Elixir Talk

# Episode 166 - Elixir at Boulevard w/ Sean Stavropoulos We're back after a hiatus on our irregularly posted podcast! Chris and Desmond are back in the hot seat, this time joined by CTO and co-founder at Boulevard, Sean Stavropoulos where we hear all about the founding of Boulevard and their early adoption of Elixir and GraphQL. In this show, we touch on: * The adoption of Elixir early in 2017 * The adoption of GraphQL early * GraphQL vs REST, especially for third party APIs * Hiring Elixir engineers * How they deploy and run Elixir * How they do observability and monitoring * How stateful are their services * The future vision for Elixir at Boulevard ## Links - Boulevard: https://joinblvd.com - Sean on Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanstavro - Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Languages-Weeks-Programming-Programmers/dp/193435659X - Absinthe GQL: https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/absinthe - Absinthe Dataloader: https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/dataloader - Apollo GraphQL: https://www.apollographql.com/ - Honeycomb: https://honeycomb.io - AWS Fargate: https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/ - Postgres tuning and performance at Pleroma: https://blog.soykaf.com/post/postgresql-elixir-troubles/ - Spandex: https://github.com/spandex-project/spandex - OpenCensus Elixir: https://github.com/opencensus-beam/opencensus_elixir - Absinthe Subscriptions: https://hexdocs.pm/absinthe/subscriptions.html

# Episode 165 - José Valim on Bytepack, Open Source, and LiveView changes in Phoenix 1.5 Chris and Desmond are backed by a very special guest; José Valim! You might know José as the creator of the Elixir programming language and we're excited to have him back as a 3rd time guest on the show. José walks us through a brand new Dashbit project, Bytepack which is a way to package and sell software projects and takes all of the hassle out of the process today. We dig into Bytepack and discuss sustainable open source, Dashbit, and more. As well as that we also hear about the new Phoenix 1.5 features, LiveDashboard, all of the great new LiveView enhancements, some nice new Elixir additions and much more! A lot of links in this episode, think we got them all below but let us know if we missed anything

We’re back with another episode of ElixirTalk. In this episode Chris & Desmond do a deep dive on organizing code in Elixir and talk about some best practices. We recorded this a couple weeks ago so it may sound a little stale :) We touch on: * Module and context naming * How we like to organize code in our projects * Big long modules vs many small modules * How to split up contexts * Injecting code via macros ## Links * On the Criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules - D.L Parnas: https://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/edu/2ip30/references/criteria_for_modularization.pdf * Proposal for some ew rules for Phoenix contexts: https://devonestes.herokuapp.com/a-proposal-for-context-rules * Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend: https://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write-code-that-is-easy-to-delete-not-easy-to * How to use `use` well: https://dockyard.com/blog/2017/12/07/macro-madness-how-to-use-use-well * Protocols in Elixir: https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Protocol.html

We’re back with a recap with another episode of ElixirTalk. In this episode we cover quite a few topics; an EMPEX LA recap, a foray into project management tools that we like and use (!), and then we round things out by talking about Chris integrating App Signal into his API at Muru. It’s a fun, jam packed episode with us going all around through many topics and go longer than we thought and off on an ops tangent (as usual). Times of topics: - Intro [00:00 - 03:40] - EMPEX LA Recap [03:40 - 17:10] - Project Management Tools: [17:10 - 25:40] - Monitoring / Metrics / Instrumentation: [25:40 - 39:30] - Close [39:30 - 41:00] ## Links * EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la * Todd Resudek - It’s Time to Embrace Erlang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJb9wjUJhm4 * Shanti Chellaram - High Performance Data Structures in Erlang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdxhxAqxR94 * Jesse J. Anderson - Powering Pixels with Scenic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3L-VZtP_dY * Geoffrey Lessel - Controlling MIDI Devices in Real Time with Elixir – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o4FzOFL2eE * Michael Reis - Nerves Takes to the Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o4FzOFL2eE * Jeff Grunewald - Stream-processing connected vehicle data in Elixir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnY2hO2JdA * EMPEX NYC: https://empex.co/nyc * EMPEX NYC CFP: https://forms.gle/Vv3aqpXbtQA8a4TU8 * Desmond on Twitter: https://twitter.com/desmondmonster and Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cjbell_ * Pivotal Tracker: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/ * Clubhouse: https://clubhouse.io/ * Linear: https://linear.app * Notion: https://notion.so * Appsignal: https://appsignal.com * Spandex: https://github.com/spandex-project/spandex * Datadog: https://datadog.com * Telemetry: https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry

# Episode 162 - Designing Elixir Systems with Bruce Tate It's another episode of ElixirTalk, this time Chris and Desmond are joined by the one and only Bruce Tate author of many notable titles such as Programming Phoenix and Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, as well as being a frequent speaker on the circuit. We dig into the new Designing Elixir Systems with OTP book, that James Edward Gray, II and Bruce co-authored. We talk a lot about the way systems are put together, going into depth about the 'Do Fun Things with Big, Loud Worker-Bees' pattern that's advocated for in the book. Along the way we talk about software design, persistence and more. Come along for the ride, it's a fun one! ## Links - Bruce Tate on Twitter: twitter.com/redrapids - Grox.io: https://grox.io - Designing Elixir Systems with OTP: https://pragprog.com/book/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp - Chris McCord Elixir Conf Keynote 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk4WAlabvI - The Climb at EMPEX 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkO-kgxoiY - Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks - Poncho Projects: https://embedded-elixir.com/post/2017-05-19-poncho-projects/ - Grox.io Quadblock Series: https://grox.io/series/quad - The River at Lone Star Elixir 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW85rW6-PgI - Justin Schneck goes to Very: https://www.verypossible.com/news/very-hires-justin-schneck-co-author-of-nerves-project?utm_content=111962264&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-1009603460 - EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la - EMPEX NYC: https://empex.co/nyc - Lonestar Elixir Conference: https://lonestarelixir.com/ - Gig City Elixir Conference: https://www.gigcityelixir.com/ - Dev Next Conference: https://www.devdotnext.com/

# Episode 161 - feat. Todd Resudek We’re back with another episode of ElixirTalk, this time joined by the one and only Todd Resudek who gives us a run through of his talk at this years EMPEX LA entitled “It’s Time to Embrace Erlang”. Listen in to hear us discuss Todd’s nerve projects (including his recent LiveView Smart Mirror), why Todd thinks learning you some Erlang as an Elixir developer is important, and even about Hollywood Hogan and some other wrestling trivia. This show has it all. ## Links - EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la - Intro to Elixir Training: https://ti.to/empex/empex-la-2020 - Todd on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sprsmpl - SimpleBet: https://www.simplebet.io/ - Building a “Smart Mirror” with Phoenix LiveView: https://medium.com/@toddresudek/building-a-smart-mirror-with-phoenix-liveview-18193ee6438f - Building a Smart Sprinkler Controller with Nerves - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qklciKp7sD8 - Erlang Crypto module: https://erlang.org/doc/man/crypto.html - Fred Hebert Advent of Code 2019 in Erlang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqzBchjZw4Q - Erlang Queue module: https://erlang.org/doc/man/queue.html - Erlang ETS module: https://erlang.org/doc/man/ets.html - Erlang Digraph module: https://erlang.org/doc/man/digraph.html - Learn you some Erlang: https://learnyousomeerlang.com/ - Adopting Erlang: https://adoptingerlang.org/ - Decompile Module: https://github.com/michalmuskala/decompile - Property-Based Testing with PropEr, Erlang and Elixir: https://propertesting.com/ - Lonestar Elixir Conference: https://lonestarelixir.com/ - CodeBEAM SF 2020: https://codesync.global/conferences/code-beam-sf/

We’re back! It’s been a while but it’s 2020 and Chris and Desmond are back with a new episode for the new decade. In this very timely episode we dive into the big community news; Plataformatec being acquired and what that means for the community and the new Elixir v1.10-rc.0 release. After that, we accidentally stray once again into a spirited discussion about ops, Kubernetes, and picking technology that suits you right now. Desmond provides some controversial opinions and we kick off the new year with a bang :boom: ## Links in the show notes - EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la - Bruce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/redrapids - James & Bruces book: https://pragprog.com/book/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp - EMPEX NYC: https://empex.co/nyc - Plataformatec Announcement: http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2020/01/important-information-about-our-elixir-and-ruby-open-source-projects/ - More context on the announcement on Elixir Forum: https://elixirforum.com/t/plataformatec-acqui-hired-by-nubank/28072/3 - Elixir v1.10.0-rc.0: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.10.0-rc.0 - Elixir 1.9 releases vs Distillery: https://elixirforum.com/t/elixir-1-9-release-vs-distillery/23454 - Jose on Elixir releases vs Distillery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20267585

