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VirtusLab's Articles

Artificial Intelligence|Apr 13, 2026

Your CI is an Oracle... that lies too

This is post #3 in The Agent-Ready SDLC series. In post #1 we laid out the Ferrari-in-a-Fiat-500 problem - the engine is great, the chassis isn't. In post #2 we covered the first bottleneck: context. Now we're at the second bottleneck - the one that sits between your agent and reality.

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Artificial Intelligence|Apr 13, 2026

Interview with Krzysztof Grajek, Principal Software Developer at SoftwareMill and the lead engineer behind TraceVault

As AI tools take over more and more of the actual coding work, a new question emerges: who's watching what they do? TraceVault is a tool designed to bring that control back. Krzysztof Grajek, Principal Software Developer at SoftwareMill and the lead engineer behind TraceVault, talks about why the rise of AI-generated code demands a completely new approach to trust, auditability, and documentation.

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Artificial Intelligence|Apr 10, 2026

AI in the SDLC: Faster or Just Busier?

As AI accelerates code generation, many teams are discovering that speed gains often come with hidden costs in review, validation, and complexity. We sat down with Krzysztof Romanowski to unpack what’s really happening inside modern engineering organizations.

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Business insights|Apr 9, 2026

Build or Delegate? The Hidden Cost of Developer Experience (DX)

As developer experience (DX) becomes a competitive advantage, many organizations are investing in internal platforms and tooling. However, building and maintaining DX capabilities in-house is costly and complex. This raises a key question: when should organizations manage developer productivity internally, and when is it more effective to engage external partners?

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Backend Engineering|Sep 24, 2025

Gradle vs. Bazel for Android projects: A deep dive

Discover how Gradle and Bazel compare for Android builds, from IDE support to scalability. Learn which tool suits your team’s size and project goals.

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Backend Engineering|Jan 8, 2025

Overcoming monorepo challenges with Bazel for your projects

In this article, we will examine common monorepo challenges and show how Bazel helps turn a large codebase into a more manageable, efficient ecosystem. Also, we included a link to a working repository where the ideas described here are implemented.

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Scala|Dec 17, 2024

Scala, Bazel, Akka, and monorepos: A technical perspective of monorepo migration

Companies, especially mid-sized and larger ones, face the challenge of structuring projects at scale. Arguably, almost every technology and paradigm can be used by a single developer to write a small piece of code, but obviously, this is not enough for any organization—engineering solutions must allow people from multiple disciplines to develop and maintain the application efficiently throughout the whole application lifecycle.

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Backend Engineering|Nov 28, 2024

9 Developer Experience (DX) tools to use in 2025

Being software engineering consultants we have a unique perspective on how different developer experience tools work with our client’s tech stacks. We have gathered a collective experience of our engineers and prepared this list of 9 developer experience tools that our clients and their developers found helpful.

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Backend Engineering|Nov 26, 2024

Bazel-fueled monorepos for microservices

Code organization is easy when work is done in a small team, and the codebase is not yet extensive. However, as the project's scope grows and new sub-teams appear, the question of how to subdivide and manage the growing codebase becomes increasingly important.

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Backend Engineering|Nov 13, 2024

Deep dive into Bazel queries: from basics to advanced use cases

This article will guide you through a notable subset of Bazelʼs querying features backed by examples. These are useful for debugging, exploration, and tooling. We’ll start with basic Bazel queries with target patterns, then we will move on to demonstrating Bazel aquery and cquery.

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Backend Engineering|Oct 14, 2024

What is developer experience (DX) and how to tell if your project delivers a good one?

Developer Experience (DX) has emerged as a crucial factor in the success of any software development project. At its core, DX represents the overall happiness, productivity, and ease with which developers can create high-quality work. But how can you truly measure the DX of your project?

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Backend Engineering|Jul 31, 2024

What are the best IDEs in 2024? Our perspective, based on 10+ years of experience

In this article, we will take a closer look at 3 IDEs, that we believe to be the best in their own right, and a few others that are worth taking a closer look at. We will explain their unique features and the types of projects for which they are best suited.

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