Elixir Wizards

On today’s show, we welcome Justin Schneck and Frank Hunleth, luminaries from the Nerves team! We take a dive into the world of Nerves with them, covering themes of performance, problem-solving, transitioning to hardware, and breakthroughs in the field. We begin with a conversation on how Elixir handles performance issues on the range of devices they support and Frank gets into how the team solved an early boot time discrepancy between a PC and a Raspberry Pi board. Other big themes for today are ironing out the kinks in the system registry model and merging Erlang and into hard real-time. After squeezing some information out of the guys about their use of ugly code hacks we get into some visionary decisions as well as things the team wished they could have done differently at Elixir (see the release of the new networking stack). Finally, we end off with what Frank and Justin are excited about as far as developments in the Nerves community, so be sure to plug into this one! **Key Points From This Episode: What Justin did in Tokyo, from soaking in hot springs to debugging in Kanji. An explanation of The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation, an embedded systems working group. The use of the VintageNet library for setting up multi-hold nerve networks. How Elixir handles performance issues on the range of devices they support. A breakdown of troubleshooting processes as far as acceleration with FPGAs. Issues with dependencies that occur when starting a network node on a Nerves device. How Elixir is trying to evolve past the system registry model. Identifying the challenge of reconfiguring early boot time which Elixir is facing. How Elixir solved a load time discrepancy between a PC and the Raspberry Pi board. Which situations require hardware when Elixir is too slow, such as video encoding. Japanese research into GPU, FPGA and SIMD optimization involving wrapping code blocks. Merging Erlang which is soft real-time into hard real-time. Examples of ugly but fast code hacks in Elixir. Hacks and the pitfalls of system registry such as returning to a prompt when an app crashes. Things Elixir would have done differently in working with Nerves if could they rewind time. Why releasing a new networking stack means Elixir could have done things differently. Lessons Justin and Frank learned moving from OTP to functional programming at Elixir. Exciting new developments and releases in the Nerves community. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Nerves Project — https://nerves-project.org/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ ElixirConf US — https://elixirconf.com/events The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation — https://erlef.org/ GRiSP — https://www.grisp.org/ Vintage Net — https://github.com/nerves-networking/vintage_net Joe Armstrong — https://joearms.github.io/ Erlang — https://www.erlang.org/ Linux — https://www.linux.org/Special Guest: Frank Hunleth.

Our theme this season is working with Elixir, and joining in the conversation today is Brad Traylor from Podium. Brad shares his expertise in hiring and training for Podium, a position he is passionate about since it gives him the opportunity to work on the people and tech side of things. We begin by hearing a bit of Brad’s background, when and how he was first introduced to Elixir and the standout qualities that attracted him to Podium. He discusses the hiring process, including what he looks for in an engineer, why they don’t recruit much but rather work with referrals, the step-by-step of onboarding new devs and the resources he recommends to anyone in the industry. Another great talk with a stand-up guy — be sure to tune in! Key Points From This Episode: When Brad was first exposed to Elixir and how he became the engineering manager. Searching for rocket ship startups and what specifically drew him to Podium. Having a desire to work with the people and the tech side of the industry. The growth trajectory of Podium from a management perspective. Hiring predominantly from referrals rather than recruiting developers. The biggest challenge with hiring Elixir devs, including the scarcity of good ones! Two things Brad looks for when hiring engineers: the drive to learn and a cultural fit. The benefit of hiring younger developers. Thoughts on training different languages and adding them to Podium’s tech stack. An overview of the typical onboarding process for a new engineer. Elixir 101 and other ways they keep training and refining the skills of developers. Resources that Brad has recently learned and those he always recommends to devs. **Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Brad Traylor on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradtraylor Brad Traylor on Twitter — https://twitter.com/btjordan23 Podium — https://www.podium.com SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir — https://elixir-lang.org University of Michigan — https://umich.edu Java — https://www.java.com/en/ Python — https://www.python.org Rust — https://www.rust-lang.org Ruby — https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ TypeScript — https://www.typescriptlang.org Pragmatic Institute — https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/courses The Manager’s Path — https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth-ebook/dp/B06XP3GJ7F Camile Fournier — https://twitter.com/skamilleSpecial Guest: Brad Traylor.

