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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Jenn Gamble on Data Science, Machine Learning, and Elixir
The fields of data science and machine learning are moving ever faster. Jenn Gamble has her finger on the pulse and has become an industry expert with a wealth of experience to her name. As today’s guest, she dives into these rich and often complex topics, and she helps us boil them down into palatable nuggets of knowledge. We start off by asking Jenn about her current role at Very, and she tells us about the nature of her team and the things they’re able to achieve. She touches on what the language markups look like for a data science team, before moving onto her experiences in machine learning and data science. Delving deeper, Jenn tells us why it is not a necessity to have a master’s in data science, and why you can be well enough equipped in other senses to become proficient in the area. Later on, she reveals the differences between Elixir models and data science models. Following these detailed explanations, she furnishes listener’s minds with informative comments on relating the foundations of machine learning to IoT, using priori knowledge to add nuance to your machine learning, and how she envisions the future of data science. Join us today and be sure to get all this, and much more! Key Points From This Episode: Introducing today’s guest, Jenn Gamble. Jenn tells us about Very, an IoT engineering firm. Hear about the data science team at Very. We learn more on what the language markup looks like for a data science team. Jenn’s experience in learning machine learning and data science. Hear her five-year plan while doing her masters. We ask if it’s necessary to have a master’s degree to be well-equipped in data science. The difference between an Elixir model and a data science model. Jenn elaborates on weights and intuitive algorithms. Dealing with N-dimensional matrices. Relating the foundations of machine learning to IoT. Ways to start building up an intuition around what the most fundamental abstractions are. Using priori knowledge to add nuance to your machine learning. How Jenn envisions the future of data science. Hear about tensors and vectors. Jenn tells us about her keynote experience at ElixirConf 2020. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Discord — https://smr.tl/wizards-discord Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io Jenn Gamble on Twitter – https://twitter.com/jennpgamble Jenn Gamble on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenn-gamble/ ElixirConf 2020 - Keynote - Jenn Gamble – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btIvtN9wsI&abchannel=ElixirConf IoT – https://www.verypossible.com/careers Very – https://jobs.lever.co/verypossible MathWorks – https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html Cassie Kozykrov – https://kozyrkov.medium.com/ Linear regression – http://www.stat.yale.edu/Courses/1997-98/101/linreg.htm Pythagorean theorem – https://www.mathplanet.com/education/pre-algebra/right-triangles-and-algebra/the-pythagorean-theorem Quadratic equation – https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/quadratic-equation.html A priori and a posteriori – https://iep.utm.edu/apriori/ Tensor – https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tensor.html Vector (mathematics and physics) – https://mathinsight.org/vector_introduction Coursera – https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone Special Guest: Jenn Gamble.
John Mertens on Adopting Elixir at Change.org
Many organizations take an incremental approach when adopting Elixir, preferring to pick up its nuances by using it to work on non-essential projects. But not Change.org. Today we speak with Change.org Director of Engineering John Mertens about how his company adopted Elixir to create a business-critical app that handles over a billion emails per month. From building webpages on GeoCities to working as an IT intern at an Iowan prison, we open our conversation by exploring John’s coding background. After chatting about his first Elixir project, we dive into Change.org’s process in adopting Elixir. As John shares his insights into successfully integrating Elixir into your tech stack, he highlights the benefits provided by the language. Later, John discusses the advantages of event-driven architecture and how this structure makes it easier for teams to access and analyze data, while also making it easier to add product features. We wrap up this episode with John highlighting his user-centered approach to coding. Join us to hear John’s lessons on making the leap and adopting Elixir in large organizations. Key Points From This Episode: John shares details about his role at Change.org. The story behind John and Change’s Elixir adoption. Hear about John’s coding journey. How John made an Elixir app based on spotting San Francisco tram carriages. Insights into the massive project that Change built using Elixir. Why Elixir is taking over Change’s back-end tech stack. Using Elixir to build reliable event-based architecture. Exploring event-driven architecture from the perspective of Change’s system. John makes a compelling case for event-driven architecture. How Change hires for Elixir roles. Change’s process in training their staff to code in Elixir. John talks about his user-centred approach to design. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Discord — https://smr.tl/wizards-discord Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io John Mertens — https://www.mertonium.com/about John Mertens on Twitter — https://twitter.com/mertonium John Mertens on GitHub — https://github.com/mertonium Change.org — https://www.change.org/ Change.org Careers — https://careers.change.org/ José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim GenStage and Flow - José Valim (Lambda Days 2017) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlXNUXmcgE Dashbit — https://dashbit.co/ Hacker News — https://thehackernews.com/ Paul Graham — https://twitter.com/paulg/ Nim — https://nim-lang.org/ Pony — https://www.ponylang.io/ Grax.io — https://www.grax.com/ Logo — https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/whatislogo/logo_programming.html Nerves — https://www.nerves-project.org/ Flow — https://hexdocs.pm/flow/Flow.html ElixirConf EU — https://www.elixirconf.eu/ Martin Fowler — https://martinfowler.com/ ‘The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction’ — https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying Salesforce Marketing Cloud — https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/marketing-cloud/overview/ ‘Delivering social change with Elixir at Change.org’ — https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/27/delivering-social-change-with-elixir-at-change.org/ Code for America — https://www.codeforamerica.org/ Special Guest: John Mertens.
