As users increasingly demand interactivity from their web experiences, Phoenix LiveView is becoming the dominant way of writing interactive Elixir applications without a loss to reliability. Today we welcome back an old friend of the show and GitHub engineer Sophie DeBenedetto to talk about her upcoming book, Programming Phoenix LiveView. We open our conversation with Sophie by hearing about her work at GitHub, as well as what we can expect from the Code BEAM V conference. As she doesn’t always get to use Elixir at her job, Sophie then discusses how coders can sharpen their Elixir skills when not at work. After exploring how companies can begin adopting Elixir through event-driven design, we dive into Sophie’s book. She unpacks the value of LiveView when building efficient web applications before touching on how her book can best help people to learn LiveView. We ask Sophie how intertwined the future of Elixir is to the success of LiveView and how this might impact Phoenix. Her answers highlight LiveView’s role in pushing Elixir adoption while also making Elixir easier to learn. We wrap up our discussion by chatting about the challenges of technical writing and Sophie’s experience working with the wonderful Pragmatic Programmers publishing house. Tune in to hear more insights into programming LiveView; if you believe the hype, it’s “one of the most important new frameworks of our generation.”

Key Points From This Episode:

We catch up with guest Sophie DeBenedetto and hear about the Code BEAM V conference.
Sophie shares her feelings on coding in Go.
How Sophie engages with Elixir when it’s not a key part of her day job.
What Flatiron School did to work towards Elixir adoption.
Exploring the concept of event-driven design.
Insights into the eventing system used at GitHub.
Sophie talks about her experience as an engineering manager.
Why Sophie transitioned from being a manager to being an individual contributor.
How work-from-home has impacted meeting expectations.
Hear the elevator pitch for Sophie’s upcoming book.
Thoughts on how beginner-friendly Elixir is as a language.
Whether Phoenix LiveView is the future of Elixir.
How the attention placed on LiveView limits access to Phoenix resources and tutorials.
We ask Sophie if LiveView will make it easier or more difficult to learn Elixir.
Advice on writing technical books and the writing support offered by Pragmatic Programmers.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Special Guest: Sophie DeBenedetto.

Margaret MacMillan, “For the Love of History” (Open Agenda, 2021)