Elixir Mix is a weekly show focused on the Elixir programming community. Our panel discusses topics around functional programming, the Elixir ecosystem, and building real world apps with Elixir based tools and frameworks.
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Episode 40: EMx 040: Elixir Outlaws and Adopting Elixir with Chris Keathley
Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit Triplebyte CacheFly Panel Josh Adams Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Joined by special guest: Chris Keathley Episode Summary In this episode of Elixir Mix, Chris Keathley introduces himself briefly and starts with talking about his work at Bleacher Report - a company specializing in sports culture - with respect to handling web traffic during major sports events and the implications of moving from Rails to Elixir as a backend system. He briefly touches on scaling issues, performance and the services they are running on their website. He then describes his Elixir journey until now and certain new areas he is working with, such as property based testing and distributed systems. He talks about maintaining the Wallaby library which is developed by him, mentions existing and upcoming exciting things in Elixir, and explains a few features of the Distillery and Vapor libraries. He also gives advice to people that are starting to work with Elixir on what must be learnt and more, and discusses certain projects and topics he wants to pursue and build knowledge in, in the near future. Links Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix: Rethink the Modern Web App Lance Halvorsen Bleacher Report Wallaby Distillery Vapor Elixir Outlaws Lonestar ElixirConf – Chris Keathley ElixirConf EU Benefits of Elixir: How Elixir helped Bleacher Report handle 8x more traffic Picks Josh Adams: Axe - tool GraphQL – Zero to Awesome Mark Ericksen: Bash command “cd -” to go back to the last working directory Charles Max Wood: Zapier Canon EOS M6 Camera Rode Microphone Chris Keathley: Moka Express Coffee Maker Picross S2 Stamping on Event-Stream
Episode 39: EMx 039: Types in Erlang / Elixir with Zachary Kessin
Sponsors Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit Episode Summary In this episode, the panelists, Josh Adams, Mark Erickson and guest Zachary Kessin, author of the book "Building Web Applications with Erlang", discuss types in Erlang and Elixir. Expert inputs with examples of implemented projects that use the Erlang and Elixir data types, were discussed. Here are the highlights of the discussion: Different data types in Erlang and Elixir such as structs, tuples. Differences in the Erlang/Elixir data types to other languages. Using data types to generate error messages Decoding and validating input data into functions. Getting type information from a running application. Coding patterns and rules engine in Erlang/Elixir. Dialyzer testing tool that validates code and catches any bugs. Changes in Erlang and Elixir code over the years Elixir ecosystem and the Beam Community Links Dialyzer PropEr Sheriff Dialyxir Typed_Struct Beam_Types GB_Trees Programming Languages on the BEAM A reactive game stack: Using Erlang, Lua and Voltdb Robert Virding Zachary Kessin BEAM Channel - Erlang & Elixir https://github.com/ejpcmac/typed_struct Picks Josh Adams Elixir Components: A 12 minute introduction aws-lambda-elixir-runtime Mark Ericksen BalenaEtcher Zach Kessin Elixir Release Ecourse Shalva Band
Episode 38: EMx 038: Slax and SAX Parsers with Ben Schmeckpeper
Sponsors Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit Panel Charles Max Wood Josh Adams Mark Ericksen Joined by special guest Ben Schmeckpeper Episode Summary Charles would expressed how in this episode they had a good time learning about “SAX parsers and about some of the issues with migrating and sharing space between systems.” They discussed the benefits of using SAX (Simple API for XML). One of these benefits is that of being event based. Elixir and Ruby are also discussed, with a greater focus on Elixir. One benefits of using Elixir is that of pattern matching. Lots is also shared on “containers” and the pros and cons of these. Links Ben Schmeckpeper Twitter Ben Schmeckpeper blog https://photos.app.goo.gl/17v3dnxGoYsgkTvn6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/zH17oda67NKPr1rL9 xmerl XML parser Erlsom - Erlang library to parse XML documents BERT - Binary ERlang Term BERT and BERT-RPC 1.0 Specification Saxy - an XML SAX parser and encoder in Elixir Genstage Slax SAX - Wikipedia Picks Josh: Who gives an F*** about rails in 2019 Mark: Mental model for understanding Elixir GenServers Charles: Episode 400 of Ruby Rogues Villinous Disney Game Ben: The Soul of a New Machine Reflections on Trusting Trust The Rise of Worse is Better Flameshot
Episode 37: EMx 037: The Elixir Language Service with Mitchell Hanberg
Sponsors Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit TripleByte offers $1000 signing bonus Cachefly Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Mitchell Hanberg Notes: This episode welcomes guest Mitchell Hanberg, software developer for SEP in Carmel, IN. Currently, he is working with Rails at his job and writes Elixir at home. Mitchell wrote a blog post about how to use Elixir LS with Vim. He is working on integrating ALE and Elixir LS for Vim. The panelists discuss some problems they are having with Elixir LS crashing. The panelists conclude by discussing their favorite features of the Elixir/ALE integration and their favorite features of VIM. Terms: Erlang VS CODE Github Vim ALE (asynchronos linting engine) Visual Studio Code Vim LSP NeoVim OniVim intelliJ ASDF Emacs Picks: Mark https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/ Josh https://urbit.org/primer/ https://xi-editor.io/xi-editor/ Mitchell Hanberg http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/ https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Kindle-Paperwhite-Waterproof-Storage/
Episode 36: EMx 036: Gremlex and Graph Databases with Kevin Moore & Barak Karavani
Sponsors Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit TripleByte Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Joined by Special Guests: Kevin Moore and Barak Karavani Summary Kevin Moore and Barak Karavani start by introducing Gremlex; they also define graph databases and explain what graph databases are used for. The panel asks Kevin and Barak about their work with chatbots and why they chose to use a graph database for this project. Amazon Neptune is introduced, Kevin and Barak explain why they chose to use Neptune and its role in them using Gremlin. The panel discusses open sourcing. Kevin and Barak share what it was like to open source Gremlex and the benefits they have seen in their company because of it. They discuss licensing and give advice for developers who would like to convince their company to open source. The features of Gremlex are discussed and Kevin and Barak share sources for getting started with Gremlex, including recommendations for running Gremlex and test support recommendations. The episode ends as Kevin and Barak explain why they chose elixir and how they teach elixir. Links Gremlex Home Page Gremlex Github Repo Gremlex Medium Post https://aws.amazon.com/neptune/ https://gremlex.carlabs.ai/ https://www.carlabs.ai/ https://neo4j.com/ https://dgraph.io/ https://orientdb.com/ https://medium.com/carlabs/introducing-gremlex-6f685adf73bd http://tinkerpop.apache.org/ https://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming-elixir http://plataformatec.com.br/ https://www.manning.com/books/the-little-elixir-and-otp-guidebook https://github.com/rrrene/credo http://erlang.org/doc/man/dialyzer.html https://github.com/nccgroup/sobelow https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf https://github.com/kevmojay https://github.com/barakyo https://twitter.com/kevmojay https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Mark Ericksen https://www.makemkv.com/ Josh Adams https://github.com/infinitered/torch https://blog.ispirata.com/get-started-with-elm-0-19-and-phoenix-1-4-291beebb350b Kevin Moore https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness Barak Karavani http://haskellbook.com/
Episode 35: EMx 035: Adopting Elixir with Tiago Duarte
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Episode 34: EMx 034: My First Nerves Project with Anders Smedegaard Pedersen
Sponsors Sentry use the code "devchat" for 2 months free on Sentry small plan TripleByte offers a $1000 signing bonus CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Joined by Special Guest: Anders Smedegaard Pedersen Summary Anders Smedegaard Pedersen shares how he got into Elixir and his experience joining the elixir community. He shares with the panel his initial frustration with the community and his confusion on the “correct” way to do things. He tells the panel of his experience at elixir conf meeting Claudio Ortolina, the advice he got, and how this led him to his first nerves project. Mark Ericksen and Josh Adams give advice to new elixir developers. The three of them compare umbrella structure and poncho structure. Links http://erlang.org/doc/apps/jinterface/jinterface_users_guide.html https://elixirforum.com/t/do-you-really-need-a-database/4567/15 https://smedegaard.io/my-first-nerves-project-pt-2/ ElixirConf 2018- My first Nerves Project Bioreactor - David Schainker https://farm.bot/ https://hexdocs.pm/nerves/user-interfaces.html https://embedded-elixir.com/post/2017-05-19-poncho-projects/ https://smedegaard.io/anders-smedegaard-pedersen/ https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Mark Ericksen Set a larger goal (like 30-day goal) and do something every day to move you toward that goal. Even if only 10 minutes. Keep your momentum. Josh Adams https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-recap-of-frontend-development-in-2018-715724c9441d https://elm-lang.org/ Anders Smedegaard Pedersen Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) Property-Based Testing with PropEr, Erlang, and Elixir
