Elixir Mix

In this episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews Parker Selbert. Parker lives in Chicago and runs a consultancy with his wife. He joins the panel to discuss a library that he wrote, Oban. Parker starts by explaining what Oban is and why he wrote it. Oban is a way to run reliable background jobs by persisting them in the database. Oban is akin to Sidekick, Parker explains, he wanted something similar to Sidekick for Elixir. He made a few improvements including moving it to Postgres from Redis. He shares the common problems found using Redis and how easy Postgres was to use for this library.  The panel asks Parker about his Oban Recipes. Parker explains why he wrote the recipes and what some of them contain. After releasing Oban he received many questions asking about how to use Oban. Parker took the most common questions and wrote 7 blog post outlining how to use Oban.  Parker shares his favorite features found in Oban and walks the panel through its architecture. The panel asks him about the maturity and

"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is available on Amazon. Get your copy here today only for $2.99! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/elixir-mix--6102049/support.

In this episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews  Nathan Long about Pheonix Phrenzy. Nathan explains what Pheonix Phrenzy is and what the contest is all about. The panel explains how exciting it is for everyone to see what Live View can really do. With all the submissions open-sourced, the consider what a great resource the submissions are for those learning to use Live View.  Nathan explains his motivations behind Pheonix Phrenzy. He explains what they learned from this contest and what they may do in future contests. Nathan shares how wonderful it was to work with everyone at Dockyard on Pheonix Phrenzy. He explains how the competition worked, the role of the VIP judges and how the site was designed to make the contest as fair as possible.  The top three submissions are shared, the panel is impressed by how different each of the projects are. Nathan shares all the amazing things developers get when they use Live View. The panel considers when to use Live View. The episode finishes as Nathan shares what

In this episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews Jason Fertel who runs the marketing automation team at PepsiCo eCommerce. Jason shares the story of bringing Elixir to PepsiCo eCommerce and explains how it became their go-to for application development.   Jason explains what they do at PepsiCo eCommerce. They build software to optimize everything from supply chain to marketing and sales for big companies in eCommerce like Amazon.com and InstaCart. He explains the difference between what they do at PepsiCo eCommerce and other CPG’s.  The panel asks Jason about what Elixir has brought to the table at PepsiCo eCommerce. He explains why he chose Elixir when he started out as a one-man development team. Elixir is powerful, straight forward and easy to learn. It is efficient and has everything you need out of the box. Jason shares how using Elixir has also had a positive effect on hiring. The panel considers how using Elixir has benefitted hiring at their companies as well.  The episode ends with Jason outlini

On this episode of Elixir Mix the panelists interview Eric Oestrich, one of the regular panelists for the show. Eric is a developer at SmartLogic where he works with Elixir and recently has been working with deployments. He has a project called Grapevine which is similar to steam but for text games. Mark opens up the discussion by asking Eric to talk about his game ExVenture which is a MUD game. MUD stands for multi user dungeon and ExVenture is a multi user version of a text adventure game from 1978 called Dungeon. He shares more details of the game and how it’s played. Erit explains that Grapevine was spawned from ExVenture and Mark asks him to expound more on Grapevine.  ExVenture is open source and it is an application that is currently running in production. This provides opportunity for those not interested in making or playing a MUD to get involved and work on a project. Eric also goes into detail about the livestreaming he does and how to get involved. Since the project is open source, Eric is able

Jeff Kreeftmeijer works at Appsignal where they create a tool for application monitoring that works in Ruby and Elixir. He works specifically with integrations focusing in Elixir and also writes articles for their Elixir and Ruby newsletters. Jeff started as a Ruby programmer but had an interest in functional programming which lead him to gain an interest in Elixir. When he started at Appsignal they were already considering an Elixir integration and that made it a perfect fit.  Jeff then shares more details about his involvement in Appsignal’s two newsletters called Ruby magic and Elixir alchemy, both of which are aimed at more experienced programmers. He also details his experience with articles that he wrote on Live Share and how he came to write them. The panelists also introduce the Go game that is written about in these articles. The next topic covered by the Elixir experts is the Go game Live View implementation mentioned in Jeff’s articles. The panelists draw comparisons of how something similar coul

This episode of Elixir mix opens with Lars Wikman and Emilio Nyaray sharing how they came to be working together on a project called Inky. Inky is an E-Ink display that works with Nerves and Elixir. The project started when Lars wanted to use the Inky device from Nerves but didn’t want to install Python to do it. Emilio wanted to join because he found it fascinating to be able to control this device with Elixir. Lars and Emilio share some details of how this project came about and how it works.  The inky comes in multiple sizes with the smaller pHAT display being about the size of a business card and the Inky wHAT being closer to the size of a Raspberry Pi. Lars shares that one of the biggest gotchas with these displays is the refresh rate. Once the pixels are changed the device can be turned off and still remain the same because they are physically changing. The panelists highlight that very little troubleshooting time had to go in to the Nerves portion of the project. Lars describes how he began looking at

