SnowCamp rocks! Check out our summary of the latest edition.
SnowCamp 2023 edition is over, and we cannot wait for next year. Conference tickets were sold out within a minute, and there were around 600 participants. That gives you an idea of how big SnowCamp has become year after year. It was an excellent opportunity to connect with people from Criteo and the outside. Seeing technologies or ideas beyond our day-to-day job, it is crucial to open our minds and find ways to improve our current stack or work.
Our first very deserved words are for the staff and the organizers. The conference atmosphere and the relaxed environment encouraged people to have conversations. That time, in the hall, sharing knowledge and experiences with other attendees was precious. There was a good balance between talks and networking. Grenoble and the venue offer a unique experience to everyone.
As sponsors, we had such a great time. Criteo has an office in Grenoble, and many Criteos had the chance to attend SnowCamp. We loved to welcome people to the Criteo booth and had open conversations about our technology, our way of working, what we do and how we do it, etc. That’s why we like so much to be part of the community. We had many good exchanges with people in our booth. Thank you to all who dropped by and spent some time with us. 🙌
Takeaways
Now it is time to share some of our learnings from the talks. There is always a chance to learn something new or be surprised by a topic you did not know. The topics included UI, backend, AI, accessibility, containers, coding practices, etc. You name it! Furthermore, it was an opportunity to check what other companies are doing and how they are doing it. It is very useful to have different points of view on a scenario you already know, which might encourage you to experiment and explore.
Playwright : l’outil qui va révolutionner les tests end-to-end
Talk by Jean-françois Greffier
Xavier Dupessey, Line Pouvaret, and Valerian Gonnot liked this one.
Xavier is excited about Playwright. He highlights the support of running parallel tests natively, the human-readable API, and the ability to export a test execution as an artifact to debug locally what failed on the CI.
Line enjoyed it so much that she will probably investigate how it can be used at Criteo. She mentions that this tool is 23% faster in execution time than the Cypress framework. In addition, Playwright comes with a couple of useful tools:
- The CodeGen feature of Playwright > It allows us to generate code inside our end-to-end tests by selecting elements directly in the UI. The generated code will match the locators of each selected element. It is excellent to have this feature when running the test by hand, plus the corresponding generated code next to it.
- The debugging tool > It takes snapshots of the DOM at every step, allowing us to debug every step in the test with precision.
For Valerian, Playwright clearly provides first-class functionality to Criteo and is overtaking the great Cypress. He truly thinks that it is worth giving it a try.
Remotion : le 7ème art à portée de composants web et d’API 🎬
Talk by Antoine Caron & Alves Mickaël
This talk made an impact on Luiza Cicone and Olivier Chirouze.
In Luiza’s words: “I was particularly curious about this talk as it might be interesting for our team (Video & CTV) to explore new topics. I discovered a great tool for making videos programmatically with React and was happy to learn that we don’t need a lot of knowledge or experience with React to use it. The presentation was excellent: a good mix of information and demo time, and the two presenters had a nice flow by exchanging with each other. That helped to keep the attention of the audience. From scratch, They created programmatically a movie trailer from the beg 2000, which was popular in France (TV)”
Oliver shares many of Luiza’s thoughts and mentions how amazing Remotion is to build mp4 videos using React components. This enables web developers and opens up many possibilities, like fancy animations updated with live data, templated videos, videos from APIs, and much more!
Cryptographie post-quantique : pourquoi et comment va-t-on remplacer nos algos d’aujourd’hui?
Some Criteos also highlighted this talk. In fact, it is a perfect example of why attending conferences is excellent for learning new topics.
That is exactly what Eduardo Grajeda mentions: “I would lie if I said that I understood it. I didn’t understand most of it, but it gave lots of references and YouTube videos where you could learn more about it. It was, at least, a good way to know a topic that might become more relevant in the future.”
And, on the other side of the coin, you have Brice Laurencin’s experience: “It was a fascinating dive into quantic computing and new cryptographic algorithms and why we need to update the latter to survive the rise of the former. USA NIST standardized the Kyber, Dilithium, Falcon, and Sphincs+ protocols as replacements for currently used crypto algorithms. The speaker, Willy, presented and vulgarized lattice systems to the crowd. Right now, RSA/DSA are not at risk today, but the day quantum computers can crack them, they will be as good as useless, so it’s time to look into the future of crypto.”
Railway Programming: la voie vers un code plus honnête
Talk by Sylvain Coudert & Romain Berthon
Alexis Klam enjoyed this talk: “We can add more functional programming in the code to avoid many mistakes and keep an explicit code about what is done. For Criteo in particular, it could be a great option to have some advantage of a language like Rust and keep our current C# stack by using Option<> or Result<>”.
Bien se lancer dans le Domain Driven Design sans se tromper de combat
As we said, some talks inspire you to experiment or try new ideas. That is precisely why Vincent Michau likes it. Knowing what is happening in other companies that we don’t always notice by ourselves. For example, in his own words: “the language is used to create the model, but the model also influences the language (up to the product, which sometimes starts talking about DB, … ).” He also mentions that it is good to realize that, in other companies, the knowledge about the domain becomes fragmented between multiple teams. It is a general issue. We could think it is because of a bad organization or due to the turnover. But actually, the cause is organic and very related to the size of some projects. There are methods to share a high-level understanding better and ensure the right teams have the proper knowledge. Finally, he points out that it would be great to explore more about how to do an event-storming session.
Wrapping-up
We could share much more about this latest SnowCamp edition with you, but this article would be endless. Are you still wondering why to attend next year? Ok, ok, here you have a list of good reasons:
- Networking, not just with your collages but also with new/old friends in the industry. Local communities matter, and Grenoble has a great ecosystem.
- Learning, learning, learning. Topics were diverse, and no matter your experience, you always learn about new technologies, programming languages, tools, and so on.
- It is an excellent way to escape from your daily routine and get new points of view. Open your mind, discover new topics, and meet new people and companies.
- Lots of fun! Seriously, the atmosphere is terrific, the food is delicious, and the staff deserves a prize. What else could you ask for?
It was not our first SnowCamp and will not be the last one. Join us there! 😃
Did you like the article? Would you like to be part of the Criteo crew in the next SnowCamp edition? Check our website to learn more about us and our positions.
Product, Research & Development | Criteo Careers
Product, Research & Development at Criteo. At Criteo, come and meet our teams and join our R & D and also enjoy…
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