Sophie DeBenedetto on Programming Phoenix LiveView
As users increasingly demand interactivity from their web experiences, Phoenix LiveView is becoming the dominant way of writing interactive Elixir applications without a loss to reliability. Today we welcome back an old friend of the show and GitHub engineer Sophie DeBenedetto to talk about her upcoming book, Programming Phoenix LiveView. We open our conversation with Sophie by hearing about her work at GitHub, as well as what we can expect from the Code BEAM V conference. As she doesn’t always get to use Elixir at her job, Sophie then discusses how coders can sharpen their Elixir skills when not at work. After exploring how companies can begin adopting Elixir through event-driven design, we dive into Sophie’s book. She unpacks the value of LiveView when building efficient web applications before touching on how her book can best help people to learn LiveView. We ask Sophie how intertwined the future of Elixir is to the success of LiveView and how this might impact Phoenix. Her answers highlight LiveView’s role in pushing Elixir adoption while also making Elixir easier to learn. We wrap up our discussion by chatting about the challenges of technical writing and Sophie’s experience working with the wonderful Pragmatic Programmers publishing house. Tune in to hear more insights into programming LiveView; if you believe the hype, it’s “one of the most important new frameworks of our generation.” Key Points From This Episode: We catch up with guest Sophie DeBenedetto and hear about the Code BEAM V conference. Sophie shares her feelings on coding in Go. How Sophie engages with Elixir when it’s not a key part of her day job. What Flatiron School did to work towards Elixir adoption. Exploring the concept of event-driven design. Insights into the eventing system used at GitHub. Sophie talks about her experience as an engineering manager. Why Sophie transitioned from being a manager to being an individual contributor. How work-from-home has impacted meeting expectations. Hear the elevator pitch for Sophie’s upcoming book. Thoughts on how beginner-friendly Elixir is as a language. Whether Phoenix LiveView is the future of Elixir. How the attention placed on LiveView limits access to Phoenix resources and tutorials. We ask Sophie if LiveView will make it easier or more difficult to learn Elixir. Advice on writing technical books and the writing support offered by Pragmatic Programmers. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Discord — https://smr.tl/wizards-discord Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io Sophie DeBenedetto — http://sophiedebenedetto.nyc/ Sophie DeBenedetto on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiedebenedetto/ Sophie DeBenedetto on Twitter — https://twitter.com/smdebenedetto Programming Phoenix LiveView — https://www.pragprog.com/titles/liveview/programming-phoenix-liveview/ Beam Radio — https://www.beamrad.io/ Code BEAM V — https://codesync.global/conferences/code-beam-sto/ Bruce Tate — https://twitter.com/redrapids José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim Nx — https://dashbit.co/blog/nx-numerical-elixir-is-now-publicly-available Alex Koutmos — https://twitter.com/akoutmos EMPEX — https://empex.co/nyc.html Flatiron School — https://flatironschool.com/ ‘What is the difference between Event Driven and Event Sourcing?’ — https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/385375/what-is-the-difference-between-event-driven-and-event-sourcing Chris Keithley — https://twitter.com/chriskeathley GitHub — https://github.com/ Steven Nuñez — https://twitter.com/StevenNunez ‘Shipping Greenfield Elixir in a Legacy World’ — https://codesync.global/conferences/code-beam-v-america-2021/training/#145shipping-greenfield-elixir-in-a-legacy-world Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails — https://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Rails-Tutorial-Addison-Wesley-Professional-ebook/dp/B01N779HKK Toran Billups — https://twitter.com/toranb The Pragmatic Programmers — https://pragprog.com/ Chris McCord — https://twitter.com/chris_mccord/ Dave Thomas — https://twitter.com/pragdave/ Andy Hunt — https://twitter.com/PragmaticAndy/ Zenni — https://www.zennioptical.com/ Warby Parker — https://www.warbyparker.com/ Special Guest: Sophie DeBenedetto.
Shaun Robinson and Toran Billups on Using Elixir to Empower Online Learning
With the prevalence of at-home learning, teachers have to compete for student attention against numerous screen-based activities. Today we speak with engineering lead Shaun Robinson and Elixir developer Toran Billups about how Legends of Learning helps educators make their classrooms fun, engaging, and productive through their curriculum-based games. After chatting about Legends’ mission to empower teachers, we talk with Toran about how he landed a job there. He then shares his insights into securing Elixir jobs, touching on the importance of networking and building a portfolio of Elixir projects. We discuss why Elixir became Legends’ language of choice before exploring their process in adopting Elixir. Reflecting on their early server structure, Shaun explains their process of refactoring from their old code base into an Elixir monolith. Responding to a previous episode, where frustrations were shared about coding in LiveView, Toran talks about its advantages, despite its issues as a new technology. Later, Shaun and Toran dive into what you can do to help your company adopt Elixir. We wrap up another incredible conversation by asking our guests about their favorite Legend of Learning games. Tune in to hear more about Legend of Learning’s Elixir journey and how they’re using it to create dynamic learning environments. Key Points From This Episode: Exploring the mission and work of the Legends of Learning startup. Shaun and Toran share details about their backgrounds. Why building a van home is so similar to building software. Hear about Toran’s podcast on the human side of programming. Shaun talks about the time when he sold his Twitter and GitHub handle. What Toran did to land his first Elixir job. Why Legends of Learning decided to adopt Elixir. Insights into Legends of Learning’s early server architecture. Toran unpacks Legend’s hiring process. Why Shaun’s engineering team consists of remote workers. Toran shares the virtues of coding in LiveView. What Shaun did to refactor their old code base into an Elixir monolith. The process that Legends underwent when adopting Elixir. Advice on finding an Elixir role and adopting Elixir in your company. Hear about Shaun and Toran’s favorite Legend of Learning games. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io Shaun Robinson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaun1010/ Toran Billups on Twitter — https://twitter.com/toranb Toran Billups on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/toranb/ Legends of Learning — https://www.legendsoflearning.com/ Vadim Polikov — https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-polikov/ Developing Fatigue Podcast — https://developingfatigue.fm/ Kris Van Houghton — https://twitter.com/krivaten Dave Gardner — https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegardner01/ Legends of Learning Careers — https://www.legendsoflearning.com/interested-game-developer/ Legends of Learning API Docs — https://docs.legendsoflearning.com/ Lonestar Elixir — https://lonestarelixir.com/ Elixir Match —https://elixirmatch.com/ Elixir Match on GitHub — https://github.com/toranb/elixir-match Chris McCord — http://chrismccord.com/ Grox.io — https://grox.io/ Bruce Tate — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-tate-a836b/ Postgraphile on GitHub — https://github.com/graphile/postgraphile Martin Fowler — https://martinfowler.com/ The Strangler Application — https://martinfowler.com/bliki/StranglerFigApplication.html Timescale — https://www.timescale.com/ ‘TimescaleDB 2.0 is now Generally Available’ — https://blog.timescale.com/blog/timescaledb-2-0-is-now-generally-available/ Sun, Moon & Stars: Patterns of Apparent Motion on Legends of Learning — https://www.legendsoflearning.com/learning-objectives/the-sun-moon-and-stars-patterns-of-apparent-motion/ Magic the Gathering — https://magic.wizards.com/en Legends of Learning Awakening — https://www.legendsoflearning.com/blog/homework-and-test-prep-math-and-science-game/ Hour of Code — https://hourofcode.com/ Owl Pro — https://owllabs.com/products/meeting-owl-pro Correction: In an earlier version of this episode, the host mis-spoke and mis-named the guests' company name in the outro; that error has been corrected as of 2021-02-25 3:52PM ET. Special Guests: Shaun Robinson and Toran Billups.
