Kraken.js and PayPal's Open Source Revolution

11/10/2014

Talks are always a good way to keep up with a field of study And with technology, there is an abundant of talks you can access all over the interwebz. For the record, O'Reilly has a large pool of webcasts which you can watch for free. Don't hold back on learning something new!

If you have been following Node.js and its development, then you definitely know about LinkedIn and PayPal adopting it and getting massive improvements in development time and performance. Recently I made time to listen to an O'Reilly Webcast about Kraken.js by Jeffery Harrell, Director of Engineering, Business and Payments at PayPal. For those who don't know Kraken.js is a Node.js framework layer built on top of Express.js. Although there have been many blog posts and articles about this project and PayPal, this talk really gave some insight into the company's transformation while adopting Node.js, and ultimately developing Kraken.js.

The Only Real Development Is Human Development

The technical details about using Node.js and adapting PayPal's existing infrastructure was really cool, what you'll hear about Node.js' power will convert you if you're a non-believer. But what's really important was how adopting and successfully deploying production code with Node.js changed the entire culture of the organisation. Their software development practice definitely got better - Continuous Integration was finally achieved after production code took weeks to come out. When not relying on proprietary technology, they could now hire developers who would need less training as they already have exposure to what's being used. Another benefit of being part of the OSS world is that they're able to keep up with modern software development practices and advances. There truly seemed to be a cultural change within the developers, and it made them happier :).

Don't take my word for it, check out the talk here: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/e/3084