"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." (Dr. Seuss)
We, at Wix Engineering, believe this notion also applies to organizations. The more an organization learns, the more it can achieve and grow. That's the reason why the Wix Engineering Conference, our full-day, internal gathering, is such an important event - and why we invest so much time and effort into it.
You can read more about the behind-the-scenes of this unique event in this interview, The Drive, the Culture and the Growth: Behind Wix Engineering Conference with Aviran Mordo, and this article Unlocking Tech’s Secret Sauce: How Learning Fuels Success.
From the future of AI to software development, architecture, testing, and more - explore the insightful sessions from Wix Engineering 2024, all presented by our very own Wix engineers:
Wix Engineering Conference 2024: The Official Clip
Curious to see the excitement and celebration of innovation at this unique event? Take a look at this highlight from Wix Engineering Conference 2024!
Keynote: The Future of AI - Avishai Abrahami and Prof. Amnon Shashua
Join Avishai Abrahami, CEO & Co-Founder of Wix, as he engages in a fascinating dialogue with Amnon Shashua, World-Renowned Expert in AI and President & CEO of Mobileye.
This conversation dives deep into the intersection of entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and the future of technology. Amnon shares his journey from academic research to building global tech powerhouses like Mobileye and Orcam, offering invaluable lessons on innovation, leadership, and the transformative power of AI.
Avishai and Amnon discuss the challenges and opportunities that come with creating groundbreaking solutions, the role of vision and persistence in achieving success, and how Israel has become a hub of technological excellence.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, a tech enthusiast, or someone curious about the future of AI and robotics, this video is packed with insights and practical takeaways that can inspire and guide your own journey.
Building AI System VS. Software Engineering - Yuval Nissan
Yuval Nissan has transitioned from managing an engineering group to working in Data Science and is now building the Agent Platform that powers Wix's AI Assistants.
While developing this platform, his team encountered numerous challenges that required rethinking traditional Software Engineering approaches, which did not fully apply in this new context. For example: How do you write tests for a system that runs on non-Wix services and returns non-deterministic results? How do you evaluate the quality of responses in English? How do you build a system where your carefully crafted prompt is mixed with raw text input from users? Who is responsible for writing the prompts? Why is "research" necessary? And much more.
Yuval's team has developed their own solutions to many of these questions and continues to explore answers, alongside an industry that is collectively learning as it evolves. In this lecture, Yuval will share the transitions he has experienced and dive into several of these questions and their implications.
Keep Your Users Close and Your Bugs Closer - Evelyn Moadi
Before Evelyn became the one who's fixing (or creating) bugs, she spent her time as a support QA engineer at Wix reporting and prioritizing them. This experience laid a solid foundation that profoundly influenced her development journey. Users can tell you a lot about your bugs, and your bugs can tell you a lot about your system. Working closely with users taught her invaluable lessons about our system's strengths and weaknesses.
By the time Evelyn transitioned into development, she had accumulated extensive knowledge and hands-on experience with both legacy components and new features.
In this talk, she will dive into the diverse array of investigation and debugging techniques she developed over the years. Many of which stem from translating user feedback and actions into effective tools.
From 60 Repos to One: How Wix Tackled Monorepo Migration like a Tech Giant - Zachi Nachshon
Discover the groundbreaking journey of how Wix transitioned its sprawling codebase of 32 million lines from 60 distributed repositories into a single, cohesive monorepo. Learn about the intricate challenges and innovative solutions that enabled this transformation, including the management of 6000 daily builds generating 4000 artifacts and facilitating 600 daily production deployments.
Uncover the custom-built tool, Tapas, which addresses the unique local monorepo development environment and hear about the CI/CD challenges posed by such a large-scale monorepo. Tapas reduces local clone times, normalizes git commands, and allows developers to work efficiently with only relevant parts of the monorepo. Gain insights into the strategies employed to maintain developer velocity, improve team collaboration, and ensure scalability for future growth.
Understand how this migration mirrors the efforts of tech giants like Google and the benefits it brings, such as streamlined code indexing, shortened build durations, and significant cost savings.
Lessons From Overcoming TimeCapsule Performance Challenges - Dmytro Kostiuchenko
The harsh reality of life is such that you rarely face performance challenges while being bored, sipping tea, and thinking to yourself, "Hmm, what can I improve today?" Usually, performance challenges emerge in the form of alerts and incidents. We've been there with TimeCapsule.
