Writing this, I'm both really happy it happened and really sad it's over. I guess that's how everyone feels at their first DevCon.
DevCon, or rather Developer Conference, is a massive event in the developer community here in Mauritius. DevCon has been a regular event since 2015 here, with a virtual one in 2020 and none in 2021. As such, it is really great that the event is back after a long hiatus. DevCon this year has been the biggest one in its history, with 975 attendees, painfully close to the 1000 achievement.
DevCon is a very important event as many developers all around the island come to present on a wide spectrum of topics. This year, there was a large focus on Blockchain/Cryptocurrency as well as Artificial Intelligence, both of which are right up my alley. And, with such a massive meetup comes an opportunity for networking and meeting other big names in the field. As you will see me fanboying later, I got to meet some really really cool people, including Jochen Kirstätter, Mary Jane Kirstätter, Ish Sookun, Shelly Sookun, SM and Avinash Meetoo. Well the last one doesn't really count since I'm friends with his son, Kyan anyway.
Personally, this was the first DevCon I attended. Bear in mind I'm not exactly a developer - I am still in college and only really know Python and basic HTML/CSS.
Day ONE: Tuesday 22/11/22
Technology & The Future Of Work
Very first session! I was so excited by that point. This 45 minute long session was a panel discussion led by Ish.
There were 5 panel members, including him and while I do not remember all of them individually, there were some awesome people, including the CTO of MCB and Kenneth Rhode, an international speaker working at Intel.
Some really interesting topics brought up were the concepts of remote or hybrid work, which was pushed onto us thanks to the pandemic. They talked about whether such work types have a place in the future world, or if they will be phased out as people return to the office for the most part.
Something else was the 4 day work week; whether this 4 day work week is feasible or practical and how it may be executed. I think you get an idea of how I want the future workplace to look like already.
AI was also mentioned, as well as how it may influence the workplace. Will AI be a boon or a curse...? Well, we will see.
How AI Is Being Used in NLP
Kaneez Fatima Jowaheer was leading this session. As an AI enthusiast, with a decent understanding of AI, Neural Networks and NLP (Natural Language Processing), I was very excited for this session. And boy, it delivered.
From how data is pre-processed and prepared before becoming useful information to how AI has been applied in the real world for grading of open-ended questions and hotel searching.
Blockchain in a Nutshell
This session was led by Rishi Abeeluck, a Senior Software Engineer. I understand what Bitcoin is, as well as the underlying Blockchain technology, making this one familiar territory. It covered a lot of the basics and offered useful insight into real world uses of the Blockchain and applications built on it.
I really want to like this session, I really do. But it was brought down by several things, the first being bad internet connection. This caused images and videos present in the slides to flicker and it was really unpleasant. The second thing was just how much focus was put on the money-making aspect of Bitcoin as an investment and not as much on the technology behind it and the potential it has.
But, however, I do concede that the session touched on many important factors behind Blockchain and how it being decentralised is a huge advantage over fiat.
How to Serve Billions of Images Without Billions of Dollars
I will admit that most of the practical stuff, as well as system architecture, passes wayy over my head. Nonetheless, the concepts talked about here were incredibly interesting. Hosted by Dylan Harbour, this session delved into how to serve a huge number of images to the public without a lot of money.
Serving images, like on Instagram or Facebook, is really taken for granted, as I was able to learn here. To resize images, add watermarks if necessary and serving that to the user does need quite a lot of processing power. For a website, image processing makes up no less than 60% of server load.
Coming up with an ingenuitive solution is therefore a crucial aspect which, if mastered, could reduce server costs by a massive amount.
Understanding the Underlying Stack of Linux Containers - in just 5 mins
Hosted by his (self-proclaimed) holiness Chittesh Sham, this session was my last for Monday. "Containers in Linux are but a vessel. We are a vessel. And hence, we are containers."
This "Container Guru" went on to explain cgroups and namespaces which are essential components of containers in Linux, as well as how to create containers from scratch. He made an entire bash shell work within his own Linux environment, but which was completely isolated from the "parent" Linux filesystem. This is advantageous if, for example, you want to set up a webserver. Without a container, a hacker who infiltrates your webserver can now access all of your computer system. With a container, the hacker is isolated from the actual important computer system and can wreck havoc in the container without any consequence.
Day TWO: Wednesday 23/11/22
A Brief History of Programming
This session, hosted by Avinash Meetoo, covered all 2^6 years of programming languages. There are up to 9,000 programming languages around, although since a large number do not face widespread use, the count is closer to 700.
He went on to show different major programming languages and different paradigms and also talked about his own history learning to code. Imagine learning assembly to crack games!
PCB Design and Manufacturing
Hosted by my friend Nathan Mangar, this session focused heavily on how PCBs can be made by hobbyists or industries, as well as the processes which go behind making them. Nathan is a great maker and has designed several boards himself.