Today on Elixir Wizards we are joined by none other than José Valim, the inventor of Elixir! Coming from the Ruby on Rails world, José found his way to functional programming and we hear all about the evolution of his philosophy and thought process around the time of the creation of the language. He gives us some great insight into why functional programming is so appealing to him and the problems he wanted to solve by creating Elixir. We chat about other languages and his use of Erlang, Elixir's three biggest influences and some important characters in the story. José also shares a bit of personal, behind the scenes stuff about his schedule and how he tries to stay as productive as possible. We finish off the chat, talking about performance and the measures José has taken in this regard. For all this and more from a true Elixir wizard, be sure to tune in! Key Points From This Episode: José's thoughts on our recent podcast name-change! The first steps for José in the process of writing a language. Reason for José's decision to step out of the Ruby on Rails world. The 'aha' moment that José had when moving into functional programming. Some of the inspiration for Elixir from other languages. A few of the people that have mentored and inspired José in his career. The research and development phase for Elixir and José strategy for this. José's work habits, his typical day and the influence of his kids on his flow. Why José still considers himself an Elixir programmer despite his proximity. Elixir and machine learning; why the two are not more closely linked. Steps in the measurement process for José and Elixir. The time that José has spent on the performance side of the language. Sacrifices and substitution in optimizing Elixir's performance. Some of the things on the horizon that are exciting José. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic José Valim Plataformatec Harry Potter Erlang Ruby Clojure ElixirConfSpecial Guest: José Valim.

Welcome to Elixir Wizards, today we are joined by Dr. Jim Freeze to talk about his passion for and history in Elixir and functional programming. Dr. Freeze is one of the organizers of one of our favorite things in the world, Elixir Conf! He shares his story of coming to functional programming and his early days with Elixir, what he sees as the most important aspects of the conference before diving into what is on offer for those that attend. We talk about how employers can get Elixir newcomers up to speed on the language and the most effective ways Dr. Freeze stays abreast of developments in the field. Our guest also recommends a few resources for those wanting an introduction to Elixir and makes a great argument for the usefulness of a functional approach to programming. For all this and a whole bunch more, join us today! Key Points From This Episode: How Dr. Freeze got started with Elixir and his programming background. A little bit about the early days of Elixir Conf and what the first events were like. The particulars of Dr. Freeze's doctorate and his title. Education, networking and how Elixir Conf fits into the developer hiring game. The training that is offered at the conference and the philosophy to serving attendees. Dr. Freeze's recommendations for employers bringing newbies up to speed with Elixir. How our guest continues his learning and stays focused on what is necessary. Useful resources and materials for Elixir, according to Dr. Freeze. Contemplating functional programming and its key components. Why to consider functional programming coming from an object-based background. The biggest hurdles in moving over to functional programming and Elixir. Following the data and how much the simplicity of this directive can help. Dr. Freeze's favorite thing in the functional world! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic  Dr. Jim Freeze on Twitter ElixirConf  Sophie DeBenedetto Elixir Radar Phoenix In Action Geoffrey Lessel Saša Jurić Sandi MetzSpecial Guest: Dr. Jim Freeze.

Welcome back to Season 3! Our theme this time around is Working with Elixir. Listen for more on our theme, upcoming guests, and our new name.

