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)
Brooklyn Zelenka from SPADE Co. - Elixir in Production
We talk with Brooklyn Zelenka from SPADE Co. about their current and past Elixir projects and how they are deployed.
Brooklyn Zelenka - SPADE Co.
Find Brooklyn elsewhere online:
https://twitter.com/expede
https://github.com/expede
1:08 - Brooklyn’s Background
Brooklyn's background and experience with Elixir is deep. Huge open source contributor.
Got started in Elixir just after Phoenix got to 1.0.
1:53 - Worked on several Elixir projects in production.
2:43 - Why she got into Elixir.
- Real Time
- More performant than Rails.
- Great documentation
- Industrial-grade
4:38 - When you wouldn't use Elixir.
Easy to get stakeholder buy-in. Just point to WhatsApp.
Elixir is made for 2019
CLI tools
Repl-driven development
TDD tools built in by default
All the best practices we have today are built in.
7:14 - Where has Brooklyn hosted her apps?
Heroku for POC's. AWS for production. Dockerized because "kubernetes is the new hotness"
9:40 - Do you do any clustering?
Load balanced above. AWS load balancing is very standard. They're well understood and have a nice developer experience.
10:29 Are you able to get any zero downtime deploys?
Zero downtime deploys. Awesome but impractical. Rolling deploys are easier and usually more appropriate. Some requirements make it valuable.
Erlang error states. Exceptional. Allows you to build for the happy path. Don't worry about error handling all the time.
Witchcraft and dark magic. Monads.
Poke around the standard library.
12:50 - How does Elixir compare to Rails in terms of response times, and other aspects?
15:32 - What libraries do you use and what have you built?
22:41 - Any cool features of OTP you are using?
25:36 - One tip to developers new to Elixir
Build up a peer-to-peer cli chat from scratch in one GenServer.
Find her at @expede everywhere on the internet.
Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir.
Special Guest: Brooklyn Zelenka.
Links: