Bitrock Hackathon

The Bitrock Smart Hackathon is finally here!

We’re thrilled to present the first edition of our virtual hackathon, organized in partnership with our sister company ProActivity.

Our hackathon is dedicated to all coding lovers: there’s no need to know a specific programming language, we only ask for passion and creativity!

The participants – divided into teams – will deal with the challenge remotely, but they will have the opportunity to get to know each other in person during the amazing Pitching & Awarding Event at Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan.

If you already have a work group (of friends or colleagues), feel free to register along with them. But you can also participate alone: in this case, we’ll assign you a team to join. 

Bitrock Hackathon

The Challenge 

At Bitrock we strongly believe in the efficiency and proficiency that remote and agile working can bring to every business. Indeed, we have adopted remote working since its first appearance on the Italian job market.

However, we are aware of the possible negative effects of remote working on employees. More specifically, the most common highlighted problems are the feeling of isolation, the loss of a sense of belonging to a team (especially for new hires), and the lack of effective sharing relations with their colleagues. 

Working in an office is full of spontaneous moments that allow you to interact with others. Remotely is not that easy: there are no hallway conversations or having coffee with colleagues.

Human connection is essential, not only for work productivity, but more importantly for mental well-being.

For todays’ businesses it is thus imperative to create spaces and opportunities for their employees to connect and create relations, and technology can play a fundamental role in this mission.

And here’ s how the challenge was born!

During the event, all participants will have to develop a smart tool to help employees that work remotely maintain social relations, stay motivated and collaborate with their colleagues.

Some examples? An interactive platform through which employees can have a “virtual coffee” and take a break together, or an App that allows you to connect with your colleagues in a fun way by organizing virtual games or other specific activities.

In addition, we strongly believe that a topic regarding the world of work and possible ways to improve it could really motivate all participants: those who are not working yet, those who have just started working, and those who have  already been working for a while. 

The perks of joining

In order to motivate the competing teams,  our virtual hackathon showcases a total prize pool of 10.000 Euro for the top three projects.

However, there are many other reasons to participate, including incredible networking opportunities: both during the competition and at the closing event, indeed, you will have the chance to meet and have fun with your friends and colleagues,  as well as with other developers like you, not to mention Bitrock and ProActivity’s team members.

Moreover, our experienced Professionals, in the role of Mentors, will support you throughout the whole project by giving you and your teammates constant feedback – which will allow you to improve your skills and learn some ropes.

To sum up: a prize up for grabs, an interesting and inspiring challenge, and a great occasion to enlarge your network.

Isn’t this enough? There’s still something in store for you: we are organizing a special Pitching & Awarding Event for all participants! The party will take place in an exclusive and inspirational location: the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia in Milan, on 6th of June.

Bitrock Hackathon

Special thanks to Kreativdistrikt for the support in organising and running the virtual event.

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WebSummit

The Journey Begins

A few weeks ago, the WebSummit 2022 event took place in Lisbon, and the Bitrock Team was there! The party was assembled and the mission clear: we left Milan last 30th October, early in the morning, and reached our destination a few hours later.

We landed and, after leaving the terminal, we realized how important this event was. A huge WebSummit logo was there, beside one of the entrances, waiting for us, as if it was saying: “Hello guys, you’re in the right place, welcome! It’s going to be a great time”. It wasn’t over: outside, a nice WebSummit pavilion had been set up.

After registration and check-in, we got our badges and bought some tickets for public transportation at a great discount! After dropping luggage at our place, we were free to visit the city as we had some time to spend just as tourists. 

After a quick round-trip of the city, it’s now time for the event and its rich schedule!

Day 1

The day one schedule started late in the afternoon. The event took place at the Altice Arena

whilst on the next days the activities were scattered among different pavilions in the same area.

When we arrived, the view was astounding: a lot of people, from all around the world, were waiting to be allowed in. Journalists, entrepreneurs, sponsors, developers, speakers: everyone was there, waiting for the main show to begin. 

For the day, the organization had invited few important personalities that were going to 

give their speech to the audience. 

The stage was spectacular and colorful, and everyone was ready. After a quick introduction by Paddy Cosgrave (founder) the real show began!

Then, Carlos Moedas, Mayor of the city, was introduced to the stage: he warmly welcomed the audience to Lisbon and to the event itself. His speech was interesting and inspiring: he told us how surrounding himself with the right people allowed him to accomplish great things for the city, even though many others were thinking that those things were impossible to do. He also presented Lisbon’s UnicornFactory, an organization boosting startups to scale and learn how to innovate. 

As the Mayor claimed, “innovation is not an idea but is the process that turns that idea into jobs, growth and prosperity”. Therefore, UnicornFactory helps startups begin their journey and turn their ideas into a tangible reality, something that is beneficial for as many people as possible!