Episode 33: EMx 033: Databases and Elixir with Kamil Lelonek
Panel: Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Kamil Lelonek In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Kamil Lelonek who is a full-stack developer and programmer. Chuck, Mark, and Kamil talk about Elixir, Postgrex, databases, and so much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:48 – Chuck: Hello! Our panel today is Mark and myself. Friendly reminder to listeners: check out my show the DevRev. Our guest today is Kamil Lelonek! 1:23 – Guest. 1:43 – Chuck: Today, we are talking about databases. 1:55 – Guest. 3:10 – Mark: We have your blog that you wrote in our show notes. Talk about your experience with exploring these features? 3:39 – Chuck. 3:46 – Mark: I didn’t know those features are in Postgrex. Can you talk about your experience and your journey? 4:10 – Guest. 6:17 – Mark: I am curious, what problem were you trying to solve? 6:31 – Guest. 8:12 – Mark: I like you saying: rather than modifying the application code itself, you created a separate application. I think Elixir is a good fit for that – what’s your experience with this? 8:40 – Guest: I agree with this, but let’s think about it in the other way. 9:48 – Mark: Yeah I can see that. It’s good to be aware of the upsides and downsides. It’s an interesting idea. 10:40 – Guest. 11:38 – Chuck: My experience is mostly in Rails. The other way I have solved this problem is “pulling” but this way is more elegant. Before we have talked with Chris McCord about LiveVue. Is there a way to hook this handler up to LiveVue to stream the changes all the way up to the frontend of web application with Phoenix? 12:20 – Guest. 12:55 – Mark talks about Elixir and GenServer. 13:29 – Guest. 13:49 – Mark: Please go and read Kamil’s blog post because it’s simple and it’s written well! Mark: I think Elixir is a great usage for GenServers. 14:28 – Guest. 14:35 – Chuck: You setup a store procedure, which I don’t see a lot of people doing within the communities. How necessary is that store procedure that you’ve created there? 15:00 – Guest. 16:16 – Chuck: What if you want to do targeted notifications? 16:28 – Guest. 17:33 – Mark: I am curious if you have experimented with the practical limitations of this? Like at one point does it start to break down? 18:00 – Guest. 20:00 – Chuck: I will be honest I am kind of lazy. Outside of the general use I don’t go looking for these, but when I hear about them I say: wow! 20:09 – Guest. 20:57 – Chuck. 21:15 – Guest talks about solutions that he’s found. 22:08 – FreshBooks! 23:17 – Mark: What other kind of databases have you had experience with for comparison reasons? 23:40 – Guest. 24:56 – Mark: You talked about defaults and I want to come back to this topic. 25:08 – Mark asks Chuck a question. 25:12 – Chuck: I don’t know. 25:23 – Mark talks about the databases that his work utilizes. 26:45 – Mark and Chuck go back-and-forth. 27:49 – Guest mentions a solution to the before-mentioned problem that Mark gave. 28:47 – Mark: It can get messy. I don’t repose this as a permanent solution, but it allows you do a staged-migration. 29:15 – Chuck: Do you run into problems with Postgrex? Most technologies if you don’t run into problems you aren’t pushing it enough (at least that’s my experience). 29:29 – Guest answers the question. 30:26 – Mark talks about active, active, active. 31:14 – Guest. 33:25 – Mark: In Elixir, we talk about the things that are in the box and one thing that comes up is “mnesia.” Can you talk about this please? 33:47 – Guest talks about mnesia. 35:17 – Mark talks about mnesia some more. Mark: It is an available option (mnesia), but I don’t know if it’s something that people want when they are looking for something more traditional. 37:04 – Guest. 37:30 – Mark: Yeah something people should be aware of. If you are encountering problems it’s good to know the different tools that are out there and available. 38:42 – Mark: One question: What are some of your favorite features of Postgrex? 38:57 – Guest. 41:08 – Mark talks about Postgrex’s features. 42:14 – Guest. 43:10 – Mark: I had a case where Elixir and Erlang and you can convert term to binary and binary to term. I took some data structure and converted it to a binary and using Ecto and tell it: serialize this and when it loads back out it is a native Elixir type. It’s not always the right solution, but in my cases it actually worked. 43:59 – Guest talks about a library that he wrote back-in-the-day. 44:40 – Chuck: Anything else? Nope? Okay – Picks! 44:52 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React “How to use LISTEN and NOTIFY PostgreSQL commands in Elixir?" By Kamil Lelonek Guest’s Medium Blog Postgrex.Notifications Redis.io Event Store PostgreSQL MongoDB Erlang: mnesia GitHub: cachex GitHub: meh / amnesia PostGIS When to use Ecto, when to use Mnesia PostgreSQL Ecto.Type GitHub: Exnumerator YouTube: Entreprogrammers Kamil’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Being professionally proactive! Chuck Get A Coder Job eBook Challenge: Pomodoro Technique Kamil Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman My Blog My Site
Episode 32: EMx 032: Using Ecto with Edgar Pino
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Edgar Pino In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background? 1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah. 1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready! 1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great! 2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth. 2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements? 2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago. 3:32 – Panel. 3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto. 4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)? 4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it. 4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all. 4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too. 5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps? 5:32 – The guest answers the question. 5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing. 6:24 – Mark. 7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond. 7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did. Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had. 8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching? 8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it? 9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started. 10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option. 10:46 – Guest. 11:01 – Mark asks a question. 11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data... 11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features. 12:09 – Mark chimes-in. 12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad. 12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators. 13:54 – Guest talks about web applications. 14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases? 14:23 – Panelist chimes-in. 14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here. 16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and... 16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed. 17:25 – Panel. 17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts. 18:10 – Panel. 18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL. 18:50 – Panel. 19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing. 19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those. 20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations. 20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box. 20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema? 20:48 – Panelist explains. 21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me. 21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine. 21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer. 22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too! 22:50 – Mark. 23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard. 23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could. 24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations. 24:12 – Panelist continues. 24:32 – Guest: I wonder if... 24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature. 24:48 – Guest. 24:53 – FreshBooks! 26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have? 26:21 – Guest answers the question. 28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there. 28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else. 28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries. 29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point. 29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes. 31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS. 31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too. 32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow. Mark continues. 33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw. 33:30 – Mark continues. 33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario. 34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there. 34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes. 35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade. 35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next! 41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Edgar Pino A sneak peek at Ecto 3 Ecto Active Record Pattern Repository Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Plex Josh This Erlang Life Guest Ecto Documentation! Edgar Pino – My blog!