Brian Howenstein on How ClusterTruck is Innovating Food Delivery
ClusterTruck, a master of vertical integration, is rewriting the method of end-to-end food delivery and ghost kitchens. Today we speak with ClusterTruck Product VP Brian Howenstein to find out more about his journey in programming, ClusterTruck as an end-to-end food service, and how Elixir became mission-critical to the success of the business. We kick things off by hearing more on Brian’s childhood and how he became interested in programming. We then hear about his internship at Apple where he was part of the Core OS networking team. Brian touches on brushing shoulders with Steve Jobs, Jony Ivy, and Tim Cook, and shares how these personalities changed his view of the tech industry. Later in the show, we turn our attention to current times. Brian expands on his role at ClusterTruck and shares details on how Elixir has played a vital role in the company’s success. We hear his take on vertical integration, why they’d never consider third-party delivery companies, and much more. We then briefly digress to Brian’s hobby: the Scottish Games, before returning to ClusterTruck to find out what his favorite menu items are and what the future holds for food delivery and ghost kitchens. Be sure to stay tuned to enjoy our mini-feature where we speak with Michelle Morry, a software engineer at FuturePet. For all things Elixir, be sure to join us today! Bonus: If you’re in Indianapolis, IN, Columbus, OH, or Kansas City, MO, download the ClusterTruck app and use code “ELIXIRWIZARDS” at checkout for a one-time 25% discount on your ClusterTruck order. Good for a single use for both new and returning customers. Key Points From This Episode: A call to all talented engineering managers to join our team! Introducing today’s guest, Brian Howenstein. Brian tells us about his company, ClusterTruck. Hear about Brian’s background in technology and programming. What inspired Brian to do programming professionally. Brian tells us about his internship at Apple. Hear one of Brian’s fondest anecdotes about Jony Ive. Brian shares notes on his path to Elixir. Why Elixir has had such an impact on ClusterTruck’s success. ClusterTruck’s origin story. Brian talks about ClusterTruck’s vertical integration model. How Brian got the people around him to buy into Elixir and the hurdles that came with it. Brian talks about his journey to become a ClusterTruck VP. Brian tells us about his hobby and we digress to World’s Strongest Man controversy. How COVID has affected Brian’s business. Nerves projects at ClusterTruck and how it’s being used. What the future looks like for ClusterTruck. Brian’s advice for people who are trying to get their company to code in Elixir. How ClusterTruck is using LiveView. Brian’s favorite and least favorite menu items. Stay tuned for our quick mini-feature. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: ClusterTruck — https://www.clustertruck.com/ ClusterTruck Hiring — https://www.notion.so/clustertruck/Engineering-Openings-at-ClusterTruck-ef2372d2c2ab43b3b82f56a097c86eeb Cabermetrics — https://www.cabermetrics.com/ Brain Howenstein on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhowenstein/ Brain Howenstein on Twitter — https://twitter.com/hwrd Indianapolis Scottish Games Festival — https://indyscotgamesandfest.com/ Purdue University — https://www.purdue.edu/ SimCity — https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/simcity Apple — https://www.apple.com/ Jony Ive — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jonathan-Ive Tim Cook — https://twitter.com/timcook Steve Jobs — https://www.biography.com/business-figure/steve-jobs Uber Eats — https://www.ubereats.com/za ExactTarget — https://www.linkedin.com/company/exacttarget/ Salesforce — https://www.salesforce.com/ DoorDash — https://www.doordash.com/en-US GrubHub — https://www.grubhub.com/ The World’s Strongest Man — http://theworldsstrongestman.com/ Raspberry Pi — https://www.raspberrypi.org/ Indy Elixir - Using Elixir at ClusterTruck: Milliseconds Matter When Your Users are Hangry — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LMzYTK6dsE&abchannel=IndyElixir Indy Elixir - /hungry until food arrives: How ClusterTruck uses Elixir to make ordering for a Team Simple — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2XeIENMRw&abchannel=IndyElixir ClusterTruck: Liberate Your Appetite — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNC3vrrxNWM&abchannel=ClusterTruck Sean in the City: ClusterTruck Indy — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nusA13LYJI&abchannel=B105.7Indy ClusterTruck + Slack — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6t8aZQPB68&abchannel=ClusterTruck Special Guest: Brian Howenstein.
Yair Flicker on SmartLogic’s Origin, Evolution, and Elixir Adoption Process
Building a successful development company requires having a leader with technical know-how and excellent management skills. Today we speak with SmartLogic President and Founder Yair Flicker about his company’s origin story, evolution, and their Elixir adoption process. Early in the episode, we talk about Yair’s first jobs before diving into how he founded SmartLogic. An important transition point, we then chat about how he moved from writing code to running a business. Reflecting on his tech background, Yair opens up about how he learned to code before he shares insights into the languages that his company programs in, how they discovered Elixir, and how they integrated it into their practice. In a discussion that’s sure to resonate with startup managers, Yair unpacks what he does to grow as a manager, along with best practices for companies looking to adopt Elixir. We ask Yair about the benefits of coding in Elixir, how SmartLogic has retained its top employees, why he prioritizes employee happiness, and the role that company values play in strengthening SmartLogic. After hearing about Yair’s vision for the future, we jump into our mini-segment where we interview Jake Johnson, the Director of Software Engineering at TaxJar. For more on building strong companies and advice on adopting Elixir, be sure to tune in and benefit from our conversations with Yair and Jake. Key Points From This Episode: SmartLogic Founder Yair Flicker talks about his first job. Yair shares details about SmartLogic’s humble origins. Early challenges SmarLogic faced and Yair’s move from coding to running a business. We ask Yair about how he learned to code. SmartLogic’s coding evolution and how they discovered Elixir. The Maker vs. Manager distinction; what Yair did to grow as a manager. Exploring the benefits of adopting Elixir. Yair’s advice for companies wanting to adopt Elixir. Why Elixir allows for more scalability than many other languages. How SmartLogic has been able to retain some of its top employees. The link between having happy employees and happy clients. How Yair lives his company’s values. Yair shares his recipe for creating productive meetings. Hear about Yair’s vision for SmartLogic’s future. For our mini-feature segment, we chat with Jake Johnson from TaxJar. Why TaxJar adopted Elixir and details on Jake’s background. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io Yair Flicker on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/yflicker/ Yair Flicker on Twitter — https://twitter.com/yflicker Jake Johnson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakej/ TaxJar — https://www.taxjar.com/ Music and Arts — https://www.musicarts.com/ Johns Hopkins University — https://www.jhu.edu/ Hackers — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ National Conference of Synagogue Youth — https://ncsy.org/ Stanley Black & Decker — https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/ Reddit — https://reddit.com/ Discord — https://discord.com/ Instagram — https://www.instagram.com Amazon Web Services — https://aws.amazon.com/ Sales Tax for Developers — https://salestax.dev Backstreet Boys — https://linktr.ee/backstreetboys Special Guest: Yair Flicker.
