Building Software in a Fast-Changing Ecosystem

A hack.summit() presentation by our Tech Lead Antonio Salazar Cardozo

Tens of thousands of engineers globally participated in three days of the 2018 hack.summit(), a biennial event which has historically been known as the largest gathering of developers across the globe. The conference was purely virtual and participants were able to tune-in and attend from the 9th through the 11th of July.

hack.summit() is a not-for-profit event that raised over $100,000 this year in support of charities like Women Who Code, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, Free Code Camp, CoderDojo, Bridge Foundry, and Electronic Frontier Foundation. The primary goal this year was to share education on blockchain concepts from the world’s most renowned programmers and to encourage the advancement of technology.

Our Tech Lead, Antonio Salazar Cardozo, was invited to the conference as one of the speakers. He was interviewed by Ed Roman, Managing Director at Hack VC and producer of the hack.summit() event.

“This event disrupts physical conferences with a re-imagined online experience. The decentralized nature of blockchain democratizes access and eliminates rent-seeking middlemen. This concept should be applied to events as well. hack.summit() embraces this theme — the event is decentralized and has no physical presence. Speakers from around the globe unite to focus on providing free technical education. No centralized authority seeks to profit. All ticket proceeds went towards an alliance of technology non-profits.” — Ed Roman

Having fifteen years of programming experience behind him, Antonio provided some approaches to adjust to the fast pace but slow updating of public blockchain development. Antonio also had the opportunity to share some of the privacy problems related to public blockchains and how Keep intends to solve them.

Ed Roman discussing privacy on public blockchains with Antonio

Antonio discussed on one of the biggest differences he sees between modern web development and blockchain development — the concept of continuous delivery, which has been replaced by what Antonio referred to as “decentralized delivery.” Though developers have historically worked on an infrastructure that is built or at least managed in-house, decentralized platforms have shifted to operating on everyone else’s infrastructure. As a result, pushing code and immediate fixes of any mistakes is no longer possible.

The conversation was largely focused on efficiency of development in a fast moving ecosystem and on some approaches from the past that are no longer applicable in this new space — and approaches from further in the past that can be applicable again.

Thank you to hack.summit() and to everyone who attended, participated, and asked questions. This is always the best part, as it often sparks new exciting ideas.

The full interview session was recorded and is available for you to watch here.