OpenDay JetBrains mitap review

On April 19, 2018, the OpenDay JetBrains rally met in Moscow, which was visited by a large number of people, including myself. I decided to share my impressions about this event and about the company itself.

Anticipation

I learned about the mitap from the announcement on Habré . At the time of registration, they asked to indicate what exactly I would like to hear at the meeting, which was strange, since the topics of the reports were announced. Then on April 17 a letter came with details of the venue. When at work I became interested in colleagues who would go, it turned out that many would go, but were not in the know. Maybe this is a JB error and a weak PR, or maybe they already got a fairly large number of registrations. In general, I went alone. But at the event itself there was no control and, in principle, anyone could pass. It's a shame for those who wanted to go.

Program

• 18:30 - Meet the guests. Coffee, sweets.
• 19:00 - Kotlin programming language. What is it and why. Roman Belov, PMM at Kotlin
• 19:45 - “Xodus” - a database in which YouTrack stores bugs. Maxim Mazin, Team Lead at YouTrack.
• 19:45 - Experience in developing a full-stack application on Kotlin. Sergey Shkredov, Team Lead in a new product.
• 20:30 - The evolution of features in IntelliJ IDEA. Nikolay Chashnikov, Team Lead at IDEA Core.
• 20:30 - How we at Rider improve performance. Andrey Akinshin, Senior developer at Rider.
• 21:15 - Lack Minimumprocesses is also a process. Sergey Kuks, .NET Department Lead.
• 22:00 - Questions and Answers: an open discussion with Maxim Shafirov, CEO of JetBrains.

There were two halls for parallel reports. From the parallel reports, I chose "Experience in developing a full-stack application on Kotlin" & "Evolution of features in IntelliJ IDEA"

Welcome guests

So, the meeting took place in Moscow City in the Crystal Ballroom banquet hall, located on the fourth floor of the Eye tower. In the lobby, the JB staff in a blue T-shirt with the inscription JenBrains Band amiably greeted. Who managed, was able to get a nice T-shirt with the inscription JetBrtains rocks, very many immediately began to change into a new thing. Coffee and cookies were plentiful and the hall itself was struck by a huge screen on which everything was visible very clearly. Of course, exactly how many people came to the rally, I can’t answer, but according to Sergey Kuks there are about 500 people, which in principle seems to be true.

Kotlin programming language. What is it and why

The first report was mainly about basic things at Kotlin. For those who already write on Kotlin, I think it was pretty boring, but it was interesting for me to recall some features of the language, since I had not picked up checkers for a long time. The questions after the report were more interesting. Questions were asked animatedly and Roman was driven off the stage in order to continue to answer no longer from the stage. The most interesting thing for me was to find out that for Kotlin there is now an official style guide.

Experience developing a full-stack application on Kotlin

The second report did not quite match its title, I expected to see examples of code, hardcore and something that could be applied in practice, but there was a theory and a superficial examination of architecture, how they build and assemble a full-stack project. I do not know who this report was oriented to. The entire report could be put in one paragraph. And give the title as follows: "Hedgehogs cried, pricked, but continued to eat a cactus." In general, judging by the answers to the questions asked, we can draw the following conclusion: Kotlin continues to move in the direction of cross-platform, there is progress, but he is not yet in a condition to be able to comfortably write a cross-platform application.

Evolution of features in IntelliJ IDEA

The third report was a big disappointment. I really expected something dynamic, interesting stories about how certain ideas came up with features, but there was just a story about how the addition and folding of the code developed, in half an hour there are only two features that most people use and are already talking about It was said more than once. The only thing that was interesting was that the highlighting of the names of the method arguments appeared as code folding, but only working in the opposite direction. Those. the code is expanded, but when the cursor enters there, it collapses. As a result, this feature was taken out in a separate form, since the behavior of folding the code on the contrary does not work as the user expects.

Lack of Minimum processes

The fourth report was directly about what I wrote in the topics that I expected to hear at the conference, namely, about how the development of projects in JetBrains is going on. Sergey Kuks spoke, he is from the .NET team and he talked more about how development is going on with them, but he constantly mentioned that there is no rigidly fixed development process in the company, each team works in its own way, as it wants and is convenient for developers. On the whole, it was interesting to listen to and I got the feeling that the truth set forth by Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa really works for them (which was present on one of the slides)

To lead means not to stop good people from working.

Questions and answers

Not only Maxim Shafirov was present on the stage, but also all the speakers who spoke today, HR. At first, the session was creaking, but gradually the hall warmed up and the discussion lasted until 22:30. The most diverse questions were asked about the development of JB, and about the development of Kotlin, about the internship at JB (only here I noticed that a lot of young people, students, and maybe high school students) came to the meeting. Particularly delighted with the response that a large feedback is coming from rutracker.org

After party

At the end of the official part, they brought pizza and served beer in a separate room. There are quite a few people left. The beer was delicious, pizza was enough for everyone and the conversation turned out to be interesting, I stayed until the very end, until everyone was kicked out (around 1 a.m.). There were almost all speakers, it was possible to talk with everyone, talk for life and there was visible disappointment on the faces of people who needed to leave home earlier.

Conclusion

In general, I think that JB had a good mitap. The main achievement of this event was not that they were able to teach, surprise, but that they became closer and dearer, at least to me. At first it seemed that JB is a sect in which everyone talks about how well they live here, but after closer communication, it became clear that they were talking about it seriously and sincerely. It never occurred to me that such a large product company could contain such informal processes within itself. It really surprised me.

I’ve never thought about working in JB before. Now it seems to me attractive, and given the casual dropped words that they are looking for people with new ideas, even a desire to try to get them to work.

I would like to end with an appeal: if you DO NOT like formal processes, you have your own ideas, you want to get more drive and pleasure from your work, then look at JB. It seems that you can realize your potential there.