Alexandra Chakeres on Moving Towards an Inclusive Elixir Community
Despite its welcoming character, the Elixir community struggles with diversity; as the 2020 ElixirConf community survey shows, only 2% of Elixirists are women. Today we speak with Blinker software engineer Alexandra Chakeres about her experience of the community, as well as what we can do to make it more inclusive. We open by exploring Alexandra’s background and coding career. After expressing her enthusiasm for the Turing School, we talk about Alexandra’s learn-by-doing approach to picking up Elixir. She shares how she landed her first Elixir job before we chat about her current role at Blinker. We discuss why the small size of the community means that Alexandra doesn’t recommend Elixir to coding beginners. We then dive into the topic of Elixir diversity, touching on factors that limit inclusivity, including how few Elixir positions are available for juniors. Alexandra unpacks solutions, like how organizations can shift their hiring pipeline and the need to approach diversity organizations with openings. Later, listeners will enjoy our mini-feature segment where we interview Instinct Science engineer Bill Peregoy about how their team uses Elixir. Tune in for more on what we can do to create a more diverse community. Key Points From This Episode: Hear how co-host Sundi Myint first met Alexandra. Alexandra shares details about her coding background. Why Alexandra feels so passionately about Turing Boot Camp. Details about Alexandra’s first Elixir job. What Alexandra’s current team builds in Elixir and her experience using umbrella apps. Comparing Ruby with Elixir and insights into what Elixir is missing. Why Alexandra doesn’t recommend that junior engineers first learn Elixir. How restricted Elixir hirings lead to a lack of diversity in the community. Exploring ways to make the Elixir community more diverse. What Alexandra most enjoys about coding in Elixir. Alexandra’s top advice for minorities in the Elixir community. Why it’s up to all of us to create a more inclusive community. We talk to Bill Peregoy about how the team at Instinct Science uses Elixir. Bill’s challenges and benefits to writing in Elixir. How Bill would help new hires learn Elixir. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io Alexandra Chakeres on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrachakeres/ Alexandra Chakeres on GitHub — https://github.com/chakeresa Blinker — https://www.blinker.com/ ElixirConf — https://elixirconf.com Brian Cardarella — https://twitter.com/bcardarella Turing School — https://turing.io/ Angelfire — https://www.angelfire.lycos.com/ Melvin Cedeno — https://twitter.com/thecraftedgem Weedmaps — https://weedmaps.com/ Denver Erlang and Elixir Meetup — https://www.meetup.com/Denver-Erlang-Elixir/ DC |> Elixir Meetup — https://www.meetup.com/DC-Elixir/ DispatchHealth — https://www.dispatchhealth.com/ Autotrader — https://www.autotrader.com/ José Valim - https://github.com/josevalim Diversified Tech — https://www.diversifytech.co/ Women Who Code D.C — https://www.womenwhocode.com/dc Bruce Tate — https://twitter.com/redrapids Bill Peregoy on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/billperegoy/ Instinct Science — https://www.instinct.vet/ AppSense — https://www.ivanti.com/company/history/appsense Special Guest: Alexandra Chakeres.
Matt Nowack and Jake Heinz on Elixir and Discord; Bonus: Arthi Radhakrishnan, Community.com
In this episode we continue our conversation about adopting Elixir, this time with Matt Nowack and Jake Heinz from Discord, hearing them get into the features of Elixir that make it a great fit for building a real-time chat infrastructure system! We also invite Arthi Radhakrishnan from community.com for our mini-interview in the last chunk of the episode. Our chat begins with Jake and Matt telling Elixir developers exactly why they should not use Mnesia. They subsequently dive into their journeys in programming and the process of learning Elixir after joining Discord. They share a few aha-moments as well as challenging projects that asked them to get their heads around some of the more powerful features of Elixir, highlighting a way they used immutability for a project that asked them to efficiently calculate deltas for large member list updates. From there we get into the culture around onboarding new devs at Discord, the company’s popular open-source Elixir contributions, and some brags about the high performance of features of Discord built in Elixir. Wrapping up with Jake and Matt, we hear their suggestions for teams and devs hoping to adopt Elixir, where they strongly advise on learning OTP as well as Elixir’s standard library. After that, it’s time for our chat with Arthi, where we hear about her programming journey, how Elixir is being put to use at Community.com, how the company supports new devs learning Elixir, and more! Key Points From This Episode: Our guests’ thoughts on why Elixir developers shouldn’t use the database driver Mnesia. How Jake and Matt got into programming and learned Elixir after joining Discord. The history of the use of Elixir at Discord and some of the projects Jake helped build since. The nuts and bolts of OTP; Jake’s experiences learning it along with Elixir at Discord. Different projects Matt worked on after joining Discord and how they helped him learn Elixir. Aha moments of learning Elixir; features of the language that acted as force multipliers in the development of different Discord projects. Processes at Discord for helping new developers learn Elixir. Open-source contributions from Discord to the Elixir community and the culture around this at Discord. Issues around logging and memory allocation in Elixir and what our guests think could change. The sheer power Elixir brought to the Discord project allowing rapid scale with a small team. Jake weighs in on the strengths of Python, Rust and Elixir, as well as BEAM processes versus Goroutines. Discord as a native Electron app and whether we will see it written in Rust. Advice regarding adopting Elixir about the power of OTP and the standard library. Introducing Arthi Radhakrishnan for our mini-interview at the end of the show. Previous languages Arthi worked in and how she learned Elixir after joining community.com. The fan chat service offered at community.com and some famous users. Features of the community.com architecture built in Elixir. The size of the team, the culture of hiring Elixir devs, and Arthi’s onboarding process at Community.com. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Matt Nowack on GitHub — https://github.com/ihumanable Mat Nowack on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ihumanable?lang=en Jake Heinz on GitHub — https://github.com/jhgg Apply for a Position at Discord — https://discord.com/jobs Stanislav Vishnevskiy on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/svishnevskiy/ ZenMonitor — https://github.com/discord/zenmonitor SortedSet Nif — https://github.com/discord/sortedsetnif The BEAM Book — https://github.com/happi/theBeamBook Semaphore — https://github.com/discord/semaphore ExHashRing — https://github.com/discord/exhashring ertsalloc Documentation — https://erlang.org/doc/man/erts_alloc.html Arthi Radhakrishnan on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthiradhakrishnan/ Community.com (https://www.community.com/) Andrea Leopardi on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/anleopardi/?originalSubdomain=it Special Guests: Jake Heinz and Matt Nowack.