Episode 31: EMx 031: Lessons from a Decade of Erlang with Brujo Benavides
Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Brujo Benavides In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Brujo Benavides (Argentina) who is a software engineer and uses a mix of Elixir, Erlang, and GO. They talk about the similarities and differences between Erlang and Elixir. Brujo talks about conferences that he organizes. You can find the guest through GitHub, Twitter, and About Me. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Our special guest is Brujo B.! Let’s talk about the topic today, which is: Lessons from a decade of Erlang! We really haven’t talked about Erlang in the past. 1:47 – Mark: Can you give us your introduction, please? 1:55 – Guest: I started programming at 10 years old. I translated a guest to Spanish. Then after school I started working with other languages, until I did my thesis at the university. I got hired and then while there they taught me Erlang. After 2 years the company went away and died. When that happened I had my honeymoon plan to go to Europe. I went to Poland and found a company that interviewed me, I passed the test, and got hired. The best solution I could ever make. I moved from developer to another position, to director and then to CEO. 6:16 – Chuck: You have been doing Erlang for a while. My brain said 10 years of Elixir and that’s not possible – my bad. When Erlang came onto the scene how did that affect you? 6:40 – Guest answers Chuck’s question. 9:06 – Chuck: See show note links, please. It’s cool to see that you took cautious approaches to the language. What’s the balance between Erlang and Elixir? 9:33 – Guest: It’s about 45/45, because I also do GO. I don’t really like GO, but it’s whatever. 9:59 – Chuck: What has changed in the last 10 years? 10:09 – Guest: It’s my personal view on this and what I see at conferences. I saw a change from beginning Elixir as much acceptance and the community is more open. The people are already so developed already. 11:53 – Mark: I know there is an effort to make the beam languages more compatible. I know using a colon in the name and there’s a lot of communication there. At the last conference, they were talking about this. I think it’s neat that the community is not fighting this. In the early days it seems that the Erlang community were fighting it – what’s that transfer been like? 13:00 – Guest: There were other languages outside of Elixir with the beam. They failed and didn’t catch-on. 15:00 – Panel: How have you liked/disliked coding in Elixir vs. Erlang? 15:14 – Guest: I like many things that Elixir and Erlang can offer. Elixir is a mature and young language. There are many things that they corrected from day one. One thing I don’t like about Amber is that... 17:36 – Mark: I also use it b/c it does give that consistency. It normalizes all the different ways you can code. When I review people’s code I will take the code formatter and get it to be normalized. I am happy with it and I will take it. 18:17 – Guest: Everybody understands everybody’s code. 18:48 – Guest mentions Elvis. See links below. 19:00 – Chuck: It’s interesting. It comes down to community and in some ways it’s not that Erlang community isn’t a good one, but sounds like... 19:17 – Guest: The other thing that happened with the Erlang community is the topic of building websites. In 2015 it was in the Elixir Conference in San Francisco – I think – this is what happened... 20:47 – Mark: I think it’s a credit to both communities. I’ve watched those talks before. I was watching these Erlang Conferences and there have been Elixir speakers there. Good collaboration and I’m happy for that. 21:19 – Chuck: Will these 2 technologies grow together? 21:30 – Guest: Great mix of talks from Erlang and Elixir and talking about how to build systems. 22:49 – Mark: This blog post that you wrote – see show note links before. Can you mention the main topics that you wrote within this blog post? General lessons you’ve learned? 23:23 – Guest: The most important is how we start building stuff over common abstractions. 26:07 – FreshBooks! 27:11 – Mark: You mentioned the behaviors and the abstraction that is available through OTP is through the genserver. Those are and yes it’s true to educate people you will start with a spawn to see how simple things are. Yes, you don’t build a system on that. 27:55 – Guest: I recommend the talk to Spanish speakers. See links below. I asked for a translation but he said no. 29:10 – Mark: You talked also about test-driven development. How has testing in the Erlang community from the past and how has it been influenced by Elixir if at all? 29:53 – Guest: I am not sure. 32:34 – Mark: I don’t know how to spawn another node and have a disconnect in a testing framework? There might be other ways to do it? I would like to borrow that between the two. I’ve built some code that is cluster aware. Yeah I would love to have integration tests. Maybe that is available through Elixir- thanks for talking about that! 33:27 – Chuck: Anything else? Let’s talk about the Sawn Fest! 33:40 – Guest: It started in 2011 and started with a contest that anybody could participate. Judicators judged it and then awards were given. 34:38 – Chuck. 34:44 – Guest: The next year in 2012 the sponsors gave prizes. We were eagerly waiting but there was no contest that year. 37:47 – Chuck and guest go back-and-forth. 37:57 – Guest: There is a team of four now. If you go to the website it actually looks amazing unlike last year!! 39:19 – Mark: People will not hear about this, though, at the time it broadcasts b/c your episode is coming out after Nov. 24th - 25th. Can you do the game/contest remotely? 39:54 – Guest: Yes, people are playing from around the world from India, Denmark, Romania, Africa, and China! So yes you can do it from your house. 40:18 – Mark: What can people do or see or read about the winners? And after-the-fact? 40:32 – Guest: Yes when judges are judging we make the depositories public!! 42:05 – Chuck: My Sunday’s are usually pretty full. 42:19 – Guest: Yes that happened to me. As an organizer I cannot quit b/c I still have to be there. Time with my wife and kid is important, but yes it’s fun! 42:43 – Mark: Yes that shows how passionate they are about the community and the language. 42:56 – Chuck: Mind-blown! 43:10 – Chuck: You organize some conferences right? 43:17 – Guest: Yes. 44:25 – Chuck: Anything else? 44:30 – Mark: Dialyzer and curious about you organizing a Meetup? I have organized an Elixir Meetup. With Meetups how can you tell us how to make it successful? Are you doing both Erlang and Elixir? How are you running it? 45:10 – Guest answers the question. 51:53 – Chuck: How can people find you? 52:00 – Guest: GitHub! Twitter! About Me! (See links below.) 52:19 – Chuck: Picks! 52:20 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Solutions Inaka Inaka Credo_Server Erlang Solutions Elvis 114 RR Elixir Show 048 RR Show 10 Lessons from Decade with Erlang YouTube Video in Spanish Erlang: Common_Test ExUnit Smalltalk SpawnFest 2018 SpawnFest Zoom Brujo’s Twitter Brujo’s Website Credo Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Zoom Meeting Charles Mastodon Brujo Katana Test
Episode 30: EMx 030: Writing Great Unit Tests with Devon Estes