Afterwards, it was time for another politician to make his appearance to the stage: Antonio Costa, Portugal’s Minister of Economy, who told us how the Country is investing into technology and innovation with a big plan, spanning over the next four years, about attracting startups with the goal to become an international hub for such companies. 

He promoted Portugal as the right place to be for the tech business, as a steady stream of money is going to be invested, and a dedicated set of laws is about to be passed to ease this process. It seems his claims are for a good reason, as Lisbon has been chosen to host the European Startups Nations Alliance! 

In his speech, he also mentioned how technology and innovation are much needed to help us find solutions to some of the biggest problems of our times (such as the threats caused by climate change, pollution, resources over-consumption), and how Portugal wants to be a leader in helping with solving those problems.

Then it was the time for Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, and Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s Co-founder and CEO, to take their place on the stage. They both were interviewed, describing their business to the audience, and providing their point of view on different topics.

Finally, the stage’s lights changed into two colors that all of us have seen many times on the news during the last months: blue and yellow, the Ukrainian flag’s colors. It was time for Olena Zelensky to enter the stage and tell the audience about the dramatic times her country and its people are living in. She shared with us the technological effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The dystopias we read about in science fiction novels and all the threats of destroying life are much closer than you think. We heard it in Ukraine because of Russian terror, because Russia puts technology in the service of terror.” Zelensky said the technology is now a “battleground” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and she described how drones and missiles are killing families. 

She wanted to give the same message to everyone who was there – from founders to 

startups, executives, engineers, and journalists: technology should be used to save people rather than destroy them: “I believe in technologies that save, not destroy. I believe that such technologies are the future. Because otherwise there is simply no future in the whole world. You are the powerful intellectual force that moves the world. The potential and technology that can help, not destroy are in your hands. And it is with Ukraine and right now that you can move the world in the right direction”.

With her powerful message, day one came to an end: WebSummit was officially opened!

Day 2

From day two, the event entered the heart of its agenda, and each pavilion was in turmoil: the booths of companies, large and small, attracted the participants with their lights and sets, gadgets, prize games, and the possibility of speaking with their staff and discovering their products and solutions.

Over the entire event, hundreds – if not thousands – of companies showed up: from small startups striving to find a place in the IT market (ALPHA), to the ones that already made their name known and received additional funds (BETA), to those that have grown larger and larger and are now established realities (GROWTH).

Among the latter ones, we were happy and proud to see Amity, an IaaS startup that enables companies to increase engagement in their apps or website by adding pre-built social features: chat, profiles, fortunes, feed, video stories and all. There’s quite a bit of Italy in the company, as their face-person at the event was Francesca Gargaglia, and they also have an office in Milan, our city!

Of course, WebSummit is not only about companies, but mainly people, as Paddy Cosgrave made clear during day one, when he asked everyone in the audience to stand up and get to know the two or three fellow attendees that were around them.

Being about people also means sharing ideas, which is something they did well: indeed, a lot of speeches and seminaries took place during the event. Honestly, it was impossible to attend all of them, even if we tried to split up.

Here’s a short list of the speeches we enjoyed the most, and that we would like to share:

  • Chris Anderson, TED curator, with his mantra Ideas worth sharing, gave an interesting speech about “reflection on how the internet should be incentivizing constructive behavior other than only focusing on monetization”.
  • In UI/UX trends in 2023 and beyond, various speakers discussed the key ingredients in creating a seamless, intuitive customer experience. They also explored anticipated UI and UX trends for 2023.
  • Alexa’s next AI trick: Disappearing: in this session, Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, explains how a philosophy of ‘ambient intelligence’ is driving the development of AI that blends invisibly into our environment, helping you when you need it and disappearing when you don’t.

Day 3

The sun was up again, and a brand-new day could start. We got up, prepared, and dressed for 

the occasion: day 3 was about to begin! After a delicious breakfast (thanks pasteis de nata) we were back to the Altice Arena and its surroundings. 

Pretty much as day 2, the place was crowded, full of voices speaking languages from all over the world, and the atmosphere was joyful. People were running to get their seat for the next speech. Occasionally, people wearing the Ukrainian flag could be seen, supporting their loved ones in these hard times.

More companies were showing up as a rotation happened, and their employees now took place in the stands that were assigned to others the day before.