Jason Axelson on the Elixir Language Server
Welcome back to the Elixir Wizards podcast! In this episode, we will be continuing our conversation on the theme of adopting elixir, and our great guest for today is Jason Axelson! Jason is a back-end developer for a mixed reality studio called Animal Repair Shop and has also made some significant contributions to the Elixir Language Server project. We kick off our conversation with Jason hearing about his programming journey and then dive into the event chat service app he helped build using Elixir while he was working at Hobnob. From there, we talk about some of his aha moments while learning Elixir and some of his favorite features about the language which he is putting to use building out the back end for Animal Repair Shop. Next, we turn our attention to Elixir Language Server and Jason weighs in on the IDE type features it offers, why he got started as a collaborator on the project, and some of their challenges in the field of shared governance. Wrapping up for today, Jason makes a few suggestions for how devs who love Elixir can convince their teams to adopt it as a more mainstream option. Tune in for a great chat on the topic of adopting Elixir! Key Points From This Episode: An introduction to Jason Axelson and the story of how he got into programming. Some of the books our hosts and guests read as kids and how they relate to programming. How Jason got into Elixir while working on a chat service for events app at Hobnob. Jason’s current project using Elixir to build the back end for Animal Repair Shop. What caused Hobnob to switch to Elixir for their chat app and Jason’s aha moments learning it. The TLDR version of the project that birthed ‘Road to 2 Million WebSocket Connections’. What Jason loves about Elixir — pattern matching, immutability, explicitness. Why Jason and his team at Animal Repair Shop are building their back end in Elixir. The features provided by the Elixir Language Server for giving IDEs Elixir type support. Jason’s involvement with GitHub/ElixirLSP; why he got involved, the project’s architecture, etc. Some of the most challenging aspects of working on ElixirLS for Jason. Jason’s talk on ElixirLS at ElixirConf – its content, doing it virtually, and more. New features in the pipeline for ElixirLS; formatting speed improvements and more. The role that good tooling plays in being able to learn a language more easily. What needs to happen for Elixir to become a more mainstream back end option. Advice from Jason regarding ways to convince your firm to adopt Elixir. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Jason Axelson on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonaxelson Jason Axelson on GitHub — https://github.com/axelson Jason Axelson on Twitter — https://twitter.com/bostonvaulter?lang=en Privcheck by Jason Axelson — https://github.com/axelson/privcheck Jason Axelson ElixirConf ElixirLS Talk — https://2020.elixirconf.com/speakers/126/talk A Definitive Guide to JavaScript — https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/javascript-the-definitive/9781491952016/ Hobnob — https://hobnob.app/ Elixir for Programmers by Dave Thomas — https://codestool.coding-gnome.com/courses/elixir-for-programmers Animal Repair Shop — https://www.animalrepairshop.com/about/ ‘Road to 2 Million WebSocket Connections’ — https://phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million-websocket-connections Elixir Getting Started Guide — https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html GitHub/ElixirLP — https://github.com/elixir-lsp/elixir-ls Adopting Elixir — https://pragprog.com/titles/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir/ Elixir Slack — https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/ elixir-lsp/elixir-ls: Issue #274 — https://github.com/elixir-lsp/elixir-ls/issues/274 elixir-lsp/elixir-ls: Issue #381 — https://github.com/elixir-lsp/elixir-ls/issues/381 Special Guest: Jason Axelson.
Steve Domin on Innovating Travel APIs
Anyone who has written software for the travel industry can tell you that it is in desperate need of innovation — shockingly many of their cobwebbed systems were built in the 70s. Today we speak with Duffel CEO Steve Domin, who is building tech that can finally align travel with the expectations of modern consumers. We open by exploring Steve’s journey into coding before diving into how Duffel is innovating travel. After touching on how the pandemic has impacted Duffel’s roll-out, Steve shares horror stories about the outdated tech and API systems that airlines use. We discuss Duffel’s service offerings and why Elixir is uniquely suited to solve the problems that Steve’s company is addressing. Steve then talks about the types of engineers that Duffel hires, his client base, and where his company is heading. Near the end of the episode, we ask Steve for his advice on selling your company on Elixir and we chat about the status of the London Elixir Meetup. Tune in for more insights on how Steve is using Elixir to make travel an effortless experience. Key Points From This Episode: Introducing Duffel CEO Steve Domin. Steve shares details about his coding journey and career highlights. Insights into the old school ecosystem of Flash, Flex, and ActionScript. Exploring how Duffel is innovating the travel industry. Why Duffel accelerated their roll-out due to the pandemic. Steve unpacks the outdated tech and API systems that airlines use. Why Duffel decided to use Elixir to tackle their problems. The benefits of using Elixir when dealing with airline data. Steve gives listeners an overview of Duffel’s pipeline. Insights into the types of engineers that Duffel hires. Who Duffel’s clients are and how they’re onboarded. Steve reflects on some airline API horror stories. Hear about Duffel’s roadmap — the future is bright. What Elixir has uniquely enabled Duffel to do. Steve’s advice on selling Elixir to stakeholders in your company. The status of the London Elixir Meetup. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Steve Domin — https://stevedomin.com/about Steve Domin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevedomin/ Steve Domin on Twitter — https://twitter.com/stevedomin Duffel — https://duffel.com/ Duffel Careers — https://duffel.com/careers José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim Flex — https://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html Passenger Service System — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengerservicesystem Global Distribution System — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globaldistributionsystem Sabre — https://www.sabre.com/ Amadeus — https://amadeus.com/en ‘Why does NDC matter to my travel business?’ — https://duffel.com/blog/why-does-ndc-matter-to-my-travel-business IATA — https://www.iata.org/ Next.js — https://nextjs.org/ GoCardless — https://gocardless.com/ Twilio — https://www.twilio.com/ Stripe — https://stripe.com/ Thomas Bates — https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-bates-3908a74b/ Elixir London Meetup — https://www.meetup.com/Elixir-London/ Baris Balic — https://twitter.com/barisbalic Special Guest: Steve Domin.
