Behind the Code: Insights and Highlights from Agoda Developer Day

On November 30, 2023, Agoda’s inaugural Developer Day marked a significant milestone in the company’s commitment to technological innovation and collaboration. This event brought together Agoda’s engineering team for a full day of insightful presentations, thought-provoking debates, and lightning talks. The focus was on the remarkable projects and advancements made over the year, along with a broader perspective on the evolving tech industry.

Agoda Developer Day Highlights

The event featured a range of presentations covering diverse aspects of Agoda’s technology landscape. Here are some of the day’s presentations, also available on our YouTube Channel.

Devstack: Streamlining Development with Kubernetes

Aleksandr Nekrasov and Chanpol Kongsute from the DevOps — Automation team revealed how Devstack facilitates deploying applications and their dependencies on Kubernetes clusters, streamlining the onboarding, development, integration testing, and debugging processes in complex environments.

Developer Experience Experiments

Joel Dickson from the Data and Supply tech team delved into several key initiatives designed to enhance Continuous Integration (CI) and local development processes. Strategies to optimize CI pipelines included the use of Directed Acyclic Graphs for more efficient workflows and updating frameworks for faster test times.

Engineering Aesthetics: Powering Agoda’s Design Systems

Fah Chokpitiboon and Michael Santoso from the ADS team provided an in-depth view of Agoda’s Design Systems Infrastructure (ADS). They highlighted how ADS integrates seamlessly with development workflows and the advantages of a design-driven development approach.

Selective Testing: Revolutionizing Test Caching

Karthik Periasami from the mobile platform team introduced a novel approach to executing selective UI tests affected by MR changes using code-coverage techniques. This method significantly reduces testing time, leading to quicker merge actions.

Scaling SEO Content Generation Using ChatGPT

Kevin Chakornsiri from the Marketing-SEO core team showcased a remarkable strategy to generate over 1,000 pages of content per minute, revolutionizing content creation.

Debate Highlights

Cross-Platform vs. Native Mobile Development:

The panel debated the efficacy of cross-platform development against native app development. Advocates for cross-platform tools like Flutter highlighted their flexibility, efficiency, and the speed of development, suitable for a wide range of projects. On the other hand, proponents of native development underscored its superior performance and enhanced user experience, key for resource-intensive applications. The conclusion? The choice depends on project needs, with both approaches having their unique merits. The discussion concluded by emphasizing the significance of leveraging the most appropriate technologies to stay at the forefront of mobile development innovation.

React vs. Other Web Frameworks:

A lively discussion unfolded around React’s place in the web development world. The debate centered around React’s Context API, its use in state management, and how it compares with other frameworks like SolidJS. While React offers flexibility and a rich library ecosystem, other frameworks provide simpler solutions for state management. The consensus was that the choice of a framework should be tailored to specific project requirements and preferences.

A Celebration of Agoda’s Culture

In addition to the technical discussions, Agoda Developer Day was a celebration of our unique culture, marked by a series of fun events and special awards that showcased the spirit and camaraderie within Agoda. Some of the quirky and fun awards included:

• Demolition Man: Celebrating the individual who deleted the most code.
• First Responder: Recognizing the person who received the most calls from NOC.
• The Messenger: For the team member who sent the most messages on Slack.
• The Survivor: Honoring the longest-serving member in the tech department.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Agoda Developer Day was not just a showcase of our technological prowess but also a reflection of our dynamic approach to innovation and problem-solving in the tech industry. The event highlighted our continuous pursuit of excellence, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in technology to create better experiences for our customers and a more efficient work environment for our team.