Again, here’s a short list of speeches we would like to mention:

  • Hiring and retaining talent in a remote world: one of the hottest subjects for companies nowadays was covered by Matias Roca, Founder of Kuorum, who talked about how to find, hire, and retain talents.
  • Edge-first: Decentralize the web!: Guillermo Rauch, Vercel’s founder and CEO, told us about how few locations are responsible of the availability of digital services all around the world, and what are the reasons and ways to move out of the situation by removing this huge bottleneck.
  • Rethinking how the internet is built: the internet was designed as a democratic platform to facilitate the free exchange of information, open communication, and privacy. Clearly the actual reality is not meeting expectations that well! Andy Yen and Brendan Eich share their ideas on how to try and break the circle.
  • Nations need digital sovereignty: after leaping into digital, nations face unprecedented complexity from cyber threats, surveillance and uncertainty in their software supply chains. Ian Tien, Mattermost’s Co-Founder and CEO, told us about the key risks, the principles of defense, and how open-source communities are innovating to create robust new solutions for digital sovereignty.
  • The Language Roast: this one was great, perfect for developers like us! Every programming language has its pros and cons: with the right mix of coding science and jokes, Gautam Rege talked about what he feels about a few languages out there. Let the roast begin! 
  • The Power of Geolocation: in this session, Anna Sainsbury shared insights on the threat of fraud, on digital identity in the multibillion-dollar gaming industry, and on how geolocation and advanced machine learning are setting the new standard in establishing true digital identity and trust.

Day 4

As all things, even good ones come to an end. Our last day at the WebSummit began.

Less people seemed to be around: most likely, many had already packed their stuff and got back home. However, the pavilions were still in motion and there were plenty of things to do and see.

Here’s a quick summary of what we found interesting on the last day:

  • MongoDB Stand, the guys at this stand were simply amazing! Passion spilled from their eyes as they engaged us by telling stories of what working at MongoDB and working with their product looks like. We also had the chance to attend a couple lectures hosted at their stand and held by engineers working for them. We enjoyed a lesson about the advanced usage of the browser console as well as a very nice, humorous, and brilliant story of many programming languages and tools and how their story ended or continues up to these days. Congrats Jesse Hall and Joe Drumgoole for their noteworthy speeches, and a special thanks to Diego Freniche Brito and Jorge Ortiz for their availability and friendliness.
  • How to play games and save the world: saving the world from the climate crisis is not a game, but sometimes playing games can help us achieve our goals. This one makes no exception! In this discussion, we heard about how the games industry can help solve the challenge.
  • The metaverse and the future of the internet: will we exit the internet and enter the metaverse? Or will the two exist, side by side, in a more immersive, symbiotic, 3D-experience? Naomi Gleit, Meta’s head of product, shared her thoughts on what the future has in store for us.
  • Debunking the great AI lie: even if the event was about to end, surprises were not over. In this speech, we had the chance to listen to the voice of a great personality: Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics, who joined Gary Marcus (scientist, author, and entrepreneur) for a wide-ranging discussion on why the myths surrounding AI are so dangerous, the inadvisability of relying on artificial intelligence tech as a world-saver, and where it all went wrong. Clearly, not the typical conversation a person is used to: we were very lucky to be there!

One more thing worth a mention was the final “speech” of the event. Indeed, the final greeting to all those who attended WebSummit was given by an incredible person: a guy full of energy and positive thoughts that made everyone laugh. A comedian? Absolutely not! We are talking about Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s President.

What a surprise this 74-year-old man has been: not the typical politician with the usual bla bla. He was brilliant and perfectly fitting among all the other event’s attendees. He showed great enthusiasm about WebSummit, reaching the seventh edition (despite the pandemic and the war), with more than 70k attendees (42% women)!

In the wake of this enthusiasm and energy, he set a few goals for the next year (and for the years to come) for all of us: stop the war, contribute to Ukraine’s reconstruction, fight inflation and the economic crisis that is threatening many countries and, most important, try and solve climate change.

After this speech, WebSummit 2022 closed its doors. For us, and the rest of the audience, it was time to go back to our homes, bringing back a bunch of new ideas, inspirations, connections and start building the future.

As Mr. President wants 🙂

Goodbye WebSummit, goodbye Lisbon… thanks for everything!

Author: Daniele Chiarello, Team Lead User-experience & Front-end Engineering @ Bitrock

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SheTech Breakfast Bitrock

Fortitude Group  strongly believes in gender equality and encourages inclusiveness and enhancement of differences.

For these reasons, all the companies of the Group are partners of SheTech, a non-profit association created with the aim of filling the gender gap in the world of technology, digital and entrepreneurship, through networking, empowerment and training activities.

In the past, we organized different types of events in collaboration with SheTech and, finally, last 24th November we had our first in-person breakfast, after two virtual editions.

The breakfast was the occasion to learn from our Role Models that have made a successful career out of their passion for technology. A very special thanks goes to Samantha Giro, Marinella Mastrosimone and Ginevra Grassi for sharing their personal & professional stories, being a precious source of inspiration for many young girls and women who want to enter the STEM world.

We admit that it was a surprise also for us, colleagues from the Bitrock team,  even if we already knew them: the passion and emotion that we saw in their eyes really struck us. In this blog article, we would like to share some ideas that we have found particularly enlightening and useful for all the women who work in – or  want to enter – the Tech world!

Integrate and not differentiate 

The STEM sector is indeed, according to the data, more masculine than feminine. However, this should not be a reason for the masculinization of female professionals who decide to enter it and make their own contribution.

