The Benefits of Consistently Growing Your Toolset with Florian Kraft

As we continue this season of the podcast, focusing on the impact of Elixir, we are joined by Florian Kraft, all the way from Berlin, Germany! Florian works as a software engineer at Contentful, and has a number of exciting open-source projects that he is currently involved with. In our fun conversation with Florian, we get to hear about the events that led up to him becoming interested in computers and working with software, and why he maintains a light-hearted attitude when talking about his expertise. We also get to hear from our guest about his thoughts on a few other languages, and why learning new languages is a great way to constantly improve your work in the languages you already know! Florian talks about what drew him to Elixir and the community and also shares some of his reflections from this year's virtual Elixir Wizards conference. Towards the end of our chat, Florian tells us about his work with AdoptOSS and Mimicry, which you can currently find on GitHub, both of which we are quite excited about! So to hear it all from Florian and our usual suspects, be sure to listen in!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Florian's interesting route into the world of software engineering.
• How Florian views his experiences and skills as a software engineer.
• Florian's thoughts on Haskell and some of the best resources for learning about it.
• The languages that Florian uses in his work at Contentful.
• Experiences entering into the Elixir community and the colleague who introduced him to the language!
• Life in Germany and Berlin; thoughts on the seasons, and the general culture.
• Florian's experiences at this year's Elixir Wizards conference; warming to virtual events.
• Staying active in the Elixir community and Florian's honest confessions about the time he puts in.
• Features that Florian misses and wishes for when working in Elixir.
• Immutability and pattern matching: Florian's favorite parts of Elixir!
• Some of the open-source Elixir projects that Florian is currently working on.
• The video games that Florian has most enjoyed recently and some of his all-time favorites!
  
• Where to find and connect with Florian and his exciting projects!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/
Florian Kraft — github.com/FlorianK
Contentful — https://www.contentful.com/
Exercism — https://exercism.org/
Adoptoposs — https://adoptoposs.org
Adoptoposs Github — https://github.com/adoptoposs/adoptoposs
Mimicry — https://github.com/mimicry-tech/mimicry
Learn You a Haskell for Great Good — https://www.amazon.com/Learn-You-Haskell-Great-Good/dp/1593272839
Haskell — https://www.haskell.org/
Prolog — https://www.cpp.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial/pt_framer.html
Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good — https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Some-Erlang-Great-Good/dp/1593274351
Elixir in Action, Second Edition — https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-second-edition
Gleam — https://gleam.run/
Autobutler — https://autobutler.co.uk
Squid Game — https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/squid_game
Oktoberfest — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10244612/
Toucan — https://www.toucan.events/
The Binding of Isaac — https://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/The_Binding_of_Isaac/
Zelda — https://www.zelda.com/
Doom — https://bethesda.net/en/game/doom
Defragmenting C Drive — http://hultbergs.org/defrag/

Special Guest: Florian Kraft.