Learn more about polyglot engineering and what it can do for you as an engineer and your engineering organization as a whole.

1. Polyglot engineering
and our learnings…

2. Klaus Salchner
VP Engineering
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/ksalchner
https://twitter.com/ksalchner
https://twitter.com/BDCareers

3. 3
Polyglot / Polyglotism
The ability to master, or the state of having mastered, multiple (human) languages. This comes with a list of
abilities / characteristics.
Polyglot engineer
An engineer who has mastered several software platforms / frameworks. Meaning built multiple applications
on it, or has several years of experience on it
Polyglot engineering / architecture
The practice of leveraging several software platforms / frameworks to built your (cloud) platform. This requires
engineering practices which a decade ago were not yet ready for prime time
What is polyglot engineering?

4. 4
Apply best practices from each
Each platform has its own set of best practices. Many can be applied to other platforms as well
Demonstrated the ability to rapidly learn
Engineers who have worked on 2-3 platforms for a reasonable time with reasonable experience will have the
ability to learn new frameworks and technologies rapidly. The core engineering skills matter!
Can more broadly work across your platform
There are generalists and specialists. You need reasonable depth of knowledge but the ability to work on
multiple areas of your platform combined with ability to rapidly learn are the sweet-spot in today’s rapidly
changing tech world
Why polyglot engineers?

5. 5
Micro-services
Small independent services, micro-services, with Hypermedia API’s as your access point. It enables you to
choose different platforms to run each on
Clear separation of layers
Hypermedia API’s as your glue between the presentation tier, middle tier and your various applications. Each
can run on its own optimal platform / stack
Polyglot persistence
Each micro-service has its own optimal data store. So move away from a monolithic data store. Each micro-
service can optimize for its use – relational data store, document based data store or even an S3 file bucket.
What are your enablers
for polyglot engineering?

6. 6
What are your enablers
for polyglot engineering?

7. 7
Standardization was the past
In the past most tech companies strived towards standardization to reduce operational cost. As more and
more runs in the cloud this becomes less relevant.
Leverage the cloud
Today we leverage more and more existing cloud services to solve particular problems. And its irrelevant
whether they run on Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or custom infrastructure. The standards like
Hypermedia API, Json, etc. make it seamless to interact.
Micro-services
By using a micro-service architecture the same applies within your platform. Any of the big cloud providers
can run most of today’s development platforms. But, yes you loose some capabilities.
Polyglot infrastructure

8. 8
Exercise One (3 min)
Work with your neighbour and discuss how polyglotism is used in your organization. If you don’t use it yet,
then discuss potential ways to introduce it.
Share experiences and hurdles...
Exercise Two (3 min)
Now turn around to your other neighbour and share challenges / hurdles this has introduced for you. Again if
you don’t use it yet, discuss potential challenges with it.

9. 9
Polyglot talk by ThoughtWorks
July 2015 by Scott Shaw and James Gregory

10. 10
My LinkedIn blog posts
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/polyglot-engineering-engineers-klaus-salchner
Polyglot Persistence by Martin Fowler
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PolyglotPersistence.html
Polyglot architecture by AppNeta
https://www.appneta.com/blog/polyglot-architectures
Some more reading

11. 11
Meet-up group
http://www.meetup.com/PolyglotVancouver
Twitter
https://twitter.com/polyglotconf
Polyglot conference (May)
http://www.polyglotconf.com
Polyglot Vancouver

12. 12
If you don’t use polyglotism yet
Discuss with your leaders the value of polyglot engineering / architecture and how you can start to experiment
with it
Call for action
If you already practice polyglotism then
Discuss how you can accelerate the adoption of polyglotism and how you can make it more efficient for your
team