London TypeScript May 2023 Meetup @ PrimaryBid

PrimaryBid’s engineering team is continuously seeking unique ways of exchanging ideas and sharing experiences with industry peers. On this note, we’re excited to announce that on 10th May 2023, we hosted our first London Typescript Meetup!

Over 30 developers, software engineers, designers, and fintech evangelists gathered to discuss the latest TypeScript developments. It was an interactive session of pizza-fuelled networking and thought-provoking in-person talks at our offices in Victoria, London. Below is a brief recap.

Speaker #1 Irénée Ajeneza from PrimaryBid
Topic: TypeScript and RxJS

Our own Staff Software Engineer, Irénée Ajeneza kickstarted the evening. Irénée has over 11 years of experience developing bespoke software using Java and .Net. He specialises in Angular, JavaScript, Node.js, SSRS, and SQL.

Full house @The Event Space, PrimaryBid Headquarters, Victoria.

Irénée’s fascinating talk was focused on the challenging parts of working with TypeScript and RxJS. The first part of his presentation was a brief introduction to RxJS. In a nutshell:

• Reactive Extensions for JavaScript is a library that enables reactive programming using Observables.
• RxJS provides a powerful toolkit for handling asynchronous and event-driven programming in JavaScript.

Next, we learned about three core concepts behind RxJS:

• Concept 1: Everything is a stream. A stream is like an array, but instead of having all the values at once, the values are emitted over time. To represent streams, we use Observables.
• Concept 2: Operators. Operators are functions that can be used to transform streams. RxJS provides many operators out of the box. We can chain them together using the pipe operator to create complex transformations.
• Concept 3: Subscribing to streams. To receive the values emitted by a stream, first, you have to subscribe to the observables, otherwise, nothing happens, just like nothing happens until you call a function.

Highlights of Irénée’s learning journey with RxJS

The second part of Irénée’s presentation started with him sharing a mistake many engineers make: using RxJS by reverting to older habits. With help from colleagues, he quickly learned how to make the most of RxJS while engaging the right tactics.

His learning path included the following steps:

• How to write reactive code, using out-of-the-box operators.
• How to write reusable custom operators.
• How to leverage TypeScript to write type-safe code.

Irénée explaining how to use operators to transform the observable.

What has Irénée learned along the way?

The main takeaways from Irénée’s RxJS user journey were:

• Even if he still makes mistakes, he is learning from them and he is getting better every day.
• He can now say that he is in love with RxJS.
• He believes that RxJS is one of the best options if you’re dealing with complex asynchronous problems.

Conclusion? RxJS can help you build robust software that users will love and developers will be happy to maintain and improve. By sharing his learning journey, and detailing the ups and downs he faces, Irénée explored new ways of using TypeScript to make our code more type-safe and much easier to maintain.

Speaker #2 Niraj Nain
Topic: Synchronising users. Building a web-based, collaborative graphics editor

Niraj Nain is a Lead Engineer with over 17 years of Full Stack development experience. Currently, a massive Rust enthusiast and evangelist, Niraj has in-depth knowledge of C++, C#, TypeScript and Java. His speciality is building tech stacks, tech teams, and codebases.

Niraj’s talk was on Spatial Architecture with TypeScript. He showed us how to use TypeScript to create 3D landscapes collaboratively. In his live demo, each object (a person, a tree, etc) represented a separate “spatial” that could be interactively rotated and transformed by multiple users at the same time. At Niraj’s invitation, a few of our guests were delighted to take out their laptops and draw together “on the cloud.”

Niraj also revealed the code behind the spatial interface. It included basics like paths (where the logic lies), styles, stroke colours, fill colours, sub-spatials, and spatial points. According to Niraj, the real technical challenge starts when two people are dragging the same item. Why? Because whenever a new user chooses a drawing tool, that object’s starting point changes.

The solution found by Niraj and his friends was to use the concept of “the latest update.” According to this principle, the last user who updates something becomes the author of the most recent version of the object or shape. In this case, the update of the landscape doesn’t happen until the dragging operation has finished. By the end of the evening, we all enhanced our appreciation and fascination with how collaborative drawing works.

There’s More in the PrimaryBid Engineering pipeline

This was just the first event from a series of talks and meetups PrimaryBid is looking forward to hosting, so watch this space! To ensure you’ll be the first to find out about upcoming sessions, join the online conversation on our social media (Twitter, Linkedin). See you soon & Happy coding!

About PrimaryBid

PrimaryBid is a regulated capital markets technology platform connecting public companies to their communities during fundraisings. Its digital capital raising platform features both B2B and B2C interfaces, unlocking access to IPOs, follow-on raises and other instruments to individual retail investors, improving capital formation and driving fairness into public markets.

Investing in securities involves risk.

About London Typescript Meetup

London Typescript Meetup is a group for anyone interested in TypeScript. Regardless if you’re an advanced Typescript enthusiast or you just need more type safety in your life, you are welcome to join these gatherings and meet like-minded people. The goal is to create a community in which developers, engineers, and technical professionals can learn, share knowledge, and network.

Author: Ina Ciobanu, Technical Writer II at PrimaryBid. Ina is a passionate tech documentarian and senior copywriter, with over 15 years of experience in Marketing and Fintech.