RivieraDEV 2025

RivieraDev 2025 – Let’s Go!

The 2025 edition of RivieraDev is officially underway! Amphitheater 339, with its 500-seat capacity, is completely full. The energy and anticipation in the room set the tone for an exciting lineup of talks and innovations.

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🎤 Opening Keynote by Thibaut Giraud (aka Monsieur Phi on YouTube)

Talk: “Do LLMs Dream of Electric Knights?”

• LLMs are often referred to as “stochastic parrots” — they generate text without understanding the world.
• Humans also sometimes “parrot” without understanding — language is not always tied to deep comprehension.
• Criticism like “LLMs just predict tokens” is an oversimplification.

Example: Magnus Carlsen’s unpredictable chess moves are strategic and contextual. Predicting them requires deep reasoning — something LLMs are increasingly capable of.

• GPT-3.5-turbo-instruct (as of Sept 2023) can play chess with an Elo rating around 1800.
• LLMs process games encoded in PGN (Portable Game Notation).

Takeaway: Negative results don’t reveal much, it's just teliing you “it failed with this prompt”. Positive outcomes are more telling about LLM potential. It works nows and in the future.

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🤖 Zineb Bendhiba – MCP in Action

Topic: Integrating AI Agents with Tools via MCP (Model Context Protocol)

• MCP allows local or remote interactions with models (via HTTP, for example).
• LLMs are stateless — apps must manage memory and context.
• LangChain4j supports Java developers building agent-based LLM systems.

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📚 Guillaume Laforge – LLM Limitations & RAG

Limitations of LLMs:

• No real-time awareness (e.g., current date)
• Can’t access private data
• Hallucinations
• Limited token context (even with Gemini's large windows)

What is RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)?

1. Retrieve: Pull information from external sources (DBs, websites…)
2. Augment: Add retrieved context to the prompt using templates:

   You must answer the question: {{question}}
   Based on this context: {{context}}

3. Generate: LLM produces the final response

Advantages: More accurate, less hallucination, explainable via context, and up-to-date.

Implementing RAG:

• Chunk documents and store in a vector DB
• Use vector search to retrieve and add context

Advanced Techniques:

• Chunking: fixed-length, overlapping, sentence-based, or parent-child structures
• Query compression and routing
• Agentic RAG for multi-step reasoning
• Hybrid RAG + long context models

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💡 Theo Gianella & Julien Sulpis – How Good Are You at Responsive CSS?

• “Responsive Web Design” coined by Ethan Marcotte (2010)
• Forget pixel-perfect – focus on flexibility and fluidity
• Use modern CSS units: ch, vmin, clamp(), dvh, etc.
• Use container queries instead of relying only on media queries

Reference: CSS Container Query Guide by Ahmad Shadeed

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🧪 Laurent Dogin – LLM Tools in Nushell

• Nushell + AI agents GitHub repo
• Nushell is a cross-platform modern shell
• Integration with AI uses vector DBs, the ReAct pattern, and TAO prompts (Thoughts, Actions, Observations)
• Key concerns include managing identity, permissions, and chaining tools — similar to BPM pipelines

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🧭 Arnaud Langlade – Example Mapping (Agile)

Problem: In grooming sessions, devs are passive, meetings run long, and delivery is often misaligned.

“It’s not stakeholder knowledge, but developer ignorance that gets deployed to production.” – Alberto Brandolini

Example Mapping (by Matt Wynne):

• Short (30 min) session with “Three Amigos”: PM, dev, QA
• Use cards or digital tools like Miro:
• Yellow: user story
• Blue: rules
• Green: examples (BDD style)
• Pink: open questions

Tips: Involve the whole team, rotate the scribe, split complex rules, and use examples for tests.

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🛠️ Dhruv Kumar – Platform Engineering + AI

• Dev productivity is low — only 11% of time is spent coding!
• Cloud complexity, security concerns, and tool overload are major factors

Platform Engineering can help:

• Standardizes SDLC practices
• Security built-in
• Supports tool flexibility
• Improves visibility through DORA metrics
• AI boosts developer experience with smart triage, alerts, and decision support

🎤 Conclusion – Day 1

That’s a wrap for Day 1 of the RivieraDev conference! From thought-provoking keynotes to hands-on tech sessions, the energy and ideas have been nothing short of inspiring.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings as we head into the second — and final — day of RivieraDev. Stay tuned!

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