This episode of Elixir Mix features Arkadiusz Gil. Arkadiusz is a software engineer at Erlang Solutions. He is also a member of the observability working group of the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation. The purpose of this working group is to nurture different areas of the community to maintain libraries, improve tooling, and create documentation. He became a member of this group because of his work on Telemetry. The panelists discuss the background of Telemetry and Arkadiusz explains how it was originally written in Elixir and why they decided to switch over to Erlang. Arkadiusz explains how he became involved in Elixir and Erlang. When Mark asks why he prefers Elixir to Erlang he responds with explaining his affinity for the Elixir syntax and tooling that’s available.  The conversation then moves to how Telemetry came about. Telemetry started with the goal of creating a tool for monitoring Elixir applications but the creators had no idea what that application would be like. Arkadiusz then describes how he did an

In this week’s episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews Travis Elnicky, software architect at Podium. Podium is Utah based company that has been using Elixir for three years. Travis explains Podium’s history and its experience adopting Elixir.  When Travis started at Podium they were a small startup with, he was their 16th employee. They were using Ruby on Rails and focusing on collecting reviews for local businesses. When they saw a need for a messenger application, they tried a few solutions choosing Elixir because of the familiarity they felt coming from a Rails background. After switching to Elixir, Podium grew rapidly. Now Podium has 700 employees, 130 of whom are engineers.  Travis discusses with the panel how things are run over at Podium. Their teams are aligned around products and features. This makes all their engineers' full-stack developers. Podiums teams run with a lot of autonomy, they also have teams that help with internal tooling to tie the products together. The panel is curious about t

In this week’s episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews Chris Keathley about Norm and his recent talk at ElixirConf. Chris is currently working at Bleacher Report, working mostly on backend systems. The panel starts by complimenting his presentation skills and asking him about his dislike for dialyzer.    Chris share the many problems he has with dialyzer. Dialyzer takes a lot of time and has crappy ergonomics. While it tells you a lot about an Erlang system that benefit doesn’t extend to Elixir systems. Neither doesn’t understand protocols. Mostly he feels that most type algebras don’t allow for growth, making changes and making the breaking changes. Explaining that type systems all have their costs and benefits, he feels that you don’t see the benefits of dialyzer until your system is up and running.   The panel wonders about Norm, a library written by Chris. Chris explains what it is and what its aims are. He wrote the library to solve some of the problems seen with dialyzer and other problems he was

In this episode of Elixir Mix the panel interviews Jon Carstens about his work with Nerves. Michael Ries gives a little background on Jon, as they have worked together and Jon helps run the remote nerves meet up that Michael attends.  Jon recently started working with Frank Hunleth at Smart Rent. Jon tells the panel what an adventure it is working at Smart Rent.   The panel asks Jon about the parts of the Nerves ecosystem he has been working in. He explains how he has been working with NervesHub to manage collections or groups of devices. He has also been working with ShoeHorn controlling app start order and erlang heart stop module. Making sure that they can remote reboot devices.    Jon talks more about what Smart Rent does. He explains that there are lots of brands and types of smart home devices, not all of which can connect to the internet. At Smart Rent, they connect various brands and devices using their own custom-built hub. Smart Rent has many benefits tenants and even more for property managers.

Episode Summary   In this week’s episode of Elixir Mix the panel follows up with Wiebe-Marten ("Marten") Wijnja about his talk at Elixir Conf EU, where he spoke about the distributed system his team was working on.    They start by discussing the eight fallacies of distributed computing that Marten talked about in talk. He lays out a couple of the fallacies and invites listeners to watch his talk for all eight. Marten explains that these fallacies most commonly happen to developers who are used to working with a single system. The panel discusses how to be mindful of these mistakes and how developers take for granted of how easy one system is to use.    Marten gives some tool recommendations to help with these fallacies. TLA+ is a small programming language that lets the developer describe their system and it will point out when something is wrong but it works purely on concepts. Erlang quick check implementation is also a tool that will help combat these problems. The last suggestion which was given by

Episode Summary In this week’s episode of Elixir Mix the panel is joined by David Bernheisel and Cory Schmitt, from Taxjar,  to discuss the different ways developers can contribute to the community. The first way to contribute to the Elixir community is contributing to the Elixir core code. While David shares a little of his background, he shares his first experience contributing to the elixir code by submitting a pull request about asdf. The panel all thanking him for his contribution.    The next form of contributing the panel discusses is open-sourcing projects. Cory and David share their experience getting their date-time parser open-sourced. They express gratitude at the support they received from Taxjar at open-sourcing the project.    Before moving on to the next way to contribute the panel stops for a moment to ask Cory and David about their date-time parser. David and Cory explain why they decided to build a date-time parser after finding a problem in Timex and other time libraries. They talk ab

