speaker Barbara Teruggi Abstract Threat modeling isn’t exactly a new concept, but it has recently become a must-have in product design. With cybersecurity threats on the rise and the pressure to deliver faster, security often ends up on the back burner—usually discovered during QA or, worse, after the code is already out the door. At that point, it’s either a headless-chicken chase to fix things or a recipe for disaster. Developers are the ones who really know how applications are supposed to work, so security needs to be part of the conversation from the start. Yet, for some reason, threat modeling is still seen as a "cybersecurity expert-only" club. In this talk, I’ll walk through the threat modeling process, highlight key risk concepts, and show how we can all work together to avoid those "oops" moments. Because, honestly, building secure applications is way more fun when we’re all in it together! https://www.devbcn.com