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)
Elixir DevOps & Interoperability with Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs
In this episode of Elixir Wizards, host Sundi Myint chats with SmartLogic engineers and fellow Wizards Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs about the practical tooling that surrounds Elixir in a consultancy setting. We dig into how standardized dev environments, sensible scaffolding, and clear observability help teams ship quickly across many client projects without turning every app into a snowflake. Join us for a grounded tour of what’s working for us today (and what we’ve retired), plus how we evaluate new tech (including AI) through a pragmatic, Elixir-first lens.
Key topics discussed in this episode:
- Standardizing across projects: why consistent environments matter in consultancy work
- Nix (and flakes) for reproducible dev setups and faster onboarding
- Igniter to scaffold common patterns (auth, config, workflows) without boilerplate drift
- Deployment approaches: OTP releases, runtime config, and Ansible playbooks
- Frontend pipeline evolution: from Brunch/Webpack to esbuild + Tailwind
- Observability in practice: Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboards
- Handling time-series and sensor data
- When Explorer can be the database
- Picking the right tool: Elixir where it shines, integrations where it counts
- Using AI with intention: code exploration, prototypes, and guardrails for IP/security
- Keeping quality high across multiple codebases: tests, telemetry, and sensible conventions
- Reducing context-switching costs with shared patterns and playbooks
Links mentioned:
http://smartlogic.io
https://nix.dev/
https://github.com/ash-project/igniter
Elixir Wizards S13E01 Igniter with Zach Daniel https://youtu.be/WM9iQlQSF_g
https://github.com/elixir-explorer/explorer
Elixir Wizards S14E09 Explorer with Chris Grainger https://youtu.be/OqJDsCF0El0
Elixir Wizards S14E08 Nix with Norbert (Nobbz) Melzer https://youtu.be/yymUcgy4OAk
https://jqlang.org/
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
https://github.com/resources/articles/devops/ci-cd
https://prometheus.io/
https://capistranorb.com/
https://ansible.com/
https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/releases.html
https://brunch.io/
https://webpack.js.org/loaders/css-loader/
https://tailwindcss.com/
https://sass-lang.com/dart-sass/
https://grafana.com/
https://pragprog.com/titles/passweather/build-a-weather-station-with-elixir-and-nerves/
https://www.datadoghq.com/
https://sqlite.org/
Elixir Wizards S14E06 SDUI at Cars.com with Zack Kayser https://youtu.be/nloRcgngT_k
https://github.com/features/copilot
https://openai.com/codex/
https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
YouTube Video: Vibe Coding TEDCO's RFP https://youtu.be/i1ncgXZJHZs
Blog: https://smartlogic.io/blog/how-i-used-ai-to-vibe-code-a-website-called-for-in-tedco-rfp/
Blog: https://smartlogic.io/blog/from-vibe-to-viable-turning-ai-built-prototypes-into-market-ready-mvps/
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/eragon-by-christopher-paolini/246801
https://tidewave.ai/
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