On the contrary!

First of all, women should recognize their typical characteristics and then import them into the working context in which they are, not letting that define their behavior.

Typically feminine features such as empathy, multitasking and intuitiveness are fundamental qualities in today’s business, whatever sector it is. 

On the other hand, it’s wrong to reject the masculine elements: a lot of them, like rationality, strength and assertiveness, should be internalized.

Therefore, in the STEM sector and more generally in the world of work, a progressive integration and enhancement of feminine and masculine traits should happen: this enriches and completes the professional figures of whatever gender they are.

Listen to your instincts and learn to follow gut feelings… sometimes 

During the interview, our Role Models talked about personal and emotional aspects too. A topic that emerged several times was instinct.

Considering today’s data in the STEM sector, it’s normal to be curious about the women’s reasons for choosing to work in it.

By telling their stories, our colleagues have demonstrated that often the situations we live in – both professional and personal –  derive from casual events and intuitive decisions.

In this way Samantha started her career  in the Mobile sector, Ginevra switched from being an architect to being UI designer, and Marinella often orientated herself by following “gut feelings” rather than logical thinking.

Three women, three professionals who demonstrate that success is not only determined by rigid calculations but it should be supported by flashes of creativity and instinct too.

Love what you do and you can do everything

An increasingly current problem is the mental load: a psychological overload caused by the sum of work, domestic and family thoughts. Working women are probably the most exposed category to this problem, partly due to the typical tendency to have everything under control and partly due to the socio-cultural heritage that female figures still have today.

Asking our Role Models how they deal with this dynamic, this is what emerged: love what you do and do what you love so as to be satisfied and able to manage all aspects of your life.

Obviously, it’s easier said than done, but it’s a good start.

Another way to succeed in content switching is to ask for help both at work and in private not thinking that this indicates incompetence – remember that the ability to delegate and prioritize are two of the key skills of all successful managers!

The first in-person breakfast was truly a success and brought out important aspects that need to be considered in every company. 

At Bitrock we have values ​​that reflect the key messages that emerged during the event.

We are committed to implementing them daily through a Leadership Model that envisages a series of dedicated actions, with the final goal of shaping an inclusive, supportive workplace, where effective communication and cross-team collaboration play a crucial role.

For these reasons, our collaboration with SheTech is so important and stimulates us to continuous improvement.

We now have many other events planned, first of all the coding bootcamp that will take place on January 28th focused on React, in which our colleagues (and their skills) will be at the disposal of those wishing to try their hand at a tech challenge… Stay tuned to know more!

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Lamda Days 2022 Cover

Last July we attended Lambda days 2022 in Krakow (Poland), one of the largest tech conferences in Europe with more than 50 talks and 500 attendees. The two-day event turned out to be a great experience for the whole team: undoubtedly, an incredible opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing. In this article, we now want to highlight some of the talks we enjoyed the most. You can’t skip it!

How your Brain Processes Code

Let’s start with a question: what happens in your brain when you acquire new information? We know that, when you first read something, this is stored in your short-term memory. This was discovered by George Miller in 1950. From his research, we know that this buffer is very small: it can hold between 5 and 9 things at the same time. 

When information comes into your short-term memory, it stays there for a brief period, and then it’s sort of “sent over” to your working memory. Your working memory can be seen as the processor in your brain, the one responsible for the thinking process. When your working memory processes information, it cooperates with your long-term memory (which will offer you insights related to the information present in your working memory). 

Given this introduction, we can say that, when we start learning a new programming language, here’s three different forms of confusion that are related to these memory areas. Let’s explore them in detail.

Long-term memory issues

Let’s start by looking at this program in APL:

What does this program do? Well, if you don’t know APL – which is perhaps true -, you have no clue, and it’s probably because you don’t recognize the syntax: you have no clue what the T stands for. It’s important here to point out the difference between “I don’t know” and “I don’t understand”. It is common, looking at code we are familiar with, to say “oh I don’t understand anything”; most of the time, you definitely can learn it, but you just don’t know it yet.

Short-term memory issues

Another example can be found in this Python program:

If you’re a Python programmer, this piece of code may be easy to understand. But if you come from a different background (for example Java), this syntax has a lot of elements for your short-term memory to keep track of. And if this is not familiar to you, it can overload your working memory. The effect? Easy: you recognize each single element, but you struggle in understanding how they come together.

Working memory issues

Let’s take this example in basic:

If you take each line individually, you may understand what it does. But if I ask you what’s the output of this program, well, that’s much harder to figure out! You will probably have to give N a value and process each line with the help of a piece of paper. In this case, you have all the information to understand the program, but it’s still hard.