Panel: Josh Adams Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Devon Estes In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Devon Estes who is a software developer who uses Elixir. He currently resides in Berlin, Germany and has been working there for the past four years. The panelists and the guest talk about Elixir, testing, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:49 – Chuck: I am starting a new show called The DevRev. Check it out here! Our special guest today is Devon Estes. Episode 18 is a past episode you’ve been on – check it out here! 1:26 – Devon: I am American but live in Berlin, Germany for about 4 years now. I was a freelancer, but now I am at a “real” job now where I am a software developer using Elixir. 1:50 – Chuck: Cool! 2:05 – Guest: Something to always talk about testing – it’s evergreen! 2:15 – Chuck: What are the benefits you get from testing and what is your approach? 2:24 – The guest answers the question. 3:53 – Panelist chimes in. 4:18 – Panel: I like playing around and I know when something is terrible. I have to poke around to figure out if I like it or not. I am an exploratory developer. I write a test and it looks great at first but the implementation is terrible or something. 5:54 – Mark comments on developers and how they interact with their code. 7:15 – Mark: How do you approach that? I heard you talking about tests, spikes and other things. 7:22 – Guest: If it is something that is small I will write the test first. If it’s larger I will usually do 2-3 spikes to figure out what is going on. The guest continues with this topic. 8:54 – Panel: I found that over the years I couldn’t do that. 9:21 – Guest: With the topic of testing in Elixir I have these “rules” but I break them all the time. Sometimes you get better, cleaner tests out of it if you were to break the rule(s.). Tests are only there for 90% of the time, in my own opinion. Sometimes you have to play around to see what’s going on. 10:36 – Panel: I agree a lot, especially with integrations. 10:49 – Guest. 12:18 – Panel: You have these guidelines or rules and you know when to break those rules. You talked about these specific rules and I thought it was interesting. I was reading through these and I have the same rules but you codified them with examples. Can you walk us through your guidelines? 13:00 – Guest: To be super clear I am talking about unit tests. When I think of testing there is this testing pyramid. 13:52 – Panel. 14:57 – Guest: Like I said, these rules are meant to be broken, if appropriate. 16:39 – Guest continues with unit testing and other types of testing. He talks about easier to more difficult kinds of tests. 17:42 – Guest (continues): Sometimes the tests are accurately true, and sometimes not. It can be easy to get into those traps. Hopefully they will tell you what is expected. 18:25 – Panel: In Ruby, there is a test that would modify your code and remove stuff? Was it Mutant? Mutant testing. 19:03 – Guest answers the question. 19:38 – Guest: I don’t know if Elixir has anything like that, yet, but it would be pretty cool. It would be a good idea for someone to take on! 20:00 – Chuck: I have had conversations with a colleague – they both pushed back and talked more about Cypress.io and integrated tests. 21:04 – Chuck: I think it’s interesting to see the different approaches! 21:14 – Guest: We are lucky to have great tooling in Elixir!! The guest mentions Wallaby.js! 24:39 – The guest talks about unit levels. Check it out here! 26:35 – Panel. 26:48 – Chuck: How does it affect my workflow? I like end-to-end tests. The efficiency, if it’s repeating stuff – I don’t care – as long as it’s fast enough. If it ruins my workflow then it’s a problem. 27:22 – Panel. 28:12 – The topic “test coverage” is mentioned by Chuck. 28:25 – Panel. 29:02 – FreshBooks! 30:10 – Guest talks about Wallaby.js. 32:24 – Panel: We’ve had you on before, and the idea is that you are all into Elixir and its path. (EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes) 32:57 – Guest: I think testing in Elixir is simpler. 34:04 – Panel. 34:07 – Guest: You have commands and you have queries. The guest gives a hypothetical example! The guest also mentions GenServers, too. 35:42 – Guest: There are two ways that you can interact with the process: command & queries. 37:00 – Guest talks about different libraries such as: MoX. 37:41 – Panel: Any tips on testing the servers; just any GenServer? 38:25 – Panelist shares his approach with this. 39:54 – Guest: I don’t test name servers b/c they are by definition global state. The guest goes into great detail about testing – check it out! 46:29 – Panel. 47:01 – Guest: I kind of hate the term dependency interjection in the functional context. 47:17 – Panel: I think it’s helpful, because... 47:28 – Guest. 47:49 – Panelists go back-and-forth! 48:20 – Panel: Sending a message to the testing process – this was something that was stated by Devon earlier. I find this really helpful. 49:00 – Chuck: Picks! 49:05 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Wallaby Cypress.io Mutation Testing – GitHub MoX MRS 003 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 295 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 330 – Episode with Devon Estes EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes Devon’s GitHub Devon’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Get Alias Blog - Mox Josh GitPitch.com Slide Deck by Josh Charles Values Extreme Ownership Sit down with your team Discord server for DevChat Recommendation Page for Elixir Devon Dell Laptop XPS 13 Play Station Mini Test - devonestes@gmail.com
Episode 29: EMx 029: JWT Auth in Phoenix with Joken with Sophie DeBenedetto
Panel: Mark Ericksen Nathan (Nate) Hopkins Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Sophie DeBenedetto In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Sophie DeBenedetto who is a teacher at the Flatiron School, a software engineer, and creator of Break In. The panelists and Sophie talk about her blog, the Flatiron School, and her background. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:50 – Chuck: Welcome! Our panel is Mark, Nate, and myself. Our special guest, today, is Sophie! Please introduce yourself! 1:32 – Guest: Hi! I am Sophie and I am an engineer who works at the Flatiron School. We are growing and fast and offer a lot of different courses. We are an international school working with Elixir and Phoenix. 2:10 – Chuck: You gave us multiple topics: Joken and Elixir Packages. Give us please some background there. 2:33 – Guest: I will talk about the problems we were trying to resolve with Joken. The Guest goes into detail about this topic. Sophie mentions Rails, Joken, Guardian, Phoenix, and Erlang-Jose. 4:41 – Guest: We found this nice little library that we needed and that was Joken. Initially, we were trying to hit the nail with a racket and all we needed was a hammer. 6:48 – Guest: I am telling the whole Internet our problem we had, and how we resolved it. That’s why I am here today, because you all found my blog. 9:04 – Panel: There is a lot there! Some terms that you mentioned: JWT is referred to as a JOT – for those listeners who don’t know. Panelist asks question. 9:43 – Guest answers the question. 10:52 – Panel: When I used Joken before I did use it with the HMAC algorithm. You are on the fringe of what is mainstream and you can come across those rough spots. You are doing this service of saying yes I found this problem and I will try to help you with this problem. 11:25 – Guest: It’s an interesting feeling to say we solved this problem and then realizing we were wrong about it. I’m glad that happened because it’s real. As a teacher I saw students being reluctant to blog b/c they didn’t want to be wrong, but that’s how you grow! 12:22 – Chuck: We talked about the JWT and the dots. How is this different than Ruby gems and other things? 12:44 – Guest: I think anyone would have thoughts on this. There’s not a lot of resources, and look into the Ruby community. From the Flatiron School our focus has been Ruby, and we ask our students to contribute. We want to find an answer to any problem we are facing through Ruby and Rails. More or less you will find a solution from somebody through the Internet. Elixir is definitely different from this because it’s a newer framework. 