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 and The Exciting World of Edge Computing
We are very excited to welcome Brooklyn Zelenka back to the podcast to talk about her work at Fission and the ever-expanding frontier of edge computing! Brooklyn is a co-founder and CTO at Fission and she gives us some insight into the focus of the company's applied research. We hear from our guest about the projects she has been most excited about recently and she even talks about her newfound passion for fermentation! She does a great job of explaining why edge computing is potentially so revolutionary and some of the hurdles that are yet to be overcome on the way to reaching this potential. We discuss security and trust, tech equity, broad adoption, and much more before getting into some more Elixir-focused questions. Our guest shares how Elixir and functional programming have inspired her in different ways, as well as her perspective on some of the weaknesses of Elixir. At the end of our chat, Brooklyn gives some great resource recommendations for anyone wanting to learn more about edge computing, so make sure to stay tuned for that!
Key Points From This Episode:
- What Brooklyn has been keeping busy with recently.
- A little about Fission and what their research focuses on.
- Tech and societal trends through the pandemic and Brooklyn's new interest in fermentation.
- Brooklyn unpacks the main mission of edge computing and some of the biggest challenges.
- Decisions around what is localized and what is stored remotely in edge computing.
- Addressing the issue of trust and safeguarding against data breaches.
- The influence of functional programming in Brooklyn's work on edge applications.
- Some information on Brooklyn's talk at ElixirConf this year titled 'The Jump to Hyperspace.'
- Our guest explains the concept of antientropy and its associated techniques.
- Thoughts on the problem of tech equity and how this might be tackled.
- Gaining popular trust for new technologies and their inevitable faults.
- Brooklyn's feelings about Haskell, and the inspiration she takes from it into her work with Elixir.
- The impact that Elixir has on Brooklyn's work in a broader sense.
- The route that Brooklyn took into the functional programming world.
- Brooklyn weighs in on the questions of Elixir's downsides.
- Resources recommendations for anyone looking to get more acquainted with work in edge computing.
- Where to find and connect with Brooklyn online!
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/
Brooklyn Zelenka — https://twitter.com/expede?lang=en
Fission — https://fission.codes/
Brooklyn Zelenka at ElixirConf 2021— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogOEEKWxevo
Designing Data-Intensive Applications — https://www.bookmall.co.za/products/designing-data-intensive-applications?gclid=Cj0KCQiA2ZCOBhDiARIsAMRfv9ITE1sFKIIcSwK6EGR04aW2RrFZphwrvDQxZekyhuPbEyuqKt6Td8QaApPqEALw_wcB
Brooklyn's Tepache Fermentation Recipe — https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafybeiawn23o6prk4kdhv4cpbfylzr5g2fr22umhvbshf4rlksfrgjzpga/p/Tepache.pdf
Witchcraft Suite of Libraries in Haskell/Elixir — https://hexdocs.pm/witchcraft/readme.html
Proto School — https://proto.school/
Fission Discord — https://discord.gg/zAQBDEq
Fission Discourse — https://talk.fission.codes/
Fission on Luma — https://lu.ma/community/com-XuESjPQQHjh43pc
FissionCodes Twitter — https://twitter.com/FISSIONcodes
Witchcraft Suite — https://github.com/witchcrafters
Special Guest: Brooklyn Zelenka.