How to approach each of those issues

Good news: there is a specific solution for all the above-mentioned issues:

  • If you have long term memory issues, you must practice the syntax. Since you are learning a new language, you need a basic vocabulary. 
  • If you are struggling with short term memory, what you can do is try to use a syntax more familiar with your background. For example, this code has the exact same output that the one we saw earlier, but with a more Java friendly syntax:
  • As for the working memory issues, there are many things you can do to support your brain process. For instance, you can use a state table and process the code step by step: with this support, you can understand what’s going on.

This brief text is based on Felienne Hermans at Lambda Days 2022. To know more, you can read The Programmer’s Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition.

Debugging for Math Lovers

Our day-to-day jobs involve writing Scala code, testing it, and hoping that particular piece of code does what we intended. However, as any developer knows, this is not always the case, and we must spend a lot of time finding out what is wrong with what we have written.

One of the most inspiring talks we had the opportunity to see at the event is the one by Michał J. Gajda: a noteworthy contribution about debugging with a functional programmer mindset.

Let’s start from the beginning by defining what an error is!

Types of errors

The first type of error we can encounter is one of the most common ones when we approach a new language. We write some code, and it does not compile: we have written something that is syntactically wrong, and the compiler simply does not understand us. After fixing it, we start to play with some language libraries and the compiler starts to complain again: this time, about a type error. So, we do our search, we start to understand a little more about this new language type system, we fix the error, and the compiler is happy.

Our next step? We must test it! We thus write some unit tests – since we are good developers -, but the test fails. Our code gives the wrong result. Thankfully, our unit test catches the bug, and we can fix it.

Now that our code produces the correct result, it is time to make the production ready. Let’s try to test the load of data that our code can handle! We start with a small amount of data, and, from the beginning, we see that our code performance is too slow: we can’t handle the amount of data that we are expecting.

We see a common pattern here: each type of error is more difficult to fix than the previous one. Let’s try to formalize a definition of an error:

“Error is a difference between what we want, and what we got.”

Michał goes forward in his talk and classifies three other types of error (each of them worse than the other): Wrong concept was used to model realityUser experience is frustratingSpecification does not match user expectations.

Time-to-fix

After our classification of error types, let’s talk about the time we spend fixing an error. We have different tools at our disposal that can help, like our awesome text editor or our IDE, which can detect errors early, by changing the text colors or helping us in the debugging process.

As seen before, even the compiler could be one of our best friends, maybe a little rude sometimes, but it’s just trying to help us!

Another important metric to Michał is the time we need to discover an error. So, let’s do a quick list of errors and track the time needed to discover them:

  • Lexer error, editor changes color (t > 1s)
  • Syntax error, compiler parses (t > 10s)
  • Processing error, after program is complete (1min < t < 1h)
  • Latent misbehavior, after program sees new input in production (1mo < t < 1y)

There is an important result in the cognitive science field that we can bring to the table in our discussion on how to make less mistakes:

Time to learn from errors = 1/t^2

To obtain our main goal (i.e., do less errors), we should decrease latency between them! But how can we reduce the latency? This is not an easy task, but we can address it from a different point of view: the remaining errors are difficult to spot because our system is too complex.

Ultimate ways of reducing complexity

We are humans: our brain has some difficulties in following complex and long paths of reasoning. Especially for us, following a deep function call stack can be confusing and tedious: we need a lot of brain memory to maintain all the variables names, their value and how they interact. And this is only if we want to understand how a method works. What about a complex library function or, even worse, a complex Akka actor’s interaction?

Michał, at the end of his talk, gives some tips for when we are building new software:

  • decrease the size of the problem: use short functions and modules, divide the side of the problem whenever possible
  • decrease latency to comparison: follow editor hints, check type errors; the compiler is your friend
  • reduce interaction between components of our system: low number of function arguments, use module interfaces, separation of concern
  • group and reuse any abstraction: for example, monad, applicative and mathematics help us do it

These are things that some of us may take for granted, but it’s always helpful to have them in mind when we must do our job. These principles, indeed, could help us reduce the long and boring time we spend looking for an error!

This sum-up is based on Debugging for math lover by Michał J. Gajda: you can find all the slides here.

Static Analysis Tools Love Pure FP

Developers love writing code but, if there’s one thing that we all hate, this is when an error message is thrown by the application, and we can’t track the root cause of the bug. A static analysis tool helps the developer find these bugs, performing an analysis on the code at compilation time and suggesting how to address the problem through meaningful error messages. By attending Lambda Days, we discovered a new tool – a linter in this case – made by Joroen Engels for the elm programming language, which is now quite popular and appreciated within the community.

Linter headache

One thing that developers hate about linters is when they report false positives, and they end up inserting a bunch of:

linter-disable rule

The problem comes out when in big projects the linter can report thousands of messages, and, if only 10% of these are false positives, you’re going to waste a lot of time and make your code worse.

A linter is not an infallible tool, and those kinds of errors are caused by a lack of information from the code; when we miss information, it turns out to use presumptions based on probability. Let’s consider an example in javascript eslint:

The rule reports when you’re using the function map over an array, and you miss the “return” statement. This could be a problem since you want to map something from A to B and not to “undefined”. In this case, the linter is making an incorrect presumption, since the array is not really an Array, and so the “map” function could be any function. This is due to missing information: actually, type information that Javascript doesn’t have.

The Elm way

How does Elm, a pure functional language, help solve the previous problem? Here’s the same function written in Elm:

We can immediately spot some differences: “map” is explicitly called, there is no ambiguity, and array is guaranteed to be an Array. Another advantage we have using a pure functional language is that we don’t have to worry about side effects. Just look at this example:

As you can see here, the function toUpperCase is called twice: the last one is unnecessary. We can safely delete it without worrying about any issue just because we know that it cannot have any side effects; this creates a domino effect when it’s possible to remove entire modules.

Summary

We’ve seen that compilers and type checkers remove surprises. Furthermore, pure functional programming simplifies a lot of analysis – such as code simplifications and dead code elimination – with less false positives. In a language like Javascript, we’ve seen that we must recreate guarantees with a lot of linter rules requiring configurations which, most of the time, will lead to frustration!

If you want to know more about Engels’ talk, don’t miss the recorded content available here.

Authors: Marco Righi, Software Engineer @ Bitrock – Alessandro Pisani, Software Engineer @ Bitrock

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Bitrock&SheTech React Bootcamp

Last week we organized the first coding Bootcamp in collaboration with SheTech, after the strategic partnership signed in May 2021 with the common goal of bridging the gender gap in STEM and supporting women in the world of technology, entrepreneurship and digital.

More specifically, with this event we wanted to offer a real opportunity to bring girls and women from the digital and technology world closer to the world of programming, and fill the skills mismatch. As the recent Women’s Forum barometer on gender equity showed, indeed, women still play a secondary role in STEM, especially in the tech industry: in G7 Countries, the female presence in Data & AI is around 31%, while in Engineering only 19%.

After an initial briefing on the front-end scenario and Bitrock’s value proposition for Front-end Engineering, the bootcamp entered the battle zone. The participants split up in four different groups, each of one supervised by a Mentor, to start working on concrete exercises based on React Js.

What did we learn?

  • React.Js is not a framework, but a JavaScript library. Although most professionals define it as a JavaScript framework, the Reach website says otherwise: React.Js is a JavaScript library with attributes of a framework. It’s more tilted towards building interfaces than being a framework.
  • It’s the leading Front-End tool. It’s beyond being just one of the most fascinating development tools to learn. React.Js has climbed above Vue.js and Angular as the most in-demand front end development tool.
  • It has a thriving community of users. Many developers have a true love for the tool, which has transformed into close-knitted communities of loyal users. This explains why it is possible to find plenty of React.Js resources everywhere, from YouTube to GitHub.
  • React.Js allows for immutability. Every component built with React Js has two ways of working with data. This means you can build both stateless and stateful components; the choice lies in what you are aiming to achieve with the components.

The event turned out to be a great opportunity to network and meet new people with a strong passion for technology. The questions were numerous, all answered by Bitrock and SheTech Mentors through concrete examples, use-cases and in-depth explanations.
After almost five hours of programming, the event concluded with an interesting Q&A and follow-up session, characterized by an open discussion on all touched points and topics. The general feedback that came from the participants was enthusiastic – many proposals arose for other future events, continuing exploring the world of Front-end and User Experience Engineering with workshops and labs.

Keep reading our Blog and follow us on our social media channels to discover all future events in partnership with SheTech.

If you want to access the bootcamp presentation deck and workshop material, send an email to info@bitrock.it
To find out more about Bitrock’s mission to bridge the gender gap in STEM, tech and digital, and promote a workplace culture based on inclusion and gender equality, please visit https://bitrock.it/blog/equality-in-stem.html

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Corporate Event

Last week our Team gathered for our first corporate event of 2021, which turned out to be a great success for at least three different reasons.

To begin with, this was the first live event after the lengthy Covid-19 emergency. With proper precautions and respecting social distancing norms, we were able to meet in person at the event location – a cool and fancy restaurant in Milan – laughing, eating, and drinking together (as every proper event requires).

This occasion allowed many people to finally get together face to face: as we all know, seeing each other via  a computer screen may be fun and necessary these days, but meeting colleagues in the “real” world, shaking hands, sharing laughs and jokes is another story!

Secondly, this was the first official Fortitude Group event, with all team members from Bitrock, Radicalbit and ProActivity participating. A great opportunity to mark the new Fortitude era, after the 2021 Group rebranding.

Last but not least, events of this kind are also important since many colleagues that seldom have the chance to meet due to the allocation on different projects or different geographical location can finally spend some time together. During this evening, we finally had all people from Treviso, Lugano, Milano (and many other cities around Italy) together in one spot.

