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)
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Chris Miller on Crafting a Programming Language
Today on Elixir Wizards, Chris Miller, software engineer at Corvus Insurance, joins us again for an in-depth discussion on the different approaches to programming. We dive into the conception and origin of new languages and how they evolve to solve new problems over time. Key Points From This Episode: The hosts catch up with Chris and learn a bit about Corvus Insurance What excites Chris about programming language and new ways of thinking Chris' fascination with all different types of languages from Chinese to Greek to C++ We get a refresher on the concept of Domain Specific Language What DSL is being used for certains problems in the domain at Corvus Insurance Why a coder should care about the crafting of a programming language We discuss why all coders don't only write assembly code Chris breaks down how he has attempted to write his own programming language We learn some inside tips on how stay within the abstract boundary when building a domain How Chris' experience with multiple coding languages has influenced his work in Elixir What the advantage of knowing multiple languages is Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Corvus Insurance on Twitter — https://twitter.com/CorvusInsurance Corvus Insurance -- https://www.corvusinsurance.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Frank Hunleth and Joe Martin on the Particulars of Nerves
Today on Elixir Wizards, we speak with two great minds in the Elixir community: Frank Hunleth from SmartRent and Joe Martin from Company Six. Join us to parse the particulars of Nerves, from production and terminology, to stacks, customization, and how they function. *Please remember to take our LISTENER SURVEY (https://smr.tl/survey2022) so we can come back bigger and better for Season 10 – Coming in early 2023!! * Key Points From This Episode: How both Frank & Joe became interested in Elixir We learn what nerves is currently being used for in production How Nerves is being utilized within farming and energy companies What the elevator pitch for nerves would be How well nerves play with pre-existing embedded projects in other languages, especially when having to coexist within a system How much can a user customize nerves What is Buildroot and the functions that it serves Frank explains how there are two worlds: elixir world & nerves systems Joe and Frank let us know what they are most excited about in the near future of nerves and Elixir Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: LISTENER SURVEY – https://smr.tl/survey2022 Nerves Livebook – https://github.com/livebook-dev/nerves_livebook Frank Hunleth on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/fhunleth/ Frank Hunleth on Twitter — https://twitter.com/fhunleth Frank Hunleth on GitHub -- https://github.com/fhunleth Joe Martin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-martin-265861b2/ Joe Martin on GitHub – http://github.com/josephmartin09 SmartRent -- https://smartrent.com/ Company Six – https://www.co6.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Jenny Bramble on Testing and Collaboration at Papa
Today on Elixir Wizards, we chat with Jenny Bramble. Jenny is the Director of Quality Engineering at Papa, a platform that connects older adults and low-income families with companionship and a helping hand with daily tasks. Tune in to learn more about Jenny's experience with testing and team collaboration at Papa. Key Points From This Episode: Jenny tells us about her journey to learning Elixir (for 8 years now!) We learn about the 24 talks that Jenny has done as a keynote speaker The breakdown of her talk this year at Elixir Conf on upgrades How Jenny got in to writing tests after going to college for computer science What goes into developer handoff and how that varies depending on the company and team The connection and importance between customer service and empathy What it's like to work in Quality Engineering and Testing at Papa What is testing? She provides helpful tips of things that tend to be caught up by QA during code reviews Jenny has a course on management for Test Automation coming out in 2023! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Jenny Bramble on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybramble/ Jenny Bramble on Twitter — https://twitter.com/jennydoesthings Jenny Bramble on GitHub -- https://github.com/jennydoesthings Papa -- https://www.papa.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Harper Atlas on Tailwind From the Perspective of a Designer
We are excited to have SmartLogic's own Harper Atlas as our guest on Elixir Wizards today! Harper, a product designer at SmartLogic (and cat lady at home), joins us on this episode to parse the particulars of the Tailwind framework from a designer's perspective. Join us to gain insights from our first non-engineer guest in this spirited conversation with Harper! Key Points From This Episode: We learn about Harper’s journey into the UX field Harper breaks down her day-to-day life as a product designer at SmartLogic What the difference between FigMa and FigJam is The good & bad sides of Tailwind What goes into developer handoff and how that varies depending on the company and team The importance of finding common language and bridging the gap between developer island and design island within a developer handoff The features that Harper doesn’t like about Tailwind How Tailwind has started to feel like the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon Harper gives developers some advice on how to be more helpful to designers while working in a Tailwind space Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Harper Atlas on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/harper-atlas Harper Atlas on Twitter — https://twitter.com/harperatlas SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Theo Harris on On Boarding into Elixir at Alembic