14:26 – Panelist asks about the curriculum through the Flatiron School. 14:48 – Guest answers the question. 16:08 – Panel: We have had Kate Travers from Flatiron Schools on our podcast before. What has your path been? 16:30 – Guest: We graduated at the same time and I went to the educational-side, which I did for a year to about a year and a half. I thought I needed to get my hands dirty, though, to be a better teacher. I went to this company...and I recently rejoined the Flatiron School’s faculty. 17:40 – Panel: That’s great. I was with a company for 3 years, left for 2 years, and then I came back. It’s a testament to not burning bridges. There is value to leaving and going to get new and different experiences. You grow in the process, and that’s what happened for me. I like your path and thanks for sharing your story! 18:50 – Fresh Books! 20:00 – Chuck: Do you have any policies on how students (at Flatiron School) need to contribute? 20:06 – Guest: Not so much HOW but we encourage it. The guest goes into detail and mentions Elixir School (see links below). 21:33 – Panel: That is a good suggestion if a newbie wants to contribute and they are afraid to contribute. You can get involved and your suggestion will be reviewed. 22:10 – Guest: Yes! There is a team member, Matt, and he contributed to the code base. He was new to the Elixir community, and showed his thought-process. Contributing to open source is great because it helps the community, and opens a pathway for great feedback and conversation. 23:30 – Panel: I think that’s a healthy way to look at pole requests. I have worked with folks that don’t view it that way, though. They hold their code a little close to their chest and that’s it. I like the dialogue. 24:00 – Chuck: This stuff isn’t staying still b/c the Elixir community is constantly growing. I cannot recommend highly enough to learn something new. It can be just 20-30 minutes a day. If you aren’t doing that then you will fall behind. 24:57 – Panel: Question for Sophie. How did you get involved with Elixir School? 25:18 – Guest: I am definitely not an expert. It’s a group of people who thought that Elixir should be more accessible. I like it because it’s beginner-friendly. Find something to contribute to b/c there are tons of different levels to find what’s good for you. 27:09 – Panel: Has it be re-skinned/re-themed? 27:15 – Guest: Yeah, I think so. Along with the theme-related they have been putting high priority into different languages. 27:38 – Panelist comments about natural languages and translations. 27:52 – Chuck: Was this a project through the school or something else? 28:06 – Guest: It’s not through the school. 28:36 – Chuck: Any other projects through the school? 28:46 – Guest: Yes, the school has a lab and it’s neat to see it grow! 29:38 – Panel: Have you tried those other technologies before (and they didn’t work) or did you just anticipate it was a problem that you couldn’t solve without the Beam. 30:02 – Guest answers. 32:33 – Panel: That makes sense. You were reaching for Erlang when you were on the Ruby Stack. 32:49 – Guest refers to tooling and Rabbit. 33:00 – Chuck: You mentioned Rabbit – what does your typical stack look like? Are you running Phoenix? Or here is a job so here is Elixir? What is your process like? 33:23 – Guest: A Ruby on Rails app it has all the ups-and-downs and it’s kind of old. As we are growing and partnering with new companies/schools we are updating and seeing a need to grow even more. 34:49 – Panel. 34:54 – Guest: The video that Chris McCord put out! 35:03 – Chuck: Check the show notes’ links! 35:15 – Chuck: Picks! 35:23 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elm Atom.io Flutter.io JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Guardian Joken Erlang-Jose Flatiron School Flatiron School's Blog Flatiron Labs Elixir School Elixir School EMx 020 Episode Utah Elixir Meetup Blog: How We Built the Learn IDE in Browser Break_In The Great Code Adventure Rabbit Sophie’s Website Sophie’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Utah Elixir Meetup Nate Racquetball Getting out and doing something Charles repurpose.io Sling TV Fox Sports Sophie Elixir School Learn IDE Blog
Episode 28: EMx 028: Elixir, Node, and Bitcoin with Pete Corey
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Pete Corey In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Pete Corey who is a software developer who resides in Denver, CO (USA). He uses Node, React, and Elixir and currently is working on two big projects. Listen to today’s episode to hear the panelists and Pete talk about Elixir, Node, Bitcoin, and Gen_TCP. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:50 – Mark: Welcome! Our panel is Josh Adams and our guest is Pete Corey! Pete, can you tell people about yourself? 1:12 – Guest: I am a software developer and I run a web development consultancy company. I use Node and React, and I use Elixir in my free time, and I blog about that and various projects. 1:38 – Mark: How did you get into Elixir? 1:40 – Guest: Node has its limitations. I found myself not understanding concurrency at all. I saw Elixir and I came around to it when it was around its 1.0 era. I have been hooked ever since. 2:43 – Josh asks a question. 3:00 – Guest. 3:42 – Josh: Yeah it felt like I was putting a s 4:03 – Mark: Letting the mantra of letting it fail or let it crash. How do I recover? You are mentioning about your Node situation that you have these complex situations and how do I get back to a good running state. That’s what I like about Elixir. I’m more concerned: how do I get back to a good running state. It’s a mental shift and I really appreciate it. Instead of worrying about this half, I am focusing more on how do I use it to make it run smoothly? 5:20 – Guest: I totally agree. Learning Elixir has really flipped my mind about developing. I know failure happens – figure it how it fails and then anticipating HOW they might fail to make things easier. In terms of bigger projects... The guest talks about the BIG project he is working on now! Listen here! 7:40 – Panel: That sounds cool! Are you building this by yourself or with other people? 7:54 – Guest: It’s a solo project and I want to keep it that way. I was into Bitcoin before and I bought Mastering Bitcoin. Started working through that – how to go through private keys and things like that. 8:40 – Panel: I think that it’s great that you are SHARING through the process. I think that’s awesome and you are showing what you are learning and the pitfalls and the gains. 9:11 – Guest: It’s been a learning process with pattern matching. 10:20 – Panel. 10:30 – Guest talks about bytes. 10:59 – Panel: One of the first things I did in Elixir was... 11:27 – Guest: ...moving bytes around and moving integers and things like that. Elixir is much nicer! 11:40 – Panel: Can you talk about Gen TCP, please? 11:55 – Guest: A goal of my project tis to dig into the underlining Erlang properties. I think it’s a shame that people don’t explore this. The guest talks about what Gen TCP is! 13:38 – Panel: I like using Gen TCP. 13:54 – Guest: Every problem that I had boiled down to my lack of knowledge. 14:29 – Panel: What do you mean: it worked out better? 14:35 – Guest: My Gen TCP connection would pass to the...the issue is that Gen TCP is a streaming protocol. It might contain multiple packets or 1½ packets, etc. Every time I received some data I would impend it to a buffer and I would look for head eliminators. After that would be the packet length and I would split that number of bytes from the original buffer. That’s hard to explain, but... The guest talks about a solution!! 16:21 – Panel: I think there are a few great points there. One, Erlang has a lot of rich history. What are available through Erlang already? Join the Elixir Slack Channel! 