The Rock & Roll with Ember band - Gilles Bertrand

15 January 2021

The "Rock & Roll with Ember band" interview series introduces readers of the similarly titled book. They tell us about how they got acquainted with the framework, how they learned it, what they use it for, and share a few more details about the non-tech related side of their lives. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

Could you introduce yourself in a few sentences?

My name is Gilles Bertrand, computer enthusiast since I was 12. I have been working in the digitalization industry for 20 years and I still love it. I am the CEO of TRIPTYK, a small Belgian company working in the digitalization of companies and in the field of training. In the past 2 years, we have developed digital products in joint venture with startups with innovative ideas, and focused on the future of their businesses.

Which part of the world are you from?

I come from Belgium. I live with my family in a town called Mons very close to the French border.

When and how did your Ember journey begin? How did you learn about the framework?

At first, TRIPTYK specialized in Flash / ActionScript products. When the latter was put aside by the web, we had to decide on a new direction. We therefore transferred our know-how to HTML / CSS / jQuery and AngularJs to meet the demands of our customers. Being a manager, I quickly encountered concerns: putting new employees to work and portability between employees and projects. So, I decided to look for a framework with conventions and the necessary tools for the internal development of TRIPTYK. This is how I found Ember.js and joined the community very quickly.

How did reading the Rock & Roll with Ember book help you? Can you recall something that you learned from it?

The book has been a great and effective help in understanding the concepts behind the conventions that are in the framework. I think the element that helped me the most at the time was the part about computed properties, containing an array of objects which has been a stumbling block for me for a long time. I will end by saying that the book allows you to correctly structure the learning of the building blocks necessary for understanding the framework and does this in a progressive way.

What Ember feature/RFC/etc. are you most excited about?

Octane has been a real relief in the continuity of products at TRIPTYK. And today we are enthusiastic and confident in the use of Octane in our projects. Our attention has turned to Embroider to improve the efficiency of our applications and give us code splitting, tree shaking and lazy loading.

Other than reading the book, how did you learn to “speak" Ember?

This question is fun. Being in a rush to learn the framework, I reached out to Jamie White to get 2 days of mentoring around Ember.js. He was so enthusiastic that these 2 days were more than instructive - it also was a discovery of an extraordinary community. We also took advantage of the trainings given by Mike North and organized by Marco Otte-Witte of Simplabs.

Is there something you’d like to see covered or explained in more detail in the book?

No, not really, the more advanced book (Encore) gives us everything we expected. (Note from the author: the Encore book has not been yet published for Octane)

Are there any (side-)projects that you’ve built in Ember? What is it (are they) about?

Yes. This year we had the opportunity to release our first product:

Reaktiv.be, aimed at real estate agents for the management of property visits and communication between parties. It was developed in Ember and NFW: a Node.js open-source framework developed by TRIPTYK.

Were there any challenges or stumbling blocks while you were building your app?

I remember two things that gave us concerns. Securing the application with ember-simple-auth with our backend in NFW and configuring Mirage.js for authentication in testing.

How much time do you have to work on that project?

I would say 5%, the rest of my time being taken up by the daily management of TRIPTYK. On the other hand, the team spent more than 500 hours on the product.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I like to take care of my family and visit cities. If I have time left, I love to code and learn new things while listening to music and drinking good white wine :)

If people would like to follow you (or your project), where can they do so?

You can follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Triptyk on LinkedIn. If they are interested in NFW, they can follow the project on Github.

Is there something else you’d like to say?

One of the points that marked me throughout my experience with Ember is the community and the benevolence of all. I have attended EmberConf and EmberFest several times and the atmosphere is incredible.

If you've read the book, and would like to give a similar interview, please drop me a line at rarwe-book@balinterdi.com.

If you'd like to join the Rock & Roll with Ember band, check out the book of the same name to learn Ember (and be part of a band).