Shawn Vo on Elixir as a Competitive Advantage
To beat out their competitors, startups need to code quickly, simply, and in a language that attracts top engineers. Enter Elixir. Today we speak with Shawn Vo, Axle Payments Co-Founder and CTO, about his journey with Elixir and how it has given his company a competitive advantage. We open our conversation by exploring how Shawn got into coding while automating his work as an investment banker. After touching on why he sees programming as a superpower for adding value, he shares his growth hacks for learning a language — these range from reading old books to attending coding meetups. We then dive into Axle Payments’ business model, with Shawn highlighting the business opportunity of creating tech for industries that “people don’t think about.” A key theme in this episode, Shawn talks about how building in Elixir has helped Axle Payments hire the best engineers. We also discuss how Elixir allows them to quickly and efficiently write code that doesn’t break. Near the end of the episode, we explore Shawn’s browser extension projects and why he has a readme file to help guide people who want to work with him. Be sure to tune in to hear more insight from Shawn on the benefits of using Elixir in the startup space. Key Points From This Episode: Introducing Axle Payments CTO Shawn Vo. From investment banking to coding, hear how Shawn got into our industry. Why coding and creating content are top ways of creating value. Reading books and getting into the fundamentals; tips on how Shawn learns a language. Shawn shares details about his professional career. How Shawn grew his skills by attending coding meetups. Hear about Axle Payments’ model providing a factoring service. How Shawn discovered and fell in love with Elixir. Why Elixir has given Axle Payments their competitive advantage. Shawn reflects on his first Elixir project. The benefits of using event sourcing to build your app. Why Shawn created a readme to guide people who want to work with him. Shawn summarizes why Elixir is the perfect language for his company. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Shawn Vo on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnvo/ Shawn Vo on Twitter — https://twitter.com/shawnvo Shawn Vo on GitHub — https://github.com/voshawn Shawn Vo Email — shawn@axlepayments.com Axle Payments — https://www.axlepayments.com/ The Technical Cofounder Newsletter — https://technicalcofounder.substack.com/ Meryl Dakin — https://twitter.com/meryldakin WALL-E — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/ Barclays Investment Bank — https://www.investmentbank.barclays.com/ The Climate Corporation — https://www.climate.com/ The Monsanto Company — https://www.cropscience.bayer.com/ Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — https://www.fdic.gov/ Deep Learning NYC — https://www.meetup.com/Deep-Learning-NYC/ Baltimore AI Meetup — https://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-AI/ Fast.ai — https://www.fast.ai/ Megabus — https://www.megabus.com/ Greyhound — https://www.greyhound.com/ Techstars — https://www.techstars.com/ Peter Thiel — https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/ WeWork — https://www.wework.com/ Paul Graham — http://www.paulgraham.com/ Y Combinator — https://www.ycombinator.com/ ‘The Python Paradox’ — http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Heroku — https://www.heroku.com/ Sessionizer — https://sessionize-me.herokuapp.com/ Hamilton — https://hamiltonmusical.com/new-york/home/ Slack — https://slack.com/ Phoenix — https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/overview.html Commanded — https://hexdocs.pm/commanded/Commanded.html The Social Dilemma — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11464826/ Special Guest: Shawn Vo.
Viktória Fördős on Erlang
Today we sit down with Erlanger Viktória Fördős, who talks with us about Erlang and how it is used at Cisco. We open the show by finding out about Viki’s background in coding and her unorthodox entry into the field. After hearing about her experiences in her school choir and her transition into the informatics faculty, Viki talks to us about her first experiences in coding and the thrills she found in it. She then expands on the topic, revealing how she approached people to build their websites using her newfound skills in HTML and PHP. A flash-forward later, and Viki shares details about her role as an NSO Core Engineer for Cisco. After hearing how NSO serves as a network operating system, device automation platform, and orchestration engine, Viki explains why NSO is so special. She touches on fast map-based service and some of the ways she and her team implement network-wide transactions using — you guessed it — Erlang. Viki then explains Erlang, how you should approach it if you’re a newbie, and what to expect from its biggest challenges. She elaborates on tail-recursive functions and high-level vulnerabilities concerned with SSL crypto libraries, system integrity, and atom tables. Toward the end of the show, we ask Viki to tell us about her Code BEAM presentation and about her thoughts on why academia and industry should collaborate on a more regular basis. Join us today and be treated to an enriching conversation about Erlang, as well as our secret mini-feature segment! Key Points From This Episode: Introducing today’s guest, Viki Fördős from Cisco. A snapshot of Viki’s unorthodox background in coding. Viki shares details about early experiences learning Basic. Hear about Viki’s first programming job out of college. Viki’s position as a core engineer for the NSO team at Cisco. Find out what the NSO team at Cisco does. Insights into the patented algorithm, “fast map.” How Viki started to use Erlang on a day-to-day basis. Ways you can start thinking in Erlang from an Elixir background. The kinds of issues Viki runs into when spawning too many processes. What Erlang has to offer that other languages cannot. Viki’s biggest challenges when she first started learning Erlang. The elevator pitch Viki uses when she encourages friends and colleagues to use Erlang. Distribution protocols and what they mean to Erlang newbies. Hear about the high-level vulnerabilities you ought to pay attention to when coding in Erlang. Introducing Christian Koch, today’s mini-feature segment guest. How Chris first got into Elixir. How Elixir is being used by platform engineers at Cars.com. Why Elixir was chosen as the end-game language to be used at Cars.com The process behind onboarding coders onto Chris’s Elixir team. Viki’s best advice to those wanting to give a Code BEAM talk. Hear about refactoring and how it works. What Viki means by, “research being consumed by industry.” Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Viktória Fördős - https://github.com/viktoriafordos Cisco — https://www.cisco.com/ EW20 — https://github.com/viktoriafordos/ew20 Prototype implementation of the security analysis introduced in V. Fördős: Secure Design and Verification of Erlang Systems paper Christian Koch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckochx/ Cars.com — https://www.cars.com/ BASIC — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC Cisco NSO — https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systems-management/network-services-orchestrator/index.html Think in Erlang! - Viktória Fördős — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYkOsQU2ywM Erlang general server — https://erlang.org/doc/man/genserver.html Erland Reference Manual — https://erlang.org/doc/referencemanual/distributed.html 4 Using TLS — https://erlang.org/doc/apps/ssl/ssldistribution.html Erland System Limits — http://erlang.org/doc/efficiencyguide/advanced.html#system-limits Hexdocs — https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/String.html#toexistingatom/1 RefactorErl — https://plc.inf.elte.hu/erlang/ Pipedream on GitHub — https://github.com/PipedreamHQ/pipedream/blob/master/components/github/readme.md Special Guest: Viktória Fördős.