The event started with a welcome aperitif followed by a tasty dinner (typical Milanese cuisine…what else?!). Our CEO Leo Pillon took the chance to greet all participants and deliver a brief talk, addressing the challenges this period has meant for the Group, but also all the great results and success we were able to achieve while working remotely. It is a distinct corporate culture, a sense of togetherness and a clear direction that have fuelled the passion emerging in our daily work.

Curious to know more about the Bitrock world? Look at the pics below to get a taste of our event, and visit our Instagram page to discover much more!

We are now ready to start planning our next big event. Will you join us? 🙂

Sales & Key Client
Management, Sales & Key Client
Team Front End
Front End Team
Team DevOps
DevOps Team
Team Back End
Back End Team
HR & Marketing
HR & Marketing
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Bitrock Brain Training Game

Unleashing Innovation and Collaboration with Technology Team-building Events


Integrating new technology into team building activities and team development is a thrilling way to engage employees in a safe and playful environment outside the standard working environment.

Our “Bitrock Front-end Brain Training Game”, a RxJs training session during which our Front-end team tried their hand at generating a data stream in an engaging virtual game, is just an example.

The event – Bitrock’s first of its kind – was organized last Spring with two main goals: to experiment new front-end technologies applying them in a practical code project, and to improve teamwork among team members who are often assigned to different projects.

Bitrock Brain Training Game

Let’s now consider at a closer glance the technical aspects of our Brain Training Game.

Our goal was to organize a training session on reactive programming. We thus implemented the Back-end and Front-end (in Javascript) of a small Brain Training game application, in order to have a generator of a fair number of events.

Although this was a small-size project, we made an initial analysis working with the UX team and producing some wireframes, mockups and flow diagrams.

The Front-end part was built with React, and we focused on the adoption of the reactive paradigm using RxJS. For the Back-end, we opted for MarbleJs, a framework with RxJs capability. WebSocket was adopted as an events communication system, and we created some components that subscribed to it.

The Importance of an Innovation-based Workplace Culture

Internal events like these have many side effects in terms of employee empowerment and corporate workplace culture.

To begin with, our Brain Training Game has proven to be a highly collaborative, team-building activity empowering team members. Collaboration and teamwork are forged by such occurrences: people are drawn together and motivated to achieve a common goal when they are presented with a common problem to solve.

The game has also given our company (and specifically the Front-end department) a great opportunity to innovate. This is due to the fact that the very essence of these activities encourages creativity, as each team member is involved and granted complete freedom to develop and express themselves. Having a set amount of time to complete the project produces results. However, this is a different kind of pressure than what employees are used to, and a game may help loosen the constraints of corporate bureaucracy, responsibilities, and strict deadlines.

Last but not least, the relaxed atmosphere of such an event, which is centered on a shared challenge expressed through an interactive online game, offers a temporary departure from the standard. And such a “disruptive” workflow can lead to an improved work ethic among employees. Not to mention the chance to have fun and share pleasant moments with coworkers throughout the workday – if deadlines, reports, and briefings are part of the team’s everyday routine, why not set aside some time and space for something different? A bit of fun is always appreciated.

Conclusions

Thanks to our Brain Training Game, Team members have had the chance to share their imagination, create cool things, and learn while having fun.

All participants have shown great excitement during the event: for them, this hackathon has been a real opportunity to work with new technologies, specifically with the Reactive paradigm.
While one of our Front-end developers said that this was a great opportunity to improve communication and bond with colleagues, another participant said: “I am glad to have joined this project: I have experimented with Marble.js, a useful library to make practical use of RxJs syntax”.

We are now prepared to replicate this type of event in the future, experimenting with new formulas and events, and maybe even extending it to other Teams.
Our efforts to promote creativity and cooperation are still ongoing. Keep an eye out for the next move!



BrainTraining 1

Braintraining 2

Braintraining 3

Braintraining 4

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Bitrock Virtual_Office Journal

Bitrock Virtual_Office Journal

Here we are, after two months spending time together in our Virtual Office. Two months that have seen us deeply involved in many team-building activities to give the due importance to the human aspect of our worklife and reinforce our Team spirit during the long lockdown phase.

Here’s the best highlights from our Bitrock Virtual_Office Journal: delve into its pages with us and get ready to turn back time…


Friday, 10 April

Our first virtual event is an open discussion about the world of Sport&Wellbeing. What are Bitrockers fond of? Huge success for Martial arts and Oriental disciplines, followed by typical Winter sports (above all Skiing) and Water sports (Sailing is king here). But there’s appreciation for Meditation and Yoga, too!

Tuesday, 14 April

Another day, another event: this time we’re ready to talk about Movies&TV Series: a very popular topic, especially during these months of lockdown. “What do you suggest me watching?” “Have you ever watched…?” – a passionate debate full of advice and reviews. The most loved TV series? The historical and science-fiction ones.

