London & Krakow Scala Talks: Complexity is a sin & AI with Metals

Get ready for a special joint edition of Scala meetup with the London and Kraków communities! Save the date — May 14th at the VirtusLab office (ul. Szlak 49).

Volodymyr Yaroslavskyi: Complexity is a sin

Complex code will follow throughout the entirety of your career. Developers tend to take it like the weather - it’s something you can’t change, and you hope you’ll be lucky next time. But is this the best way to tackle it?

The talk will cover the problem of code complexity. I’ll talk about where to look for it, how to assess the damage it causes and how to make the situation better for your future self and team.

From my experience, I’ve noticed that the complexity introduced by a developer strongly correlates to the Dunning-Kruger effect (Confidence - Competence curve), while this topic is relevant to a broad audience, it will be especially useful for the developers with 2-5 years of experience - who are close to the peak of so called “Mount Stupid”. As someone not far from the peak myself, I was inspired to write this talk to share my experience.

Volodymyr Yaroslavskyi

Scala and FP Enthusiast, currently working in JP Morgan Chase.

I don’t like cutting corners, and I am strong believer that nicely designed and written software is beneficial for any team at any stage.

Happy to talk about that and about other things as well.

AI with Metals - introducing built-in MCP server

There is a lot of hype surrounding AI and using agents to write your code. In a lot of the cases it leaves a lot be desired and you might even quickly give up on using it. Especially that this isn't actual cheap. This is why a new protocol was created Model Context Protocol that will make sure your AI tools can have proper context and provide you with a correct answer. We'll go over how it's implemented, how to use it and try some live demos to show off its capabilities.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!