Simon Glenn-Gregg on Building an Election Results Prototype in Elixir
Today’s guest is Simon Glenn-Gregg, News Engineer at The Washington Post. He joins us to talk about using Elixir to build a prototype for a platform the news house recently implemented to visualize the results of the November 2020 elections in real-time. While the job title of ‘News Engineer’ makes it seem like Simon invents news, this is not the case. He is focused on software related to publishing at The Washington Post, and in particular, has been working on building their election visualization platform for the past two years. Before the final iteration of the platform was built, the software engineering team at The Washington Post were given a period to test different technologies as an experiment to find the best fit, and Simon decided to try his hand at Elixir and Phoenix. He talks about what led him to this choice, and his experiences building out his prototype which he demonstrated on a dataset generated by the North Carolina 3rd Congressional District house race in September. Simon tells us about how the pitch went, what the team at The Washington Post was especially impressed by, and what led to the choice to use Node in the end. Simon talks about the culture of openness to new technologies at The Washington Post as well as some of the limitations to their adoption. We also hear about how the final version of the visualization platform held up during the elections proper, and Simon’s plans to include Elixir in future stacks due to its amazing abilities as far as concurrency and memory. Tune in today! Key Points From This Episode: What kinds of projects Simon works on at The Washington Post as a ‘news engineer’. The live updating election visualizer that Simon was working on at The Washington Post. What went into building the infrastructure for this platform and how Elixir was chosen as a candidate. A blog post about Elixir’s memory management; abilities Elixir has regarding concurrency. The first steps Simon took toward learning Elixir and Phoenix by building simple projects. Simon’s process of integrating his Elixir app into the current stack and people at The Washington Post. Testing the app on the 3rd Congressional District house race in North Carolina, and pitching to the team. Why it is hard to implement projects in new languages at The Washington Post. How the voting process went after the pitch and which project won. What the audience at the pitch loved about Elixir, and what the stumbling blocks were. The nature of working at a deadline-driven place like The Washington Post when it comes to adopting new technologies. Sources The Washington Post used to get their election data. What technologies and methods the team used to handle the size of data some election moments generated. Which parts about the election visualizer that ended up being built using Node would have been easier to do in Elixir. The other side of the coin – what made writing the app in Python and JavaScript easier. What future projects Elixir might be better suited to at The Washington Post. Simon’s background, education, and how he learned programming in previous jobs Why Simon stuck programming out and decided it was the right path for him. The need for software engineers at The Washington Post and why they are recruiting so often. A deep dive into the tech stack at The Washington Post and how they render their pages and maps. How Simon feels having reached the end of a successful project that millions of people engaged with. Future projects at The Washington Post and Simon’s hopes to incorporate more Elixir. A funny story about having to manually update the votes from rural New Hampshire into the app. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Simon Glenn-Gregg on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/simongle/ Simon Glenn-Gregg — http://simonglenngregg.com/ The Washington Post — https://www.washingtonpost.com/ Jason Holt on Twitter — https://twitter.com/offpol ‘Elixir RAM and the Template of Doom’ — https://www.evanmiller.org/elixir-ram-and-the-template-of-doom.html Erik Reyna on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikreyna/ Jeremy Bowers on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyjbowers/ Associated Press — https://apnews.com/ Edison — https://www.edisonresearch.com/ Whole Whale — https://www.wholewhale.com/ The Century Foundation — https://tcf.org/ Arc Publishing — https://www.arcpublishing.com/ Sundi Myint on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin Justus Eapen — https://twitter.com/JustusEapen Eric Oestrich on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ericoestrich Special Guest: Simon Glenn-Gregg.