Today on the show we’re excited to have Theo Harris here to discuss Onboarding Into Elixir. Theo is a technical consultant working for Alembic in Sydney, Australia. He is currently working on a project utilizing Elixir and Phoenix LiveView. Tune in today to learn more about Onboarding Into Elixir, from our guest Theo Harris! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guest, Theo Harris Theo lets us in on his current hot tech take We discuss accessibility tips and tricks Theo gives us the run down on Alembic and what they do at their company We find out whether or not Theo has a pet dinosaur We learn of the technical challenges that Theo has faced as an Elixir Engineer The breakdown of the onboarding process at Alembic Theo gives advice to beginners on how to learn Elixir/Phoenix Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Theo Harris on Twitter — https://twitter.com/dino_coder Theo Harris on GitHub — https://github.com/Theosaurus-Rexv Theo Harris on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/theo-harris-coder/ Alembic — https://alembic.com.au/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Ashley Smith & Kenneth Moy from Bowery Farming on Oban
On today’s episode of Elixir Wizards, Ashley Smith and Kenneth Moy from Bowery Farming join us to dive into the particulars of Oban. Ashley has been working as a software engineer for 3 years with full-stack experience working mainly on web applications and now works in elixir at Bowery Farming. Kenneth is a software engineer at Bowery Farming with 3 years of elixir experience. Tune in today to learn more about Oban from today’s special guests, Ashley & Kenneth! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guests, Ashley & Kenneth We get the inside scoop of what happens behind the scenes at Bowery Farms and how they use elixir What is Oban and how does it compare to other languages Why one would use Oban rather than something like Broadway How Oban is useful at Bowery Farms Ashley & Kenneth explain why they are not “over” Ecto.Multi just yet We hear about their working experience at Bowery, some days are remote, some days are at the office, and some days are at the farm where they get to see their work come to life Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Ashley Smith on GitHub — https://github.com/asmith1 Ashley Smith on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-smith-951802126/ Kenneth Moy on Twitter — https://mobile.twitter.com/chehitskenniexd Kenneth Moy on GitHub — https://github.com/chehitskenniexd Kenneth Moy on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-moy/ Bowery Farms — https://boweryfarming.com SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Jason Stiebs on LiveView at RokkinCat
Today we welcome Jason Stiebs to the podcast to talk about all things LiveView and how he was originally wrong about LiveView in the beginning. Jason is the founder at Rokkincat, and a core contributor to Phoenix. Jason loves finding solutions to complex problems and mentoring young engineers. Tune in today to learn more about LiveView from today’s special guest, Jason Stiebs! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guest, Jason Stiebs A summary of Jason’s talk at ElixirConf on why he initially was wrong about LiveView How Jason became a Phoenix core team member What is stopping LiveView from being 1.0 Is there something that would make LiveView ‘complete’ How to decide to use LiveView over an SPA framework Do you know if there are any folks out there putting together tooling for LiveView? Thinking like Chrome devtools, performance monitoring, etc. What tools can we use to compare our LiveView performance to non LV performance? What Jason's thoughts about a time traveling feature for LiveView like what React / Redux has What some featuresare from other frameworks that Jason would like to see in LiveView one day How often Jason sees mixed LV and non LV projects We hear about what's next in terms of features for functional components Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Jason Stiebs on Twitter — https://twitter.com/peregrine Jason Stiebs on GitHub — https://github.com/jeregrine Jason Stiebs on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonstiebs/ Jason Stiebs Email Address – jason@rokkincat.com RokkinCat — https://rokkincat.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Mark & David from Thinking Elixir on Ecto Queries
This week the Thinking Elixir Podcast is taking over Elixir Wizards! Mark & David from Thinking Elixir are here today to parse the particulars of Ecto Queries! Mark Ericksen is an Elixir Specialist at Fly.io and host of Thinking Elixir. David Bernheisel is a Senior Software Engineer at Stripe and host of Thinking Elixir. Tune in today to learn more about Ecto Queries from today’s special guests, Mark Ericksen and David Bernheisel! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guests, Mark & David The hosts catch up with Mark & David and learn about David’s new book Ecto In Production Dave Lucia is mentioned once again, can we go one episode without talking about him? Find out how long David & Mark have been working in databases We get the breakdown of what an Ecto Query is There is a discussion around schema migrations vs data migrations and how to avoid common pain points Learn what resources are available for learning Ecto We find out what the pin operator is and when it is used What an extensive query is and how to optimize queries We learn about fun edge cases that we’ve bumped into while working with Ecto The ins and outs of Ecto dump and Ecto load ”Ecto is a whole wide world of information. You think you know a lot and then you realize you don't. Nope, I'm almost just as dumb as I was five years ago about