TimeCapsule – the scheduling solution at Wix – handles hundreds of thousands of tasks per minute and scales automatically, matching the load for cost-efficiency. But it wasn't always like this.
To get to where we are now, we, after alerts of varying severity, employed different techniques: from implementing horizontal auto-scaling to adjusting Kafka producer settings. This talk shares the highlights of our journey along with a few entertaining technical tidbits and methodological takeaways to reinforce your thinking framework.
From Hero to Zero - Evolving Resilience From a Hero Culture to a Zero Error One - Aviva Peisach
How we transformed the resilience and error handling mindset and policy across Wix, from an afterthought to day one thinking (similar to the test after the TDD revolution) allowing to highlight and resolve errors from early development stages, thus improving overall product quality and reducing the production overhead time, and how we achieved it in a combo effort of focus, culture shift and tools.
In this talk, Aviva Peisach, shares stats, results, success stories and lessons learned.
Falcon’s Behind the Scenes - Einav Carmon
Do you FEDs remember life before Falcon? It was every package to itself, weird build failures, reading long and tiresome logs, and failing because of different dependencies you sometimes didn’t even know you had. And there was light - Falcon came into our life. With its monorepo and pull-requests flow requirements, which we thought might have been overkill but we learned to love, suddenly our builds were more predictable and faster and understanding build errors became much easier.
So what is Falcon exactly? In this talk, we’ll take a tour behind the scenes, understand Falcon’s high-level architecture, meet Falcon’s key components, and understand how Falcon achieves minimal builds with parallelism and cache.
LLM Alignment - Maksym Breslavskyi
LLM alignment is the task of taking a pre-trained Large Language Model (LLM), and aligning it to perform better a specific task. For example GPT-3.5 (the model behind the scenes of the known ChatGPT) was created by applying alignment training to GPT-3, to make it follow user’s instructions helpfully and safely.
In the talk we’ll review the different alignment methods, starting from the pioneering ones by OpenAI’s ChatGPT (SFT, RLHF), to the newest ones, like DPO.
A Practical Side of Memory Management in JVM - Dmitry Komanov
We all know that JVM provides us a garbage collector that makes our lives easier and enables us to increase dev velocity. But there isn't only on GC, there are many. How to choose The One? But not "in general", but here, at Wix (but who knows?). How to find a local silver bullet to our memory management issues?
In this talk we will discuss different use cases for different GC algorithms, how different GC algorithms affect real Wix applications and ways to improve visibility to GC behavior.
Testing Strategy For Developers - Yonatan Aizenshtein
In this talk, Yonatan Aizenshtein explains how to create a testing strategy for your project in steps and show an actual use case of how we in the components group followed these steps, implementing a new testing strategy, and how it affected our CI and development experience. So, if you love talking about tests and need inspiration for testing your projects, this is the talk for you!
From Hype to Reality: Review of Current AI Practices at Wix - Olga Atzmon & Olha Shainoha
The excitement surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT suggests they are so intuitive and capable that even a 6-year-old could use them for any task. However, turning this promise into a reality for applications serving millions of users proves to be far more challenging than it seems.
Wix’s journey with GenAI seems to follow similar pattern. While Wix was an early and successful adopter of GenAI technology, already delivering value to our users and business KPIs, we observe how difficult and challenging is the development of AI based applications.
This talk originates from a comprehensive review we conducted on Wix's current LLM-based applications. The goal of this talk is to uncover key issues and detected gaps, while highlighting some of the best practices based on the latest scientific research to provide actionable insights and proven strategies for optimizing the use of LLMs.
Building Apps for Wix: The new Stack for App Builders - Noa Goldman & Dor Chaouat
In this session, we will unveil a whole new Stack for professional App builders on top of the Wix platform. I Noa, the product manager of Wix's CLI, and Dor, an engineering team leader, will showcase our key tools and resources. We'll cover the CLI toolkit, our rich SDK, and the design system that enables devs to build stunning Wix-like UI. We'll demonstrate how these tools enhance the developer experience, making it easier and faster for users to create high-quality apps. You'll see real examples of successful apps built on Wix and learn how our ecosystem's features directly benefit our users, boosting their productivity and success.
Join us to discover how Wix’s ecosystem empowers developers and contributes to their achievements.