Randall Thomas on Learning Elixir and Why Community Matters
The culture of your programming community directly impacts your professional success. As Thunderbolt Labs Founder Randall Thomas explains in this episode, a community that practices openness and which warmly welcomes its newer members leads to greater career happiness. We open our chat with Randall by exploring his start in coding and how he discovered Elixir. He shares some of the teething problems that he had moving from Ruby to Elixir before we touch on how learning other languages expands your ability to both appreciate and code in languages that you’re already fluent in. Following this, Randall explodes the myth of the genius polyglot programmer by sharing his take on why all coders are polyglots. As the Thunderbolt CEO, we ask Randall how his company adopted Elixir. He provides listeners with insights into how they introduced Elixir into their practice without affecting existing projects. After highlighting the efficiency of Elixir and how community affects the feel of a language, we compare the culture and challenges of Ruby, JavaScript, and Elixir. Near the end of the episode, Randall reflects on why experts make for poor teachers. For Randall, Elixir gives his company a competitive advantage. Tune in to hear Randall’s perspective on why community matters and for his top advice on teaching your team Elixir. Key Points From This Episode: Introducing Thunderbolt Labs Founder and CEO, Randall Thomas. Randall shares how he discovered coding and engineering. Hear how Randall first heard about Elixir and how he picked up the language. Exploring common challenges moving from Ruby to Elixir. How learning new languages can deepen your understanding of languages that you already know. Why there’s no such thing as the ‘genius polyglot programmer.’ Details on why Randall’s company began gravitating towards Elixir. How communities affect the ‘feel’ of a language. Why no one actually writes in JavaScript anymore. Randall gives his take on why Elixir is a god-send for certain programmers. Insights into how Randall integrated Elixir into his company. The challenge of learning Elixir versus the ease of learning JavaScript. How Randall sold his clients on Elixir and the benefits of having clients that trust you. Randall’s top tips on helping your developers learn Elixir. Why Elixir gives Randall’s a strategic advantage. The importance of having non-experts explain things to you. How your coding community can impact your happiness and career success. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Randall Thomas on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-j-thomas/ Randall Thomas on Twitter — https://twitter.com/daksis Thunderbolt Labs — https://www.thunderboltlabs.com/ Episode with Miki Rezentes — https://smartlogic.io/podcast/elixir-wizards/s4e16-rezentes/ Gödel, Escher, Bach on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567 Stephen Hawking — https://www.biography.com/scientist/stephen-hawking William James — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/ Bertrand Russell — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ Barcelona Ruby Conference — https://twitter.com/baruco José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim Programming Elixir on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Elixir-1-6-Functional-Concurrent/dp/1680502999 Dave Thomas — https://pragdave.me/ ElixirConf — https://2020.elixirconf.com/ ‘(UN)Learning Elixir’ — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o54EurlzK8o Bruce Tate — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-tate-a836b/ Grox.io — https://grox.io/ Eric S. Raymond — http://www.catb.org/~esr/ Stack Overflow — https://stackoverflow.com/ Medium — https://medium.com/ Engine Yard — https://www.engineyard.com/ Douglas Crockford — https://www.crockford.com/about.html Yehuda Katz — https://www.linkedin.com/in/yehudakatz/ Blake Mizerany — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmizerany/ The Pragmatic Studio — https://pragmaticstudio.com/ Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger on Amazon — https://www.erlang-in-anger.com/ Frederic Trottier-Hebert — https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredth/ Stu Holloway — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stu-holloway-linvio/ Paul Graham — http://www.paulgraham.com/ Hackers and Painters on Amazon — https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/1449389554 Lonestar Elixir — https://lonestarelixir.com/ Turing.io — https://turing.io/ Sundi Myint on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin Justus Eapen on Twitter— https://twitter.com/JustusEapen Eric Oestrich on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ericoestrich Special Guest: Randall Thomas.
Launchisode and Outlaws Takeover with Chris Keathley, Amos King, and Anna Neyzberg
Welcome back to Elixir Wizards, season five, episode one! The theme for this season is ‘Adopting Elixir’, and for today’s show the team at Elixir Outlaws play host! Chris Keathley, Amos King, and Anna Neyzberg give the Elixir Wizards a chance to talk about what they love about Elixir, how they learned it, and some of their experiences using it at SmartLogic! We kick off the conversation with some memories of college and the different degrees everybody did, how these experiences fit into programming and the different paths that Justus, Eric, and Sundi took into the world of Elixir. From there, we dive into some of the amazing features about Elixir, highlighting pattern matching, readability, and how easy it is to think about how to write solutions to problems using it. Our conversation moves onto the topic of serving clients with Elixir, and here we consider the risk of basing a consultancy on one technology, as well as how open clients are to their needs being met with this young but powerful language. We also talk about training staff and convincing teams to adopt Elixir, covering themes of barriers to entry, the job market, and using the Elixir community as a resource. For a fun conversation about Elixir where our hosts take the mic as guests, be sure to tune in today. Key Points From This Episode: Introducing this season’s topic and today’s plan where the hosts become guests. How Justus, Eric and Sundi got introduced to Elixir and their respective journeys using it. Everybody discusses their forays into programming and compares their different degrees. Hustles Justus did at college to get tuition cheaper for his friends and him. ‘Staking a consultancy on a tech’; how SmartLogic adopted Elixir initially. How the first few clients SmartLogic served with Elixir felt about the language being used. Sundi’s onboarding experience at CAVA and how she got introduced to Elixir. How Justus discovered the beauty of Elixir after he began to understand pattern matching. Sundi’s thoughts about hidden functionality in JavaScript code versus Elixir which reads better. Whether using Elixir to solve problems feels easy due to familiarity or its inherent characteristics. Conventions SmartLogic is implementing regarding using Elixir to build projects. The lack of introductory resources for learning Elixir and the team’s attempts at making some. The value of getting involved in your community for learning a new technology. Find out the value of investing in staff training for companies who want to switch to Elixir. A new wall between Dev and Ops in the form of Kubernetes. How to get your co-workers to learn Elixir if you are passionate about it. Growth at SmartLogic, new hires, and what they specialize in. The job landscape in 2020 and how this relates to having Elixir under your belt. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Chris Keathley on Twitter — https://twitter.com/chriskeathley Amos King on Twitter — https://twitter.com/adkron Anna Neyzberg on Twitter — https://twitter.com/aneyzb Sundi Myint on Twitter — https://twitter.com/sundikhin Justus Eapen — https://twitter.com/JustusEapen Eric Oestrich on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ericoestrich CAVA — https://cava.com/ Pavlok — https://pavlok.com/ Johnny Boursiquot — https://www.jboursiquot.com/ ElixirBridge — http://elixirbridge.org/ Matt Mills on GitHub — https://github.com/photomattmills Brooklyn Zelenca on Functional Programming — https://smartlogic.io/podcast/elixir-wizards/s3e9-zelenka/ Bleacher Report — https://bleacherreport.com/ LiveView by Bruce Tate — https://pragprog.com/titles/passlive/programmer-passport-liveview/ Special Guests: Amos King, Anna Neyzberg, and Chris Keathley.