17:34 – Panel: Sounds like you are using property testing? I think that’s cool – I want to spend more time digging into this! What is it? 18:00 – Guest: It is pretty cool and new to me. The guest talks about unit testing and then property testing. 20:20 – Panel: What kind of experience have you had? 20:40 – Fresh Books! 21:48 – Guest: The one place where I am using property testing is... 23:41 – Panel: That’s awesome. I want to get into it more. 23:50 – Guest: Once I get going it falls together pretty easily. It’s hard to come up with the properties that I want to test. 24:11 – Guest: It’s far more eye opening than unit testing. When you have to think about these fundamental properties you see in a different light. 24:33 – Panel: I am dropping in a link to your blog articles that you tagged. Is there anything else you want to say about your project? 24:55 – Guest: It’s an ongoing project. I haven’t actually implemented the meat of the project, yet. Please stay tuned! 25:25 – Panel: Is it your website: petecorey.com? 25:35 – Guest: Yes www.petecorey/blog.com and my newsletter! 25:47 – Panel. 25:55 – Guest asks a question. 26:05 – Panel. 26:12 – Panel: What else to talk about? 26:40 – Guest: There is another project to talk about and it’s about guitar chords and things like that; if you want? 26:57 – Panel: Yeah, generating music with Elixir is simple. I know you did the distance between chords thing? What else is super cool about it? 27:27 – Guest: It programmatically generates these guitar chords. The coolest piece is the algorithm all of guitar fingers for a guitar chord and fret this fret, etc. Then I can take the chord with a specific fingering and measure the distance. 28:30 – Panel: Have you seen Google Wave Net? It’s fairly recent. 28:39 – Guest: Is it related to Google Labs? 28:47 – Panel: I doubt it. 29:18 – Guest: Very cool, but I don’t have the AI chops. 29:26 – Panel. 29:29 – Guest: Yeah it works my brain a bit. 29:40 – Guest: Yeah I play too much guitar. I had enough money to buy my own guitar and amp. 29:54 – Panel: Talk about the chord charts. I was looking for the word: tablature! END – Ad: Lootcrate.com Links: Ruby Elixir Elm Atom.io Flutter.io JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Bitcoin Gen_TCP Stream Data Bitcoin YECC LEEX Music Rustler ElixirWeekly Jsonnet Ksonnet Pete Corey’s Blog Pete Corey’s Twitter Secure Meteor Grafonnet-lib Prometheus-operator The Sparrow Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Josh JSonnet KSonnet Grafonnet Prometheus Operator Mark HSTR Pete The Sarrow
Episode 27: EMx 027: ExVenture with Eric Oestrich
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Nate Hopkins Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Eric Oestrich In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Eric Oestrich who is a web developer who resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. He and the panel talk about ExVenture, Gossip, Cowboy, Raisin, Grapevine, and much more! Listen to today’s episode to hear all about it! Finally, check out Eric’s ElixirConf talk and his blog, too! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:51 – Charles introduces the panel. 1:14 – Nate talks about his background. 1:27 – Chuck: My first programming job I worked with Nate. Nate also works now with Eric Berry. We have a special guest and that is Eric Oestrich. Tell us who you are, please! 1:55 – Eric: I work for Smart Logic, LLC. We are a consultancy who has moved to Elixir for the last 2 years. 2:14 – Chuck: Tell us what ExVenture is? 2:46 – Eric: Late 80’s to mid-90’s it’s like a MUD tech space game. Eric goes into detail of what ExVenture is. 3:28 – Panel: Familiar with MUDS. 3:36 – Panel: Audience can’t tell that Eric isn’t an old guy. Eric – you aren’t an old gentleman – how did you get into it?! 4:02 – Eric: The concept has fascinated me. It’s pure game mechanics. In school I wrote things in Python and try to make it threaded. Never got it going. After that I wanted to do a MUD but not good enough in C and couldn’t get it working in Ruby neither. But one faithful day (a year ago) I got an echo and chat server and now we have a MUD. 5:02 – Panel: Why should you be interested? I will tell you why. ExVenture is an open source... I encourage everyone to dig into and play with it! It is a game (so that makes it more fun) but you are dealing with game mechanics. I am also curious where you wanted this to go? What made you say: I want to create this and make it open source? 6:37 – Eric: I like it and work has mostly played for it. It’s MIT because of that. Early in the project (between client work) it was a common thread and that’s why it’s open source. 7:27 – Panel: I ran into you at the conference and you were showing me... Talk about getting metrics out of your system, please? 8:20 – Eric answers the question. 9:09 – Panel: When people are trying to get metrics out of their system – what EVEN makes a good metric? 9:21- Eric: I am trying to figure that out myself, actually. I want to know how long it takes for someone to login? Is that someone trying to hack into my system? If you speak at a global channel or something else... Eric goes into more detail. Eric also mentions Prometheus. 10:31 – Panel: You mentioned: What would you want to see on a dashboard? 11:01 – Eric answers the question and mentions Prometheus EX. 12:19 – Panel: As you starting building this you were pulling libraries out of it and making them separate libraries. Are you pretty proud of GOSSIP? 12:37 – Eric: Yes! Gossip is based on web sockets and it’s a cowboy socket. Eric talks about Gossip. 13:10 – Panel: What other clients are you trying to support? 13:15 – Eric: There is a JavaScript client and Node-based game called... There is a bundle system for that. There is also a Python option. The one thing we haven’t done yet is a C client. That is important b/c most of the games that you could connect to are 25-30 years old. 14:26 – Panel asks a question. 14:34 – Eric: That is the C client we are waiting for. 14:43 – Panel: You talked at the conference (see the show notes) you talked about things you learned along the way. Can you talk about your process? What kind of bottlenecks and how did you resolve those issues? 15:10 – Eric answers the question. 16:44 – Panel: Did you run out of processes? 16:47 – Eric: The VM shut-off – it was just done. That was the first go-around. 19:27 – Eric: After the ElixirConf, I wanted to see how far I could push it. Eric continues. 19:51 – Panel: I want to identify some of these principles you just talked about. First, the major block was the gen server is a single process. 20:21 – Panel. 20:24 – Panel: I think that is a common mistake when people come to Elixir in the beginning stages. How did you solve it? 20:50 – Panelist answers the above question. 21:30 – Panel: That’s one of the big things. It’s an architectural issue. Second, you mentioned really LARGE messages. You were sending around really large messages. 22:20 – Eric: For every 100 players was a gigabyte of ram – it was a lot. And that was mostly b/c every copy...when a new character enters the room then that message gets sent out then it gets copied again, and... 23:08 – Panel. 23:24 – Panel: The third one you mentioned was around data base blocking or...? Can you talk about this one a little more, please? 23:33 – Eric answers the question. 24:02 – Panel. 24:30 – Eric: It was always saving...I tricked Echo into saving...There is a lot of things that could be better to save specifically faster. 24:52 – Panel: I think people would hit those 3 points eventually – there is a lot of value to that. 25:09 –Eric: Yes that was near the end of my ElixirConf talk and my blog. 25:23 – Panel. 25:33 – Eric: It came out in May and I figured out that I needed to learn how to cluster in Elixir. That’s what the ElixirConf was a bout from single node to multiple nodes. Eric continues. 