Krampus - Dynamic Security Testing of Wix API's at Scale - Dmitry Karlinsky & Dima Ryskin
When doing application security for an API–centric enterprise spanning thousands of micro services, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is almost a must-have. However, DAST products often fail to execute even the most rudimentary tests on “deep” endpoints that require a complex user flow. If an API call requires an ID that was obtained in the response BODY 5 HTTP calls ago, the chances a traditional DAST will be able to test your API are slim.
In this talk we’ll present our approach to solving this issue. We were able to take advantage of Wix’s TDD culture, and significant investment in testing infrastructure (Sled), which have resulted in a significant coverage of end-to-end browser based tests. Our custom DAST solution, Krampus, leverages existing and constantly updated tests as its attack surface.
Using Sled network interceptors, it is able to introduce app-sec payloads into HTTP requests issued during the normal 'user flow' test scenarios (and pick up the results) and thus have an effective DAST for internal API's and endpoints. Using Krampus, we are able to automatically test a significant part of Wix's public attack surface in a smart way, pushing our coverage and our maturity higher.
How to Build for the Future Web - Yehonatan Daniv
The web platform is evolving faster than ever before. Even faster than our platform. The solutions we create are quickly becoming obsolete in light of new native web technologies emerging in the browsers. How do we compete in the market of web creation as a tool in a platform that is outpacing us? Animations on the web platform are making a huge leap forward. An emergence of new APIs, like View Transitions, Scroll-driven Animations, and many others.
At WOW team, We set out to rebuild Wix’s animation stack from the ground up. Completely redesigning and rebuilding all existing motion products, and adding many new ones. This is a story of how we designed the next generation of motion at Wix, and a few insights and tips on how everyone can design solutions that are competitive and relevant today, and remain so for the next decade. I’ll show how we’re leveraging my work on the W3C CSSWG to promote the features we need in the web platform, and how it’s directing our technical design.
Team Lead v Tech Debt - Itay Friedman
The technical backlog often holds some of the best opportunities for a team leader to make an impact. Making it happen however, is far from easy.
In this talk, Itay Friedman will share his toolkit, methodologies for getting it done, and some of the most unique and interesting behind-the-scenes challenges at Wix Engineering.
From 2 Weeks to 2 Seconds: Elevating Mobile Releases by Streamlining Bundling - Yoav Tsook
Running the entire Wix app locally is nearly impossible due to the lengthy bundling process (+8 minutes). Each build requires bundling everything from scratch, including all modules and third-party libraries.
To solve this, we introduced package bundles, which pre-bundle smaller app segments, cutting build time by 80% and enabling fast local runs. This approach raised challenges: bundle communication, dependency sharing, and loading sequences. In this talk, by Yoav Tsook, we’ll explore these challenges and solutions.
Pinpointing Pain Points in Your Code: Effective Value-Deriven Refactoring - Asaf Korem
Code 'hot-spots' are areas within your codebase that undergo frequent modifications—whether for bug fixes, feature additions, or other updates. These regions often serve as indicators of where your code might be experiencing the most stress or complexity, potentially signaling the need for targeted refactoring. In this lightning talk, I'll provide a set of straightforward rules and tools that can quickly highlight these critical areas. By identifying and classifying your code's hot-spots, you'll gain insights into where to focus your refactoring efforts for maximum impact, with minimal effort.
Building Custom LLM that Understands Wix Better than GPT - Lior Sidi
Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing complex tasks but remain costly, slow, and prone to errors without domain-specific knowledge. A better alternative is customizing smaller LLMs with targeted data, achieving near-large-model performance at lower cost and higher efficiency. This approach excels in fields like finance, law, and medicine using techniques like Domain-Adaptive Pre-Training (DAPT) and Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT). At Wix, we fine-tuned a small LLM (LLaMa 7B) for Wix-specific tasks-outperforming GPT-3.5 in question answering, intent classification, and ticket summarization.
This talk explores this journey, showcasing how tailored LLMs can enhance accuracy while reducing costs and complexity.
Transformers - Meir Perez
Transformers are the backbone of LLMs. This Neural Network architecture, presented by Google in 2017, is the core technology behind the current AI revolution. The purpose of this talk is to give an introduction to LLMs and to give an overview of the Transformer Architecture. We will explore the core concepts which make the Transformer architecture unique.
These include Sequence to Sequence modeling, Encoder-Decoder architecture, Attention, Self Attention and Multihead Attention. We will also discuss how LLMs are trained and fine tuned.