Friday, 17 April

Today’s event is dedicated to the lifetime passion of our Team members Marco and Mattia: BBQ. During an involving presentation, with a lot of information, examples and advice, they’re able to reveal us the secrets (or almost all of them) of the perfect BBQ. Now we can dream of our next real team-building bbq party!

Tuesday, 21 April

Today there’s a unique opportunity for the Team: listening to a fascinating introduction speech into the world of Mindfulness. Thanks to the knowledge and passion of Franco, we are ready to discover its main pillars and meditation practices: from its origins to the bonds with the Oriental culture, not forgetting a few examples of concrete activities and exercises, such as the awareness of breath, feelings, and thoughts. Mindfulness has proved to be a fascinating topic for the whole Team: we’re all eager to find out more!

Friday, 24 April

Our Virtual Office is changing into a bakery! Today Claudia will show us the best tricks and tips for pastry-making. The activity is not very simple, but brings also so much fun… Our mission? Cooking chocolate truffles. Each of us has their own ingredients and is ready to follow Claudia’s instructions on the screen, step by step. Huge success for our first Cooking Together event!

Tuesday, 28 April

Since in Bitrock we foster continuous learning and improving, here’s the perfect opportunity for us to expand our knowledge in many fields (history, science, literature and much more): a challenging general-knowledge Quiz! Two teams are fighting to conquer the title of “Smartest Team”. The final result? 10-10: all winners (and smarter)!

Tuesday, 5 May

Here we are, ready to travel around the world together (at least virtually). “Let’s Travel” is our new open-discussion event, during which we have the chance to talk about our past travel experiences, and our future journeys. The most fascinating destinations for the Team? The Far-East Countries (Thailand and Indonesia above all). But also several European cities seem to have stolen the heart of many of us: from Budapest to Prague, from Lisbon to Berlin.

Friday, 8 May

Today we have the chance to get closer to Calisthenics, a form of physical training focused on teaching you how to master your own bodyweight using minimal equipment. Thanks to the expertise of Erik, who has been practicing this sport for a few years now, we can discover many interesting aspects about it. For instance, that the word itself comes from the Greek: Kalos and Sthenos, meaning “Beauty” and “Strength”. Thanks to Erik’s presentation we can learn this discipline’s origins, benefits, and the main exercises that Calisthenics athletes can perform (such as the “human flag”!)

Tuesday, 12 May

Today’s virtual event is dedicated to reinforcing our “green” soul: here’s an open discussion about Eco&Sustainability topics. Thanks to an online quiz game, we can test our knowledge regarding plastic pollution and learn many new facts and figures (for instance, that every year about 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the oceans from coastal nations). The event is also an opportunity to talk about possible remedies, such as improved waste management systems and recycling, a responsible use of disposable packaging and reduction in manufacturing of single-use plastics.

Friday, 15 May

Our Team has proved to be composed by talented chefs: here’s the second round of our “Cooking Together” event! Following Claudia’s precise instructions, we are ready to prepare our first double-chocolate cheesecakes. The event turns out into an unforgettable experience: there’s always time for fun and laughter beyond ingredients and kitchen tools!

Tuesday, 19 May

The English language plays a crucial role in our international Team. That’s why we decided to dedicate one of our events to improve our language skills. How? With fun, of course: thanks to entertaining videos and an online Pub Quiz game, we can work on our pronunciation and fluency. The one and only rule for this event? Italian banned – English only!

Friday, 21 May

Today we have the opportunity to listen again to Franco’s Mindfulness presentation. Having already explored its basics during last month’s event, this time we raise the bar and start discovering a few mindful practices that we can put into practice in our daily life – especially during these months of smart working, during which a responsible and focused attitude is required. The main lesson we have learnt from today? “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now” (Chinese proverb).


So, here we are now, full of good memories about events that have been able to cheer us up during the lockdown months.

What other opportunities will the Virtual Office offer us? The virtual room is still open and eager to welcome new voices and new faces… New events #comingsoon!

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Byteconf React 2020

Byteconf React 2020

Byteconf React is a 100% free conference with the best React speakers and teachers in the world.

The first edition was launched by Bytesized Code (whose mission is to innovate developer education online) in March of 2018. The conference, which represented a great resource for React developers of all experience levels, was streamed online on Twitch to over 900 people across the world.

Since then, the event has proved to be increasingly successful and highly appreciated by the audience, thanks to its ability to make the global dev community a small village and provide an awesome experience to everyone, in every corner of the world.

Bitrock was present during this year’s edition thanks to Claudia Bressi, brilliant Frontend Developer belonging to our Team, who was one of the official Speakers presenting her React Bandersnatch experiment project.

A great spotlight for Claudia and a source of pride for our whole frontend Team, whose expertise could be shared on one of the major stages for the global dev community.

The conference was streamed on YouTube, for free, so anyone and everyone could attend.

If you want to listen to Claudia’s speech again, simply click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCURSlsjnoA

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