28:38 – Panel: When you have a cluster – and I join – when I transfer from one room to another room, I could be passed off to another server or node? 29:01 – Eric: Whatever you mean by “being passed off.” Whatever server you land on that’s the one you will be on. The magic is that... 30:08 – Advertisement: Fresh Books! 31:15 – Panel: I am going through the code base now and I am excited. It’s going to help me get better at Elixir. 31:32 – Eric: That’s the point of ExVenture. 31:48 – Panel: You host a server so people can see what it’s about – and that’s Mid Mud, right? 32:09 – Eric: Yep, the first hour of you playing. There is a town crier, you request, and then combat monsters. Also, it is plugged into Gossip and you can talk to them. 32:44 – Eric: Yep, there you go: player logged-in! 32:55 – Panel: Maybe not b/c it will turn into a new podcast soon. 33:07 – Panel: What if I want to use Gossip, what is involved there? 33:16 – Eric: Gossip.Haus/docs – Go there! Set it up and start sending and receiving events. 34:40 – Panel: When I was trying to understand the Prometheus metrics it helped. And then in downloading it (as a tip), for me, it was easy to use the DOCKER instructions. 35:32 – Eric: Yep, that was done by a community member. 35:40 – Panel: Are you looking for people to contribute? 35:50 – Eric: Yep, I have a public Trello board. There are 2 tags. 36:12 – Panel: Sounds like you have people involved? 36:22 – Eric: Bunch of people came on after the ElixirConf. 36:33 – Panel: If people download it (another tip) in the SEEDS file you will find out the admin username and password. I guess that’s something you can add. Login: ADMIN and Password: PASSWORD. What I thought was fun (playing with it) in the admin screen I got a sense that it’s generic enough that I could create a space game. Like playing with sectors of space. Does that make sense? 37:42 – Eric: I don’t want it to be tied JUST to fantasy b/c that’s what MUD is. Everything should be good for historical/ fantasy/ etc. any genre that you want to do! 38:13 – Panel: I could see a HackFest and the company could create one for their business. You could have a lot of fun with it. 38:38 – Panel. 38:44 – Panel: Hidden things on their websites. 38:50 – Eric: Search TEXT ADVENTURE in Google Search. See show notes below. 39:24 – Panel: There is a whole subculture that people are interested in and I didn’t know that these people existed. I think that is interesting. 39:45 – Eric: There are tons of games out there that are 20+ years old! 39:55 – Panel: What is your favorite old school MUD game? 40:02 – Eric lists his favorite old school games! One of them is Achaea! 40:51 – Panel: I like the status bars are really cool. If you haven’t played it you have a health bar. Also you have these expiring times and it’s very cool – modern MUD. 41:22 – Eric. 42:00 – Panel: You came from a Ruby background – what was your transition to Elixir like for you? How did you come to Elixir? What was that like for you? 42:15 – Eric: Yeah some of my friends were into Elixir from a functional standpoint about 2 years ago. They were reading about Phoenix and such. They wanted to see how it was going to go. 43:06 – Panel: Try by fire. Coming from Ruby to Elixir – what some advice would you give the same person? 43:37 – Eric: It was less of a culture shock b/c Phoenix was still kind of “Railsy.” 44:35 – Panel: When I was first learning ERLANG, and telling them that it was a standard library. 44:59 – Eric: It’s using Cowboys Ranch. 45:19 – Eric: There are a number of people out there that they want people to run to SSH b/c it’s more secure. 45:46 – Eric: I guess if we are on this topic about secure... 46:40 – Chuck. 46:51 – Panel: I think there is a lot of value, Eric, and the lessons you’ve learned and the path you’ve gone down. If you are new to Elixir going to ExVenture is a great way to start. 47:20 – Eric. 47:35 – Panel: Just run the format and we can do it that way. I encourage people to download it and see what it’s like as a user, and play with it as an admin. We have a Meetup coming up this Thursday. Eric is coming in virtually into our Meetup group. 48:29 – Eric: Gossip is open source. Grapevine and Raisin – check these out, too, b/c they are open source, too. 48:58 – Panel: Where can people contact you? 49:05 – Eric: Twitter! GitHub! Mudcoders.com. 49:39 – Picks! 49:44 – Ad: Lootcrate.com Links: Ruby Elixir Elm Atom.io Flutter.io JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang ExVenture Ex_Venture ExVenture’s Trello Board Prometheus Prometheus EX Gossip GitHub: Gossip 2018 – Conference Talk @ Elixir Conf with Eric Oestrich Eric’s Blog Libcluster Raft – GitHub.io – The Raft Consensus Algorithm pg2 MidMUD Gossip/Haus/Docs ExVenture: Docker Environment Google: Text Adventure Achaea Cowboy SSH Grapevine Raisin ASDF Plugins Eric’s GitHub Eric’s Twitter Brooklyn Nine-Nine Elm Packages MetaBase Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Eric MUD Coders Elixir LS Mark ASDF Library Josh Brooklyn Nine-Nine Elm UI Nate Mentoring and Paired Programming Metabase Charles Monster Hunters International
Episode 26: EMx 026: Higher Level Functions GenState Deployments with Bill Peregoy
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Bill Peregoy In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Bill Peregoy who is a software engineer who uses Elixir and loves Graph QL. The panel talks with Bill about his Elixir background, in addition to past and current projects. Check out today’s episode to hear the panel talk about Elixir, Graph QL, code reviews, and much more! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:07 – Chuck: Tell us who you are and why you are famous? 1:16 – Guest: Here it goes...I have a diverse background. I have a background in hardware and went into software and it got me into Ruby. From there I moved to the software world and in constant contact with a Ruby project. Then I found an Elixir book and thought it was really cool. About a year ago I started working with a consulting company that uses Elixir. They have a cool entrepreneur group. Then about 3 months ago I transferred to another project. 2:41 – Panel: The MBTA? 2:49 – Guest: You thought I was using old crust technology, but they are using new technologies. 3:06 – Panel: You have this hardware background have you looked at NERVES? 3:17 – Guest: I have an interest in it. 3:34 – Let’s talk about deploying Elixir apps. Getting into Elixir might be interesting to talk about? Let’s talk about how you got into Elixir, please. 3:55 – Guest: I had an easy slide into it. The guest talks about how to structure code and how he learned about Elixir. 4:34 – Chuck: Where would have gotten into trouble if you didn’t have that? 4:39 – Guest: ...how do you organize code? It’s a bunch of modules with functions in them. 5:19 – Panel: You mentioned code reviews – and to me that’s how you learn something fast. 5:30 – Guest: I was lucky to have worked with a person who is really picky about code reviews. They were detailed and I learned a lot from him. 5:53 – Panel: I give code reviews, too. What makes a good code review from the receiving end? 6:12 – Guest answers the question. Guest: Don’t write the code for me, but...here is a general direction. 6:37 – Panel: I give the person a wrong review so they have to learn it. 7:00 – Chuck: Would have it been easier if it was a smaller project? 7:10 – Guest: I think it helped that it was a larger project. 7:29 – Chuck: We have talked about deployment and other tools that you’ve used. What I am curious about – you were using AWS and ECS can you talk about that, please? 