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT My Ruby StoryCacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Michael Ries Josh Adams Eric Oestrich Joined by Special Guest: Frank Hunleth Summary Frank Hunleth, co-author of Nerves, shares where Nerves came from and how it got started. The panel discusses the Nerves 1.5 release and the improvements in it. Frank introduces Nerves Hub and Michael Ries gives a little marketing spin to it, explaining what you can do with Nerves Hub and why you would want to use it. The panel discusses the funding model for Nerves. Frank introduces Elixir Circuit, which helps you find libraries for your devices. He introduces Mountrap, a library that helps to switch between ports and NIFs. Frank introduces Grisp, what it is and how it compares to Nerves. Frank introduces Vintage Net and how it will help your devices stay online. Michael shares his experie

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT My Ruby StoryCacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Michael Ries Joined by Special Guest: John Mertens Summary John Mertens, from change.org, joins the panel to discuss a recent talk he gave at ElixirConf EU. The panel starts off by discussing change.org’s adoption of Elixir and how John helped to bring that about. John discusses the value of Flow even though it is not part of the standard library. The panel discusses what the pieces of data look in John’s pipeline. After giving some context for his project, John gives details about his work in Flow and why they chose Flow for that project. The panel discusses tuning the numbers in Flow to make it faster.    John shares his experience using Broadway and shares his favorite features. The panel asks him to compare Flow and Broadway in terms of configuration and understanding what is going on.

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan React Native RadioiPhreaksCacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Michael Ries Summary Mark Ericksen introduces the topic of framework life cycles hoping to address the concerns of new Elixir developers from other frameworks. The panel explains the various phases in a frameworks life and hype cycles using other frameworks as reference. COBOL, an older language, is on the tail end of its life but still kicking and it probably won’t ever fade out completely. Ruby on Rails is considered mainstream or widely adopted. The panel considers where Elixir is in its cycle. They all agree that Elixir is in the late stages of “early adoption”. The panel explains what this means for Elixir developers and why Elixir will become a widely adopted framework. They site the stability that Erlang provides to Elixir despite its young age and the solutions that Elixir provides the developing community. Mark Ericks

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Joined by Special Guests: Hubert Łępicki Summary Hubert Łępicki joins the panel to discuss his blog post, “Refactoring Phoenix controllers”; he starts by sharing what made him decide to write this article. In the blog post, he outlines strategies and patterns to better organize your code. The first strategy discussed, which was not mentioned in the blog post is: Breaking down one controller into multiple controllers. Intrigued, the panel asks Hubert to explain exactly what he means by this. The second pattern is: extracting logic from a controller and using it in a plug instead. The panel discusses what the right code to put in a plug.    The third pattern Hubert explains is: using business logic and workflow modules. The panel asks Hubert about his dislike for phoenix context. Hubert and the panel give better alternatives to phoenix controller and explains

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Michael Ries Eric Oestrich Josh Adams Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guests: Bruce Tate and James Gray Summary Bruce Tate and James Gray join the panel to discuss their new book, “Designing Elixir Systems With OTP”. Bruce and James share the story of how they decided to write this book together. The panel discusses the books target audience, Bruce and James explain that this is not for programmers who know nothing about Elixir. Resources and books for beginners to read are recommended. Bruce and James share many key points of the book and the main lesson they hope the reads come away with. The interesting mnemonic “Do Fun Things With Big Loud Wildebeests” is explained.   Bruce and James share what this book will do for your applications. They address common misunderstandings for people moving from object-oriented programming into function

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Michael Ries Eric Oestrich Josh Adams Joined by Special Guest: Wojtek Mach Summary Wojtek Mach shares his experiences at Plataformatec; what his team is like and what types of projects they work on. The panel asks Wojtek about the announcement for hex.pm and how it works. Wojtek shares his language background and how he got into Elixir. The panel discusses Wojtek’s experience moving from a distillery release to a mixed based release. My SQL library for Ecto is considered and the panel discusses Wojtek past libraries.  Links https://github.com/elixir-ecto/myxql  https://github.com/plataformatec/broadway  https://github.com/hexpm/hexpm  https://github.com/hexpm/bob  https://repo.hex.pm/builds/elixir/builds.txt  https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf  https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-elixir  https://bobs-list.kobrakai.de/  https:/

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Eric Oestrich Joined by Special Guest: Daniel Serrano Summary Daniel Serrano explains what mutation testing is and how it works. The panel discusses the purpose and benefits of mutation testing. Daniel shares how mutation testing can fit into your process. The panel considers Daniel’s exunit deep dive and how this helped building exavier, his library. Daniel shares how he came up with the name exavier.    The panel asks Daniel about his experience load testing broadway. Daniel explains what broadway is and the benefits seen load testing it. Daniel shares how he got into distributed tracing and how it differs from tracing. Daniel tells the panel about his experience learning elixir and joining the community.  Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_testing  https://github.com/mbj/mutant  http://pitest.org/  https://github.com/dnlserrano/exavier  h