Welcome to the last episode of Season 2 of the podcast! We are taking this opportunity to recap what we covered in the season and talk about what we liked and what we didn't like so much. We do not have a guest for today's show so it is just Eric and Justus doing some reflection. We do want to take this opportunity to thank all of our guests that have appeared on this season and shared their expertise with us, we definitely feel we learned a lot during this time! In Season 3 we will be focussing on functional programming, performance and teaching Elixir, so make sure to keep an eye out for when that drops in the future! Key Points From This Episode: The possibility of longer episodes for next season Reflections on ElixirConf and the time we spent there this year. The upcoming conference in New Orleans that Eric is keynoting. Thoughts on the future of the podcast and the promise of Season 3. Reach out! We want to hear from you! And much more! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://www.smartlogic.io Brooklyn Zelenka — https://github.com/expede Bryan Joseph — https://github.com/bryanjos Paul Schoenfelder — https://github.com/bitwalker Meryl Dakin— https://github.com/meryldakin René Föhring— https://twitter.com/rrrene Michal Muskala — https://michal.muskala.eu/ Todd Resudek — https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddresudek/ Shanti Chellaram— https://github.com/shantiii Sophie DeBenedetto — http://sophiedebenedetto.nyc/ Dave Lucia — https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lucia-a395441b ElixirConf — https://elixirconf.com/2019 The Big Elixir — https://www.thebigelixir.com/ Le Petit Theatre — http://www.lepetittheatre.com Lone Star Elixir — https://www.lonestarelixir.com The Empire Strikes Back — https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/empire_strikes_back

Our guest today on the show is Dave Lucia, who is currently the Vice President of Engineering at SimpleBet. He is here as part of Elixir Internals series, to talk to us and all our listeners about Rustler and the contribution he made to the library! According to our guest, Rustler acts as a bridge between Rust and Elixir and allows users to employ the power of Rust within Elixir and a great example of this can be found in Dave's work at SimpleBet. He explains some of this application and the functionality and improvement it offers and the big difference the machine learning models make to this work. Dave also gives us some background to his work and career, previous employment and early explorations of open-source software. He also shares some great tips for problem-solving and learning and improving at programming in Rust. We unpack some of the biggest challenges that faced the creation of Rustler, notable differences between Rust and Elixir and the technical components of the library that the team created. For all this and then some, join us for this great episode! Key Points From This Episode: More about our guest and his current work at SimpleBet. How Dave got started with Elixir while at Bloomberg. The interesting and beautiful way in which The Outline used Elixir. Dave's early forays and experiences with open source software. Problem finding and solving; Dave's tips to those wanting to improve. Dave's employers' contribution and allowance for open source projects. Introducing Rustler and what users can do with it! The biggest challenges of using multiple languages in the backend. How Rustler works; the core, the code generator and more. The most important differences between Rust and Elixir. Dave's best advice and resources for learning and mastering Rust. And much more! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://www.smartlogic.io Dave Lucia — https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lucia-a395441b Rustler — https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler SimpleBet — https://simplebet.io Dave Lucia on Twitter — https://twitter.com/davydog187 Dave Lucia Email — dave@simplebet.io Elixir — https://elixir-lang.org Python — https://www.python.org JavaScript — https://www.javascript.com Rust — https://www.rust-lang.org Bloomberg — https://www.bloomberg.com Slack — https://slack.com Vox Media — https://www.voxmedia.com The Outline — https://theoutline.com The Rust Programming Language — https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Programming-Language-Steve-Klabnik/dp/1593278284 Rust Playground — https://play.rust-lang.org Elm Compiler — https://github.com/elm/compilerSpecial Guest: Dave Lucia.

This season on Smart Software Season 2, we are focused on the inner workings of Elixir and the inner workings of popular Elixir libraries, or Elixir internals. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing my colleague, Eric Oestrich who's responsible for the wildly successful Elixir MUD framework ExVenture. ExVenture - https://exventure.org/ MUDs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD Ecto - https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto Eric's Going Multi-Node presentation at ElixirConf - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCUKQnkjajo The Big Elixir - https://www.thebigelixir.com/ Eric's Prometheus presentation at Lonestar Elixir - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETUD9SaRCjY Prometheus - https://prometheus.io/ Go - https://golang.org/ Celluloid - https://celluloid.io/ Phoenix - https://phoenixframework.org/ Grapevine - https://grapevine.haus/ Gossip - https://mudcoders.com/gossip-the-mud-chat-network-3156cf24edf/ Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir.