SQL and Ecto. Nope, it evolves. It gets deep.” - Mark Ericksen Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Mark Ericksen on Twitter — https://twitter.com/brainlid Mark Ericksen on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-ericksen-66397417/ David Bernheisel on Twitter – https://twitter.com/bernheisel David Bernheisel on GitHub – https://github.com/dbernheisel David Bernheisel on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernheisel/ Thinking Elixir Podcast https://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic Use The Index, Luke! https://use-the-index-luke.com/ Postgresql Tutorial https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/ Postgresql subqueries https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3004887/how-to-do-a-postgresql-subquery-in-select-clause-with-join-in-from-clause-like-s https://www.w3resource.com/sql/subqueries/understanding-sql-subqueries.php Fly Blog: Safe Ecto Migrations https://fly.io/phoenix-files/safe-ecto-migrations/ Crunchy Data Developer Tutorials https://www.crunchydata.com/developers/tutorials Crunchy Data Postgres Tips https://www.crunchydata.com/postgres-tips Ecto in Production https://www.ectoinproduction.com/ SQL Join Illustration https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SQLJoins.svg SQL Join Illustration https://i.stack.imgur.com/UI25E.jpg
Tyler Young on Geo Mapping at Felt
Today on Elixir Wizards we are joined by Tyler Young to explore the particulars of Geo Mapping, the process of turning data into maps. Tyler is a Senior Software Developer at Felt, the world’s first collaborative mapping tool built for anyone to make a beautiful map in minutes. Tune in today to learn more about Geo Mapping from today’s special guest, Tyler Young! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guest, Tyler Young We discover Tyler’s background and how he started working in Elixir, as well as how he got into the map business because of his love for Elixir We learn about GIS and its history as a system/standard/protocol, and how someone can study GIS Find out how mapping is helpful in more ways than just for directions, including climate changes, vacation planning, and more Tyler breaks down the common technologies and toolkits for programming with maps The specific tools that Felt is using to ingest map data and build the interactive maps What common problems arise when developing with maps Tyler teaches the Elixir Wizards about his tried and true way of decision making with “The McDonald’s option” _ **Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Tyler Young on Twitter — https://twitter.com/TylerAYoung Tyler Young on GitHub — https://github.com/s3cur3 Tyler Young on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-young-dev/ Felt — https://felt.com/about SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Kate Rezentes on GenServers at Simplebet
Season 9 is in full swing and we are so excited to welcome Kate Rezentes today to dive into the particulars of GenServers. Kate is a Junior Software Developer at Simplebet, a B2B product development company using machine learning and real-time technology to make every moment of every sporting event a betting opportunity. Tune in today to learn more from today’s special guest, Kate Rezentes! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guest, Kate Rezentes We learn about Kate’s background and her long history with programming We discuss how many conferences she’s attended and why ElixirConf has been her favorite (thus far) Find out how Kate landed a job while attending ElixirConf How GenServers as a subject came to be We get an inside look at Kate’s working experience at Simplebet and her experience as a Junior Engineer in the industry so far What cases in particular cause the need for a GenServer We discuss where GenServers would be appropriate to use and why The ins and outs of ‘handle calls’ and ‘callbacks’ The process of testing a GenServer and data storage_ **Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:* Kate Rezentes on Twitter — https://twitter.com/rezkate Kate Rezentes on GitHub — https://github.com/KateRezentes Kate Rezentes on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfrezent/ Simplebet — https://simplebet.io/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
Dave Lucia on Observability at Bitfo
Welcome to our first episode of Season 9 Elixir Wizards, Parsing the Particulars. A show focused on conversations with software developers from around the world on the Elixir language and other modern web technologies. Today, we are joined by Dave Lucia, Chief Technology Officer at Bitfo, a cryptocurrency media company building educational content for people who are interested in cryptocurrency. Dave is active in the Elixir community and in the past has spoken at Code BEAM SF, ElixirConf, RabbitMQ Summit, and has written several blog posts which can be found at davelucia.com. In today’s episode we find out more about Dave’s professional background and dive into the particulars of observability. Tune in today to learn more from today’s special guest, Dave Lucia! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today’s topic and introduction to our special guest, Dave Lucia We find out about Bitfo and what services they offer We discuss Dave’s blog post on observability Find out how Dave wrote the blog post because he saw a gap at his company How Sundi proofread Dave’s blog post and realized her lack of knowledge on observability The most common mistake teams or engineers make when it comes to observability We peel back the layers on what telemetry is What the difference between telemetry and OpenTelemetry is How to choose which tool is right when it comes to better observability *The breakdown of the uses for observability telemetry *When and why would we use OpenTelemtry vs basic observability *What languages Dave started in before he was working in Elixir *How Elixir lends better for observability *Where to start if you want to implement basic observability for someone who has no experience with it *Dave answers the question, “can you go too far with observability?” *We discuss Livebook and what exciting things it will bring for the future *Most importantly, Dave explains why pineapples are important to him **Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Dave’s blog post on Observability: https://davelucia.com/blog/observing-elixir-with-lightstep Dave Lucia on Twitter — https://twitter.com/davydog187 Dave Lucia on GitHub — https://github.com/davydog187 Dave Lucia on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lucia-a395441b/ Bitfo — https://www.bitfo.com/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Sundi Myint on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin Owen Bickford on Twitter — https://twitter.com/owenbickford/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io
We're baaaack! Season 9 Teaser
SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic on Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic SmartLogic on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartlogic-io/ SmartLogic on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/smartlogic/ Bilal Hankins on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/hankins-bilal/ Sundi Myint on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundimyint/ Owen Bickford on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-bickford-8b6b1523a/
Looking back on Season 8 with Sundi, Owen & Dan
It’s the season finale show! Can you believe it? Join us this week as Sundi, Owen, and Dan take a look back at this season of Elixir Wizards! You’ll hear their discussion about favorite moments over the season and learn about this season’s theme and its origin, and what they learned throughout the season. Enjoy and we hope to see you back for Season 9! Key Points From This Episode: Reflection on the guests experiences with all different types of language How the team landed on the theme of Elixir in a Polyglot Environment Having expectation of guests vs how the conversation turned out The discovery that environment influences the strength of the code that is being written We dig deeper into the flexibility of all of these companies How the hosts enjoyed the dream language combination answers from guests We hear about the teams experience with their first in-person recording Hearing about guests personal experiences and projects vs just their at-work experience We find out what birds do when they’re excited in a tree Flutter as a solution for building mobile applications The hosts likes, dislikes, experience with Flutter and the difference it brings to the table We reflect on a guest applying gamification The hosts discuss the guests range of experience, from a year to decades in the field, and how many different perspectives were shown with different backgrounds A recurring theme of the guests: structuring teams to fit the needs of the company - recurring theme Hearing about products and projects guests are working on Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic on Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogiccom SmartLogic on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartlogic-io/ SmartLogic on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/smartlogic/ Dan Ivovich on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundimyint/ Dan Ivovich on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin Dan Ivovich on Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogiccom SmartLogic on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartlogic-io/ SmartLogic on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/smartlogic/ Owen Bickford on Twitter — https://twitter.com/owenbickford/ Owen Bickford on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/OwenBickford/ Sundi Myint on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundimyint/ Sundi Myint on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/sundikhin/ Sundi Myint on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin/ Sundi Myint on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/sundimyint/
Nathan Retta on Engineering in Android at DoorDash
This week on Elixir Wizards we’re joined by Nathan Retta, Senior Software Engineer from Android at DoorDash. We learn about Nathan’s background; his experience having a degree in Chemical Engineering and working in Oil and Gas for 6 years. Nathan then wrote an Android app in 2016 and soon after became a mobile developer -- the rest is history. He is currently based in Denver, Colorado, and our host Owen has met him prior through the Denver Elixir virtual meet up. Join us today for this conversation between Owen, Dan and Nathan as we learn about Nathan’s experience leading up to his current position at Android for DoorDash and how he is using Elixir in his side projects.
Cara Mitchell on Internal In-house eCommerce
Welcome to this week’s episode of Elixir Wizards, with our special guest, Cara Mitchell of Pepsi Co. Today we speak with Cara about her career journey that led to her living in the lower East Side of New York City. Cara has been working in the software engineering field for over 20 years and currently works at PepsiCo on their in-house eCommerce platform built with Elixir. Over the years, she's worked on systems that range from embedded firmware to large distributed systems running on thousands of machines. She enjoys working in a number of programming languages and refuses to pick a favorite. Today we learn about Cara’s unique experience as a college dropout turned self-made software engineer and how PepsiCo is working in Elixir on a global scale with an inside look at the goings on at PepsiCo. Tune in today to learn more from today’s special guest, Cara Mitchell!