In fact, I have his Stormduino which is an Arduino-compatible board but with a USB-C connector and a new design.
How to Become a Full-Stack Developer
Oh man. I'm a certified newbie in programming but this was nonetheless a really educational session for me.
Alexandre Bazile - the host for this session, went very in depth on the attitude and techniques one must possess to become a fully qualified full stack developer. The path is challenging and extremely arduous but is nonetheless very rewarding! I have yet to choose my own path and having an idea of what lies ahead is very useful.
Securing and Managing Your Own Mail Server
Here's a fun story. My school (CSE) used to have its own mail server. Emphasis on "used to". They had some problems, to say the least. All the mail sent was marked as spam, malicious and had a giant red banner added by Gmail in my inbox. Oh, and it was nearly always sent to spam.
This session was held by [drowsy and tired] Ish Sookun and showed how to setup a mail server from scratch! It used iRedMail which is an *open source* mail server solution with a huge amount of facilities. You can even sync calendars and contacts on that server!
I found this session really interesting and is one of my favourites. Once I have some time, I will definitely be trying this out for myself!
Day THREE: Thursday 24/11/22
I had a Mock Trial at school in the morning, ended up getting to Port Louis really late and then had to eat lunch. And so I was there only for Lightning Talks.
Lightning Talks!
Lightning talks was so much fun. A number of speakers (7) talked about a wide variety of topics.
- Containers.
- Spicing up your game with special effects.
- Making music with the great Dj Container Guru.
- Web bundles and why they're cool.
- Directus and the services it provides.
- Online IDEs - their use and practicality.
- The story and challenges behind Ish setting up Linux mirrors in Mauritius for OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Alma, and Fedora. Sadly no Arch or Mint yet :(
mirrorman
A small edit. Soon after I published this article, Ish and David Venter, the Managing Director of cloud.mu, read it and had a chat. The servers for Mint and Arch have been provisioned and the Mint mirror server has been synced by Ish. So, we'll be seeing a Mint mirror soon, here in Mauritius! Thanks Ish and David!
Happy Hour!
Before I talk about the closing ceremony, I want to mention the 2 happy hours on days 1 and 2. Happy Hour lasted 2 hours each day, so not exactly "hour".
There was so much cool stuff during Happy Hour(s), I do not know where to start.
On day 1, I was feeling a bit awkward - I am not a very social person and somewhat introverted. Worst bit was that I knew absolutely nobody.
THANKFULLY my mother struck up a conversation with a couple of MCB employees who were very friendly. They gave me loads of advice on what to do as I pursue a career in the Computer Science field.
As time passed, there were fewer and fewer people left at Caudan Arts Centre and eventually it was the "harcore" people like Ish, Jochen and SM.
Now, I do know Joki since I went to the DevFest in 2020. On the other hand, I had never met Ish before but I did follow him on Twitter.
So, uh, Ish Sookun is someone I look up to and who is a really cool person. And I really wanted to meet him. I told my mum, who does know him from the first DevCon back in 2015. And, being the great wing-woman that she is, she later went up to him and said that someone wanted to meet him. And honestly, I felt awkward. "I... uh... follow you on Twitter" - what an introduction that was.
Day 2 was also really cool. I played Rocket League and won 6-0 with prize a license key to Parallels Toolbox; the emulation software which allowed Rocket League to run flawlessly on Mac OS. It works on Mac and Windows. And, uh, I use neither.
I got to talk to Ish a bit more and told him about the amazing mess-up by my school with the email server. He then gave me the great idea to dig for the IP being used by the mail server and see if it is on any IP blacklists. I did in fact do this, and an article on that can be found here!
I then got to talk to SM for quite some time. He encouraged me a lot to work on some projects by myself. Things I've been meaning to do, such as a media server and now an email server. I'll get to them eventually but being a secondary student does not leave me with much free time.
Closing Ceremony
"Don't be sad it's over. Be happy it happened."
The closing ceremony was fairly straightforward and to the point. Joki and Ish were up on stage, with Ish wearing a nice straw hat. I guess that summer is here after all!
The closing session started off with thanking the sponsors. And yes, thanks Rogers Capital for the WiFi!
The next major part was the goodies. Everyone had a numbered ticket for the raffle and there were loads of goodie bags to be won. I got sooooo close with 1540 vs my 1580. But well, didn't get anything sadly. There was a sort of quiz as well. "How many years of DevCon has there been?" - I should have shouted louder TwT.
And then a group picture! Good luck finding me in there.
With the closure of DevCon Mauritius 2022, I was pretty sad. The past three days had been extremely memorable. And now, I look forward to DevFest in December and DevCon in July next year. Maybe I'll be a speaker in 2023 :D
