Elixir Wizards is an interview-format podcast, focused on engineers who use the Elixir programming language. Initially launched in early 2019, each season focuses on a specific topic or topics, with each interview focusing on the guest's experience and opinions on the topic. Elixir Wizards is hosted by Eric Oestrich and Sundi Myint of SmartLogic, a dev shop that’s been building custom software since 2005 and running Elixir applications in production since 2015. Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir. (https://smartlogic.io/phoenix-and-elixir?utm_source=podcast)
Season 10 Kickoff: The Hosts Discuss The Future of Elixir
It’s the season 10 premiere of the Elixir Wizards podcast! Sundi Myint, Owen Bickford, and Dan Ivovich kick off the season with a spirited conversation about what they hope to see in the future of the Elixir programming language, experiences that inform their predictions, and excitement for this season’s lineup of guests.
They touch on how Elixir has evolved in the previous ten years and how the range of use cases has expanded beyond web development.
- The hosts introduce the season 10 theme: The Next Ten Years of Elixir
- Dan explains his initial hesitation and how he was ultimately won over by the language
- Owen talks about functional programming and why Elixir piqued his interest
- Sundi compares Elixir to other languages she’s worked with and why she thinks it’s more intuitive and readable
- Sundi talks about her recent experience using Flutter for mobile application development
- The hosts express excitement about the various ways Elixir is currently being used and its potential for growth
- The Wizards express interest in hearing from guests this season to gain more perspective
- They discuss Phoenix, LiveView, documentation, Flutter, Dart, and resources available to the Elixir community, and the benefits of being fluent in different programming languages
- Owen suggests that Elixir and Phoenix are optimal for projects with limited resources and leaner teams
- They highlight the importance of building resource-efficient apps that work well on low-powered devices
- Dan expresses his desire to embrace types more but acknowledges that a first-party typing system is unlikely
- The speakers discuss how Elixir has made complex tasks more accessible through features like LiveView, Phoenix Presence, WebSockets, Pub/Sub, Nerves, and ML libraries
- They express excitement about the possibilities for the future of Elixir
Links mentioned in this episode:
SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/
SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Axon – https://hexdocs.pm/axon/Axon.html
Bumblebee – https://hex.pm/packages/bumblebee
HEEx – https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/assigns-eex.html
Phoenix LiveView – https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveView.html
Numerical Elixir – https://hexdocs.pm/nx/intro-to-nx.html
Hugging Face – https://huggingface.co/docs
Flutter – https://docs.flutter.dev/
Dart – https://dart.dev/
Broadway – https://hexdocs.pm/broadway/Broadway.html
Phoenix Presence – https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Presence.html
Nerves – https://hexdocs.pm/nerves/getting-started.html
WebSocket – https://hexdocs.pm/web_socket/readme.html