On the Way to Perfection: How to Make API Changes Fast and Safely - Elena Kravchenko
We all know the process of changing public API which usually comes down to adding new fields, marking old ones as deprecated and leaving it forever. But what if your API is in development and has only internal clients so you still have a hope to really finish your changes?
In such a case you probably would like to avoid breaking clients and ensure smooth migration. This is what I’m going to help with in this talk after showing why it might not be that easy as it seems.
How We Moved Java Upgrades From a 2 Years Project to a 1 Quarter Task - Ignas Limanauskas
When we started the Java 11 upgrade project in 2020 we had 1 large PR, 25 repositories with failing builds, and hundreds of failing tests. Little did we know that fixing code and introducing workarounds would be the lesser of our problems. We stumbled on custom runtime and deployment environments, and incomplete past migrations, which required us to migrate them individually.
The whole upgrade project took us over 2 years to complete. This painful experience, led us to derive lessons learned and improvements, so that subsequent Java upgrades were significantly easier and faster and Java 21 upgrade was just a 3-month task.
Ignas Limanauskas discusses the roadblocks encountered during Java version upgrades, explains how they were overcome, and outlines the steps taken to minimize the pain of future upgrades. He also shares practical insights that you can apply to your own migrations.
FED with Nile - Evgeny Alterman
Evgeny Alterman’s team has been working with Node.js services and has a common Nile use case across almost all of their services. Then came the announcement—the Node Single Runtime (NSR) was shutting down, and Wix would no longer support Node.js services. Faced with this change, the team transitioned to Nile, exploring Scala and Java—technologies that were previously only theoretical options. As a front-end development (FED) team handling full-stack work, TypeScript was a natural choice for both front-end and server code. However, given how well their services aligned with Nile’s design, the migration to Scala and Nile was smooth and efficient. This transition stands as a success story, demonstrating the strength of Nile’s server infrastructure.
Where Do Dev Terms Come From? - Yonatan Mevorach
If you stop and think about it, the terms we use on a daily basis in software development are actually a little... strange. When you restart your computer, you need to wait for it to 'Boot'. If you serialize a UTC date, it will have a 'Z' suffix, and if you look up what the 'Z' stands for, you'll find it stands for "Zulu" (what?) In this short talk, we're going to speed through a bunch of software development terms that you probably use all the time and explore their unexpected origins. We'll also see how other engineering fields influence our own via the etymology of these words we use every day.
Epic Failure: From 4 Weeks to 4 Qs - Matan Keidar
Imagine starting off on a seemingly straightforward innocent and normal four-week task journey, only to find yourself hurtling down a year-long (!) rollercoaster of chaos and confusion. In this talk, we'll peel back the curtain on the story behind this epic timeline extension, complete with all the drama and suspense of a Hollywood blockbuster. But fear not! This isn't the end of the line—it's a chance for redemption. Armed with the hard-earned wisdom of experience, we'll arm you with the tools and tactics you need to steer clear of similar pitfalls in your own projects. We will address all questions: what went wrong, why and each issue could have been avoided.
The Future of React: What's New, What's Next, and What Matters for Us - Hadar Grossman
React, the leading JavaScript library for building user interfaces, is constantly evolving to meet the growing demands of modern web development. With the recent release of versions 18 and 19, React introduces a range of cutting-edge features that promise to transform how we build applications. Over the past year, I've been working on integrating new React 18 features into Wix's site infrastructure, and it has already brought significant improvements to our user experience. But guess what? There's still a ton of cool stuff packed into React 18 and 19 that we haven't even explored yet.
In this talk, we'll dive into the specifics of React 18 and 19, focusing on top new features like Suspense, concurrent rendering, the new React compiler introduced in React 19, and more. We'll demonstrate their profound impact on performance and user experience. Through practical examples and demos, we'll illustrate how to apply these features to real-world scenarios, helping you unlock the full potential of React's latest advancements.
Navigating the Rollercoaster Ride of Maternity & IDF Reserve Return - Adi Mor & TimorBelitsky
Join Adi and Timor as they share their journeys of returning to tech after long absences due to maternity leave and IDF reserve duty. This session covers the emotional and physical challenges they faced, strategies for reintegration, and key lessons learned. Gain insights into managing significant life transitions while maintaining career momentum. This talk was given as part of Wix Engineering Conference 2024, our full-day event featuring in-depth talks, panels, workshops, lightning talks, and inspiring keynotes. For Wix's developers. By Wix's developers.
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