Welcome to another episode of the podcast everybody! As we continue our journey into Elixir internals in Season 2, we welcome Sophie DeBenedetto to tell us about the two libraries she and the Flatiron School created! We talk about Encrypt and Railway and a bunch of other great stuff from the world of Elixir and open source and Sophie shares so much about why she is particularly excited about things at the moment. She talks about the maturation of the Elixir community and her first and most important open-source experiences before diving into her hopes for the future of these platforms. We also discuss the ins and out of the two libraries and our guest does a fantastic job of explaining their functions and the reasons they were built. Sophie shares the major challenges that faced her and the team in creating them and a whole lot more, so make sure to tune in today for all this great information! Key Points From This Episode: A brief introduction to Sophie's career, the Flatiron School and her Elixir work. Sophie's first experiences with open source, contributing to the Elixir School. Flatiron's support of open source and their attitude towards the growth of engineers. Why Elixir and Ruby are such important languages to Sophie and Flatiron. Sophie's wishes for Elixir and what she wants to see more of in the community. Introducing Encrypt and Excrypt for Elixir and why Flatiron chose to build them. The hardest parts of building the library, the challenges of encryption. Elixir's built-in option parser; convenience and accessing data easily. The Railway hex package and what it enables users to do. Breaking down the functions of RabbitMQ for Erlang. The two things that Sophie is most excited about in the Elixir space right now! And much more! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Sophie DeBenedetto — http://sophiedebenedetto.nyc/ Flatiron School — http://sophiedebenedetto.nyc/ Elixir School — https://elixirschool.com/en/ Encrypt — https://github.com/flatiron-labs/encrypt Escript — https://hexdocs.pm/mix/master/Mix.Tasks.Escript.Build.html Ruby — https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ Kafka — https://kafka.apache.org Ecto — https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.html Erlang — https://www.erlang.org RabbitMQ — https://www.rabbitmq.com Phoenix — https://phoenixframework.org LiveView — https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/12/12/phoenix-liveview-interactive-real-time-apps-no-need-to-write-javascript Elixir Conf — https://elixirconf.com/2019Special Guest: Sophie DeBenedetto.

Today on the show we welcome Shanti Chellaram to talk about a couple of Erlang libraries she has created! We hear from her about Pri-Queue and raft_erl, and her motivation behind making them and some of the things we wishes she did differently! Shanti shares some of her background, early coding experiences, affinity for open source and her current work situation. From there we look at Pri-Queue, the problem it addresses and what a priority queue is. A highlight of the show is Shanti giving the best explanation of a bootstrapped skew binomial heap we have heard before explaining some of the main issues she faced in creating Pri-Queue. We then turn to raft_erl, how she got started with it and her hopes for its future. Throughout the conversation Shanti shares her philosophy towards open source and coding going forward as well as offering advice for newcomers to Erlang. Make you you join us for this fantastic episode! Key Points From This Episode: A little bit about Shanti's background and current employment. Shanti's early experiences and what got her into open source software. Some coding decisions that Shanti would make differently in retrospect. The problem that Pri-Queue solves; the dearth of data efficient libraries. What is a priority queue? Ordering your data with scores. Shanti explains a bootstrapped skew binomial heap! Some of the hurdles that Shanti faced in writing Pri-Queue. How Shanti got started on her other library, raft_erl. The three Raft protocols and how much of it is implemented in the library. Shanti's next goals for raft_erl; bug free and widely used. The importance of distributed systems and Shanti's philosophy looking to the future. Advice for someone just starting out in Elixir! And much more! Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://www.smartlogic.io/ Shanti Chellaram Linkedin— https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanti-chellaram-495444187 Shanti Chellaram on Twitter — https://twitter.com/theccoder Shanti Chellaram on github — https://github.com/shantiii Erlang — https://www.erlang.org/ Elixir — https://elixir-lang.org/ Pri-Queue — https://github.com/okeuday/pqueue raft_erl — https://github.com/shantiii/raft_erl MailChimp — https://mailchimp.com Teachers Pay Teachers — https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ Purely Functional Data Structures — https://www.amazon.com/Purely-Functional-Structures-Chris-Okasaki-ebook/dp/B00AKE1V04 Rust — https://www.rust-lang.org/ Raft — https://raft.github.io/ Raspberry Pi — https://www.raspberrypi.org/ ElixirConf — https://elixirconf.com/2019 Partisan — https://partisan.cloud/Special Guests: Dan Ivovich and Shanti Chellaram.