Chris and Desmond are back! In this episode we talk about Desmond’s exploration into Property-Based testing, and then do a deep dive into authorization and access control in Chris’ GraphQL API. Property-based testing is a new world for both of us, but we do our best to tell you all about what libraries to use and how we’re thinking of using it. Chris is deep in some reworking of the authorization code in his GraphQL API and we go into depth talking about how it is structured, some of the challenges of building a flexible authorization system and then how this integrates back into a system. After talking about authorization we then go into validation of parameters in our APIs and how we think about typing and validating them at the boundaries, and in our Ecto Schemas. ## Links * EMPEX LA (https://empex.co/la) * StreamData Library for property testing (https://github.com/whatyouhide/stream_data) * PropEr (https://github.com/proper-testing/proper) * PropSchema (https://github.com/podium/prop_schema) * Property-Based Testing with PropEr (https://pragprog.com/book/fhproper/property-based-testing-with-proper-erlang-and-elixir) * StreamData: Property-based testing and data generation for Elixir (https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2017/10/31/stream-data-property-based-testing-and-data-generation-for-elixir/) * Canada Library (https://github.com/jarednorman/canada) * GraphQL Scalar Types in Absinthe (https://hexdocs.pm/absinthe/custom-scalars.html) * JSON Schema in Elixir (https://github.com/jonasschmidt/ex_json_schema) * API versioning at Stripe (https://stripe.com/blog/api-versioning)

# Episode 158 - Oban, Background Jobs and Designing Resilient Systems in Elixir. In this episode of ElixirTalk Chris & Desmond dive into background jobs using Oban, a new library that relies on Postgres to add persistence to job scheduling. We discuss why you’d want to reach for a library like Oban in the first place, which leads us to a discussion on distributed systems design, failure handling, and some of the gotchas of modeling everything in-memory. We’ve added some extra reading in the links belong for some articles that we didn’t mention in the episode, but might serve as good reading material regardless. ## Links - EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la - Pigeon Push Notification: https://github.com/codedge-llc/pigeon - Oban: https://github.com/sorentwo/oban - Oban Recipes: https://sorentwo.com/2019/07/18/oban-recipes-part-1-unique-jobs.html - Eli Kim Leveraging GenStage to Implement You Own Event Bus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffhCUKI2_ho - Dangers of Single Global Process: https://keathley.io/blog/sgp.html - To spawn or not to spawn: https://www.theerlangelist.com/article/spawn_or_not

# Episode 157 – LiveView & The Future of Phoenix ft. Chris McCord Today on ElixirTalk we’re joined by Chris McCord who you may know as the creator of the Phoenix framework, and a second time guest on ElixirTalk. In this episode we talk quite a bit about LiveView, the journey of taking it from a prototype to release, the optimizations that have come along the way, and some of the great examples of LiveView running today. We get into some of our previous discussions about the balance of LiveView vs Javascript with Chris and how we frame the benefits of using the technology today. Additionally we hear about what’s on the roadmap for Phoenix, and the roadmap outside of the Phoenix core library itself. Thanks as always to Chris and the Phoenix Core team for their work! ## Links * ElixirConf 2018 – Announcing LiveView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2DU0qLfPIY * ElixirConf 2019 – Chris’ Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk4WAlabvI * What’s new and next for LiveView: https://dockyard.com/blog/2019/09/06/whats-new-and-next-for-phoenix-liveview * LiveView JavaScript Hooks: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveView.html#module-javascript-client-specific * LiveView in Marlus’ ElixirConf talk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPu-P97-cbE * Phoenix Presence and CRDTs: https://dockyard.com/blog/2016/03/25/what-makes-phoenix-presence-special-sneak-peek * Dark Lang: https://darklang.com * Oban Job Library: https://github.com/sorentwo/oban * Our discussion on LiveView: https://soundcloud.com/elixirtalk/episode-154-a-great-intro-elixirconf-recap-javascript-v-liveview * Phoenix Phrenzy Competition: https://phoenixphrenzy.com/ * Dockyard: http://dockyard.com

# Episode 156 - Desmond & Chris face-to-face In todays special episode Desmond and Chris are together in NYC in-person for the first time in the history of recording Elixir talk. In the episode we dig into Desmond’s new role as CTO at Payitoff and talk about how Elixir helps in managing the complexity of student loans processing. We also discuss best practices in Elixir, some common gotchas in working in the language and more. ## Todays topics include: * Using tuples and tagged tuples * Structuring control flow for Elixir * Enforcing conventions in your codebase * Behaviours vs Protocols ## Links: * Payitoff: https://www.payitoff.io * Credo: https://github.com/rrrene/credo * Protocols in Elixir: https://elixirschool.com/en/lessons/advanced/protocols/ * Behaviours: https://elixirschool.com/en/lessons/advanced/behaviours/ * Plug Behavior: https://hexdocs.pm/plug/Plug.html#content * Mocks and Explicit contracts: http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2015/10/mocks-and-explicit-contracts/

