Challenges at Kiwi.com: Connecting hundreds

Tin Markovič (Booking Backend team leader at Kiwi.com) @ Brno-Moscow Python Meetup 2

"What is Kiwi.com? Why is engineering so important to a travel agency? How do we solve our problems? Tin will answer these questions and more when he explains the methodology of this budding techno-travel giant. We'll look at the problems of growing at breakneck speed, the advantages of being in a friendly environment and the challenges that make it all exciting".

Video: http://www.moscowpython.ru/meetup/2/kiwi-challenges/

Transcript

1. Tin Marković, Senior Software Eng
   Challenges at Kiwi.com
   Connecting hundreds
   

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2. 2
   Introduction and Overview
   
   How does Kiwi.com work
   
   Who are we? Why are we here?
   
   What are our daily problems
   
   Our daily challenges
   
   Assets and the work we do
   

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3. 3
   Speaker
   
   Tin
   
   Team Leader at Kiwi.com
   
   Software Architecture as passion
   
   Experiences working big projects (edX, Texas U, Kiwi)
   
   Where do I fit in the Kiwi picture?
   

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4. 4
   Company: Kiwi.com
   
   Making travel better
   
   Our vision is to make travelling simple and
   accessible to everyone
   

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5. 5
   Kiwi.com and Python
   
   We develop using mainly Python
   
   Startup beginnings (and present)
   
   Adaptability and quick scaling
   
   Try. Fail. Learn.
   
   EAFP
   

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6. 6
   The Problems
   
   Our scale is enormous with worldwide scope
   
   We need better standards
   
   Our environment changes often
   
   Growing pains of a huge company
   

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7. 7
   The Problems II
   
   Python lets us move rapidly, but...
   
   Issues:
   
   Type security
   
   Dictionaries: mutable, dynamic, nested
   
   There's more than one way to do it
   

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8. 8
   The Challenges
   
   Speed of delivery
   
   Changes have to come weekly and daily
   
   Downtime is unacceptable
   
   Dozens of bookings a minute
   
   Making travel better
   
   Customer experience: reliable and verbose
   

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9. 9
   The Assets
   
   Great Tooling
   
   Continuous Integration & Source Control
   
   Process, but measured
   
   Code review, trainings and education budget
   
   Safety nets
   
   Blameless, failures are expected
   

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10. 10
    The Assets II
    
    Static:
    
    PyLint, mypy, Coala, SonarQube
    
    Logging:
    
    Sentry, Pagerduty, Datadog, Kibana logs
    
    More? → Refactoring in Python (PyConf
    Moscow)
    

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11. 11
    The Work
    
    What do I do?
    
    The Bag Man, Mambo
    
    Precise, when it can be
    
    A lot of obscurity and vague rules
    
    Visible impacts
    
    Conversion rate, consumer satisfaction
    

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12. 12
    The Work II
    
    Booking → Monolith
    
    Scrape off part by part — services separated
    
    From: Method/Function oriented approach
    
    To: Resource/Item oriented approach (OOP!)
    
    REST-ish → Swagger/OpenAPI + Connexion
    
    Doing it right, but mindful of business needs
    

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13. 13
    The Work III
    
    Demanding:
    
    Mapping the processes
    
    Edge cases and their validity
    
    History of code
    
    Issues with service split:
    
    Edge cases get reimplemented
    
    Hereditary implementation - undocumented
    

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14. 14
    The Work IV
    
    Splitting services - summation:
    
    Mapped processes invalidate edge cases
    
    System can be forced into a stronger model
    
    Operation based API doesnt scale: focus on resources
    
    Stricter validation with Python: scheme everything
    
    Use modules generously: encapsulate everything
    shared and share business logic through all services
    

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15. ANY QUESTIONS?
    You can find me at tin.markovic@kiwi.com
    Thanks!
    

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