8:00 – Guest: It was a wild ride for me. We knew we’d have to get there eventually and went for it. We never had deployed an Elixir app before. I had little knowledge with AWS, so there were thousands of new things I was learning in one week. I learned a lot from this guy and he said let’s get the app running, then let’s take it to an RDS, then let’s make sure this and that work. There is a lot going on there, but breaking it down you could figure it out when they came up. It was a lifesaver having his work b/c it would have taken me weeks instead of a few days. 9:28 – Chuck: My wife and I watched The Martian a few days ago. The character said: you solve one problem at a time. 9:47 – Guest: Yes. 10:00 – Guest: The article, “Guide to Deploy a...” 10:20 – Guest: I understood the pieces very well. 10:30 – Panel: Setting up an umbrella project. Is that how you have yours set-up? 10:48 – Guest: Single Phoenix application for me. 11:15 – Panel: Sounds like you were learning a lot of different technologies – any big “AH HA” moments? 11:30 – Guest answers the question. 12:15 – Panel: I like how the Distillery 2.0 Guide and the docker file... 12:30 – Chuck: Walk us through your structure of your talk? 12:39 – Guest: Yes, higher order functions - that’s what I was talking about. Where in the Elixir world you want to pass around functions. I had this idea that I had one task that was very similar but you had to do it multiple times. To do that I defined one piece of code that... It was a way to reuse a lot of code and... 13:51 – Panel: That is a pattern I enjoy using. Instead of using a mocking library I like a function that can direct it. The thing I enjoyed about it was that I could have a test data and a test interface in a production environment. I could create a customer... 15:06 – Guest. 15:44 – Guest: Gen state is pretty awesome. It’s not in Elixir Proper, yet. 16:55 – Chuck: I can see how that is helpful. You have to manage the pipeline on your own. 17:18 – Guest: You can upload a certain number of permits. That can be handled behind the scenes. 17:45 – Panel: Yeah the first state was manage the Q and then... 18:48 – Guest: That is what I am doing right now – one at a time right now. If I need more processing on this one node, I can... 19:20 – Panel: That’s when Elixir feels very powerful. 19:26 – Guest: That’s a talk I have a lot. Ruby is great, but when you dive into OPT in Elixir then it’s amazing. 19:54 – Chuck: We are starting to get there with Elixir. I don’t miss as much stuff with Ruby as I did before. 20:10 – Guest: What libraries I don’t need and I haven’t come across that just yet. 20:44 – Panel asks a question. 20:50 – Guest: I wasn’t directly involved. They are working with predictions for bust lines. And they grab data form many different sources. They are trying to combine all that data and it has been a good solution for them. 21:25 – Panel: Since you have a Ruby background and hardware – what is the Elixir system like for you? 21:41 – Guest: I haven’t come across too many problems. Elixir’s language tends to be smaller – which I like. I think people from JavaScript like having NEW things all of the time. Elixir is done and we are just adding small things here and there. 22:13 – Panel: Yeah, I agree. Elixir is a mature platform right now. 22:45 – Guest: Elixir is very mature – I agree. 23:10 – Panel: I think it being built with care is nice. 23:34 – Guest: I love diving into Elixir and source code. I know exactly what I need. In some Ruby libraries they are so heavily dependent on... 24:05 – Loot Crate! 25:13 – Chuck. 25:40 – Guest. 25:50 – Panel: Being explicit and concise at the same time I don’t feel so bad. 26:00- Chuck: ...I want to know that those are there. If it was – you have to go through all of this ceremony – that’s boilerplate that I feel doesn’t’ add a lot. 26:36 – Panel: Getting out a functional language...being able to see a module and it has every sort of path that I can run is nice. 27:00 – Guest. 27:37 – Panel: I did that a bit for my Rail code. People didn’t like that it wasn’t “normal.” 27:52 – Guest. 28:09 – Panel: Coming into this project where one of the developers likes using MACROS. It’s been a challenge b/c MACROS still let’s you create magic. We talked with Sasha and he queued me to this document and it’s the library guidelines. In the anti-patterns it says: avoid macros. 29:32 – Guest: ...but you should think twice before you dive into macros. 29:50 – Panel: I used macros once to enforce... 30:01 – Panel: What are your feelings on dialyzer – what do you think? 30:15 – Guest: I think it’s the way of the future - I love it. 30:58 – Panel: I am trying VS code and it does incremental dialyzer compilation. 31:27 – Guest: Of course the problem with dialyzer are the error messages. It can be frustrating. 31:40 – Panel. 31:43 – Guest: ...eventually I would figure it out. I went dialyzer front to back on my current project. A month into the project I wasn’t writing new specs, and then I realized I hadn’t done it in awhile, and of course I have a 500 error on the server. Turns out I was... 33:00 – Panel: Yes. I encourage people to... 33:07 – Guest: The way it captures things is that... 33:29 – Panel. 33:42 – Panel: We talked about that on the previous episode. It’s an RC right now, but it’s been helpful. There is a explained option. It will give me an example, I didn’t know how to fix it but... 34:14 – Guest: It can help you write simpler code. 34:47 – Panel. 34:52 – Guest: With an Elm background I think it helped me. 35:13 – Panel. 35:45 – Guest: My dream world would be... 35:55 – Panel: Josh, how does it do it? 36:03 – Panel: What is Elixir LS? 36:09 – Panel answers the question. 36:50 – Panel: I have used ATOM as an editor...how do you like visual studio code? 37:01 – Panel answers the question. 37:38 – Panel: I have used FLUTTER. 37:44 – Chuck: I like it. 38:20 – Chuck talks about Flutter and the advantages of it. 38:34 – Guest: What editors do you like, Bill? 38:36 – Guest answers the question. 38:54 – Panel. 39:00 – Guest says that it is something worth trying. 39:07 – Chuck: Try it you will like it – there is an ATOM plugin, too. 39:36 – Panel: I hate the name visual studio code. 39:43 – Panel. 40:02 – Panel: I know you have some feelings of Graph QL? 40:12 – Guest: It is love in every sense. One day in vacation... 41:14 – Panel: I like it, too. 42:01 – Guest: I haven’t much experience there. I played years ago with Graph QL and it looked encouraging and thought it was hard to build one of those things. To help debug as you are writing them is out of this world! 42:30 – Panel: I can look at the schema in Graph QL, here are the mutations I have available. 42:50 – Panel: The docs are right they can’t be wrong. 43:03 – Guest. 43:38 – Chuck: What are you working on now and what are you struggling with? 43:48 – Guest: None of them are super, super hard but today I am trying to learn how to send... 44:14 – Guest: There are a lot of new things for me like AWS, new technologies and a tight schedule. Trying to get new things done. 44:33 – Chuck: What do I learn next – that is a question that I hear a lot. 44:43 – Guest: Yeah, learning when I need them but the exception is Graph QL for me. Learn things as we go – nothing is too scary b/c there are proof of concepts out there. 45:32 – Chuck: People will ask this when they are trying to work on a project. 45:44 – Guest: I try to learn things on these side projects. I usually bail out before the really hard stuff. 46:00 – Chuck: Picks! 46:14 – Fresh Books! Links: Ruby Elixir Elm Atom.io Flutter.io JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Guide to Deploy a... YouTube Video – Bill Peregoy GenStage DockYard Article Library Guidelines Avoid Macros VS CODE Elixir LS VS CODIUM Graph QL Absinthe DIRENV HEX DOCS Bill’s GitHub Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Mark Direnv Josh Flutter Bill Distillery Doc Charles Extreme Ownership