DevFest Sul 2019
Tags: techtalks, eventsinyourcity, flutter, agile
Published: 2019-10-26 18:29:43

Last weekend I've attended to [DevFest Sul 2019](https://www.sympla.com.br/devfest-sul-2019__609373), a regional conference about technology and development promoted by this local [Google Developer Group](https://www.instagram.com/gdgfloripa/). It was the first tech event I've gone after getting my first job as developer (I still shall post about this) and there I could interact with some of my new colleagues (they are pretty cool!)

I usually take notes when listening to a tech talk and here's some of what I have learned.
*(Photos by Fabrício 'Foto Imagem e Arte', Karen and Isaque Fontinele)*

![Matheus Romão Barcellos - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/CmTyjDp.jpg)

**● How to use native code on Flutter**
*by Matheus Romão Barcellos*

Romão explained some **Flutter**'s layers (Framework - Dart, Engine - C/C++ and Embedder - platform) and methods, such as **methodChannel** which is the one responsible to make this '**bridge**' to native code and **eventChannel** that makes streaming of data happen. He also talked about some of **Dart** aspects like isolate threads and futures promises.

![Lucas Santos - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/qiLlr30.jpg)

**● Deconstructing NodeJS**
*by Lucas Santos*

By telling some of **NodeJS** history and its intrinsic **behavior**, Lucas showed how **event loop** works, alongside **call stacks**, **byte codes** and other advanced technical aspects. A cool tip given here is that **object's properties** order actually matters because of how they're referenced internally. This means that one could lose **performance** when deleting a property, for example.

![Rodrigo Branas - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/relpYr7.jpg)

**● Native, Hybrid or PWA**
*By Rodrigo Branas*

With a highly engaging talk, Branas contextualized these **mobile development options** and presented their pros and cons. It seems that **PWA**s (Progressive Web App) are taking some time to get traction because **Native** (Plataform-Specific) and **Hybrid** (Cross-Plataform) apps are very interesting for Google and Apple currently. He also talked about what we should consider before choosing a stack to develop, legacy and how **Flutter** differs from **React Native** and **Ionic**, for example.

![Fernando Ultremare  - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/FuyW0cB.jpg)


**● How to train a model to control your robot**
*by Fernando Ultremare*

The case presented was to create a **Speech to Text** system that uses call center recordings to infers what a client is asking for. Fernando showed how he and his team managed to accomplish this using **DeepSpeech, DeepSpeech-cleaner, data augmentation** and **Open Seq2Seq**. They've managed to reach 0.28 score in the **Word Error Rating** and this project is still in progress.

![Maísa Leite Fonseca - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/kbhVVx0.jpg)

**● Agile is not a mess**
by *Maísa Leite Fonseca*

**Agile talks** seems to be very engaging and Maísa is the living proof of this. She explained that - withing the Agile Methodology - we can "skip" some documentation in exchange for more talking within the team. She also talked about **User Stories, Acceptance Criterion, Definition of Ready, Gherkin** and more. **"The agreed is not expensive"** was her key phrase in this talk.

![Marlon Burnett - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/yvYjKxJ.jpg)

**● Serverless Apps**
*by Marlon Burnett*

Burnett showed how easy is to develop **Serverless** Apps using Azure, AWS or **Firebase** - this last one being the case he brought to the table. There are several done solutions that we can use, such as **Login/Register, Authentication, Database, Scaling** and more.

![Agile - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/S8NW6Pr.jpg)

**● How we've created our own Agile Methodology after a hard time**
*by Ana Carolina Gomes and Rafael Buss*

Ana and Rafael presented their **difficulties and successes** while developing an internal+external **platform** for their company. They emphasized how important is to gather everyone that uses that tool and **understand** how they use and what they need.

![Everyone - photo by Fabrício Foto Imagem e Arte](https://i.imgur.com/BKsHjL2.jpg)

**DevFest Sul 2019** was a great conference to keep myself immersed in this **tech universe** while **learning new things** and having contact with **great tools** and **cool people**. Can't wait for the next one *(perhaps I'll be presenting a talk as well?)*

![me at DevFest - photo by Karen](https://i.imgur.com/alFZ9Ub.jpg)