DEV.BG All in One 2024
Last week, I attended the DEV.BG All in One Expo Edition 2.0. The travel to the event took two workdays and was a bit more costly for me as an hourly wage earner than the previous year’s weekend event. However, the venue, covering areas 1 and 2 of the Expo Center, was more spacious than the previous one in areas 5 and 6. This made it easier to move between stands.
Having already sought out the interesting swag last year, my interest in games and lotteries at the booths was now waning. However, Luxoft remained generous, giving out USB flash drives to all willing to share contact data. I was specifically looking for a compact charging cable since the one from the previous year was damaged during a train journey.
Unfortunately, I missed a few games where I could win such cables. So, I decided to return to DXC Technology, which has more such charging cables. To obtain one, I had to solve puzzles at a physical obstacle station. In the end, I got the same type of cable I got last year. I hope this one endures more than just a few train journeys.
The highlights of the conference were the lectures. There were fewer AI talks this year, and the ones that ran focused on AI’s problems rather than just pushing it everywhere.
Peter Sabev’s opening lecture, The Algorithm of Life in 10½ Personal Stories, told the story of a developer’s career, from student years to professional work and diverse social engagements, among other topics. This lecture could be useful, particularly for developers just starting out.
Peter Neftelimov’s lecture, Entrepreneurship Beyond Constraints, was the second one I attended. I found it challenging to understand due to my limited Bulgarian proficiency and the monotonous delivery of the automated voiceover. Still, the author’s life story shows that significant achievements are possible despite considerable physical limitations. It made me want to read more of his writing for the motivation.
Next, I found Dimo Mitev’s lecture, Critical and Analytical Thinking: The Key to Success, quite engaging. Although it didn’t offer much novelty, it reminded me of the significance of thought. A mere 5% of the population has critical and analytical thinking skills that stimulate curiosity. Such skills are essential for developers.
Unfortunately, I missed most of Miglen Evlogiev’s talk, Security is Everyone’s Job. The case studies towards the end were intriguing, although I’m not a security expert. Nonetheless, security awareness is essential, as most hacks are social and, therefore, hard to counteract technically. It needs education and self-learning.
The most interesting lesson for me was The Price of Clean Code by Martin Chaov. I mostly do product support and have dabbled in project ownership lately, and I want to do more personal projects. It was interesting to see the standard framework of IT projects, complete with explanations of support and code refactoring and their necessity. I took photographs of the reference material links, intending to review them later.
I missed part of Radostin Cholakov’s presentation, How AI Sees the World: Similarities and Differences to the Human’s Perception. He discussed how GPT processes and creates images and how human perception differs. This difference reminded me that today’s AI still can’t fully replace people.
Anton Alexandrov’s subsequent lecture, Large Language Models: The BgGPT Case, was even more interesting. It detailed the reasons behind the issues with the application of GPT in Bulgarian, mainly due to the limited learning dataset. The same goes for Ukrainian. Getting GPT to work in Ukrainian as well as it does in English is still a long way off.
Victor Danchev’s lecture, Spacenet — No Right to Error! taught me a lot. It was interesting to learn about the challenges of constructing an orbital network. The lack of physical access to a satellite demands careful planning and strict programming, a task performed under severe conditions, including drastic temperature variations and unrelenting radiation destabilizing electronics. The satellite environment is harsh, unlike software, which is far more forgiving.
Boyan Torosov’s presentation, Quantum Computers and the Next Technological Revolution, was another big takeaway. Previously, I showed little interest and hardly paid attention to quantum computers. However, understanding their fundamental principles and potential applications was interesting. Despite being slow, these computers have capabilities that traditional binary computers lack.
The most surprising lecture was 30 Letters — Countless Worlds by Viktoria Beshliiska. As the book writer delivered the lecture, it was about the Bulgarian alphabet, its origins, the influence of writing on expression, and how different tools and processes shape creativity. Writing a book and writing a program turned out to be similar enough that developers can take something from the overlap. It reminded me that planning and base algorithm design is more effectively done manually on paper before moving to the IDE.
Despite not winning anything from the concluding raffle, the trivia contest interested me. However, people seated closer to the stage or screens certainly had more advantages, as several questions were displayed in a small typeface.
Overall, the event was enjoyable, and I’m pretty content with my decision to attend it. I’ll go again next year.