YP: Improving Developer Experience

nat.peterson@workday.com
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 Workday

● Established 2005
● Provides business apps:
● Human Capital Management, Payroll,
● Financial Management, Analytics,
● Student, Learning, Recruiting …
● SaaS, in the cloud
● multi-tenant-per server
● Lots of satisfied customers
● Airbnb, Adobe, Amazon, Siemens, Wal-Mart
● Running their business through the Workday UI
○ Workday-UI-for-Customers.mp4
https://youtu.be/_BGWVSt7SbQ
 Applications Development

● Workday has hundreds of applications developers

● Defining business logic as metadata
● Customers define:
● Workers, Organizations, Compensation Plans, …
● Developers define:
● Classes, Methods, Tasks & Pages, …
● With XpressO, a language built upon itself
● “Steve Morgan” is an instance of the Worker class.
● The “Worker” class is an instance of the “Class” class.
● Developing through the same Workday UI
● Workday-UI-for-Developers.mp4
https://youtu.be/A7qRs8RdlH0
 What is XpressO? (XO)

● Collection of DSLs to define applications

● Editable through web forms, mostly
● Like this “GRA - Get Referenced Attribute Method”
 The Applications Development Experience

● Long ago: Develop together in “master” server

● Get “master” to a stable state
● Snapshot “master” for customers
● Today: Develop in virtual servers, called “SUVs”
● Create and test a patch, in another SUV
● Merge patch to “master”
● Snapshot for customers
● No version control…
● Except a new patch repository
● Learn XpressO in a 6-week “boot camp”
● Lots of room for improvement here
 What is YP?

● YP is after XO
 YP Runtime

● YP is after XO
● Runtime for XpressO
○ (and XpressO alternatives)
 YP Language

● YP is after XO
● Runtime for XpressO (and XpressO alternatives)
● Language: YP as XpressO’s new form
 YP-IDE

● YP is after XO
● Runtime for XpressO (and XpressO alternatives)
● Language: YP as XpressO’s new form
● Developer Experience: YP-IDE (tYPe) + VCS, CI, etc.
 YP-IDE, powered by MPS

● MPS + Itemis extensions + Workday extensions:

● Like: “SUV Manager”
● Import XpressO classes and methods
● Intentions to integrate XO<->YP
● YP unit tests of XpressO code
● Execution trace, REPL
● Let’s have a look:
● YP-IDE-for-Devs.mp4
https://youtu.be/nkRRZin7FTM
 Hooray, it works!

● Easy: Defining the languages

● Avoid “design by committee”
● Runtime for XpressO is “almost correct”
● YP runtime is not yet production
● Adding chaos to unsorted sets
● And roll it out cautiously
 Hooray, it works!

● Easy: Defining the languages

● Avoid “design by committee”
● Runtime for XpressO is “almost correct”
● YP runtime is not yet production
● Adding chaos for unsorted sets
● Harder: Making the new DSLs work
● Runtime is only for (some) Read methods
● Other DLSs require new runtime
● Not generating code, but runtime objects
 Hooray, it works!

● Easy: Defining the languages

● Avoid “design by committee”
● Runtime for XpressO is “almost correct”
● YP runtime is not yet production
● Adding chaos for unsorted sets
● Harder: Making the new DSLs work
● Runtime is only for (some) Read methods
● Hardest: Fitting in with existing systems and processes
● Especially when language & runtime under development
● What about YP code last changed weeks ago?
Hooray, it can work!
 Status: this stuff takes a while

● Runtime is correct, mostly.

● Maybe we go live with “hybrid mode” ?
● Surface XpressO as stubs in the YP-IDE
● Unit test language to test ‘em.
● Hello YP!
● A new, improved IDE
● … to write unit tests.
● … of XpressO read logic.
 Workday Cloud Platform (WCP)

● External Developers use the YP-IDE

● Platform-as-a-Service
● To build and sell applications
● Long-term target: YP
as the common platform
● Internal and external development
the same way
● Short-term target: YP-IDE
for Class Structure
 YP-IDE Roadmap

● First: Unit Tests (internal), Class Structure (external)

● Under development: YP “Minimum Viable Product”
○ YP Functions
○ YP Update logic,
by YP-Munich folks
 YP-IDE Roadmap

● First: Unit Tests (internal), Class Structure (external)

● Under development: YP “Minimum Viable Product”
○ YP Functions
○ YP Update logic, by YP-Munich folks
○ Unit tests for XO updates
○ Services & APIs & REST
○ UI - Pages & Tasks
 YP-IDE Roadmap

● First: Unit Tests (internal), Class Structure (external)

● Under development: YP “Minimum Viable Product”
○ YP Functions
○ YP Update logic, by YP-Munich folks
○ Unit tests for XO updates
○ Services & APIs & REST
○ UI - Pages & Tasks
○ Continuous Integration
○ Developer experience coding XO+YP together
○ MPS helps; still plenty to do
○ Excited for the future of AppsDev at Workday
 TM

Further Questions?