# Episode #155 - A special look into Lumen Today we have an extra special episode for you where we dig into a project you may have seen announced at the recent US Elixir Conference; Lumen, which is an alternate BEAM implementation, designed for WebAssembly. On the show we’re joined by the core members of the Lumen team: Brian Cardarella, Paul Schoenfelder, Luke Imhoff, and Hans Elias Bukholm Josephsen. We get into a lot of the details about the project; why it exists, what the goals are, what the hell web assembly is, and where it’s going. Join us and get a glimpse of a future direction for Elixir! ## Links * Lumen on GitHub: https://github.com/lumen/lumen * Keynote from ElixirConf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMgTIlgYB-U&feature=youtu.be * Hans talk from CodeBEAM on EIR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSWxlLCfF6s * EIR: https://github.com/eirproject/eir * web-sys crate in Rust: https://crates.io/crates/web-sys * wasm-bindgen crate in Rust: https://crates.io/crates/wasm-bindgen * Web Assembly Spec: https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec * Scenic: https://github.com/boydm/scenic * Issues for Lumen: https://github.com/lumen/lumen/issues * Lumen on Elixir Slack: #lumen

ElixirTalk Episode 154 – ElixirConf recap and more! We’re back with another ElixirTalk episode after a short break! This time featuring Chris and Desmond reflecting on a great ElixirConf! We discuss our standout talks, as well as digging into the keynotes from Dockyard (Lumen), José Valim, Justin Schneck and Chris McCord. At the end of the episode we debate LiveView and it’s place in the broader JS ecosystem. Chris and Desmond somewhat disagree in this case. Let us know your thoughts, we’d love to hear more on this hotly debated subject. ## Links: * https://elixirtraining.io * https://elixirconf.com * Day 1 Morning Keynote - Brian Cardarella, Luke Imhoff, Paul Schoenfelder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMgTIlgYB-U * Day 2 Morning Keynote - Justin Schneck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRP_dVton7o * Elixir & CQRS - Jon Grieman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d2NPc8cEnw * BEAM Extreme Don’t Do This At Home - Miriam Pena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1j36z8SllI * Contracts for Building Reliable Systems - Chris Keathley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpo3JUyVIjQ * Norm library: https://github.com/keathley/norm * Thursday PM Keynote - José Valim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpo3JUyVIjQ * Return of Wabi-Sabi: Hastega Will Bring More and... - Susumu Yamazaki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCkPyfFhPxI * Friday Evening Keynote - Chris McCord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk4WAlabvI * EMPEX LA: https://empex.co/la

Episode 153 – The Dream stack with Rust & Elixir feat. Dave Lucia We kick things off by hearing about the newly launched Elixir Training :tada: which y’all should check out if you’re looking to learn the language, or have friends who might. In todays episode we’re joined by Dave Lucia, VP of Engineering at SimpleBet where we hear about the use of the “Dream Stack” (you heard it here first folks!), which is Elixir using Rust NIFs for performance reasons (in their case calculating real-time betting odds). We spend a lot of time in the episode digging into what NIFs are, why Rust is a good fit for writing Elixir NIFs and what the pitfalls are. We get real technical with dirty schedulers, resource arcs in Rust, and all of the reasons for why you should and probably should not use NIFs unless you really need it. Also in an Elixir Talk first Dave turns around and asks us a question at the end. And in maybe a podcast first we place an on-air bet on who can donate the most to the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation. Links - Elixir Training North American Tour 2019 – https://elixirtraining.io - Elixir Conf – https://elixirconf.com - SimpleBet – https://simplebet.io - The Outline – https://theoutline.com - Two Years of Elixir at The Outline – https://blog.usejournal.com/two-years-of-elixir-at-the-outline-ad671a56c9ce - ConCache – https://github.com/sasa1977/con_cache - IO Lists and Phoenix - https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/elixir-and-io-lists-part-2-io-lists-in-phoenix/ - Using Rust to Scale Elixir at Discord – https://blog.discordapp.com/using-rust-to-scale-elixir-for-11-million-concurrent-users-c6f19fc029d3 - Rustler – https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler - Rust ResourceArcs in Rustler – https://docs.rs/rustler/0.15.1/rustler/resource/struct.ResourceArc.html - Erlang Dirty Scheduler Overhead – https://medium.com/@jlouis666/erlang-dirty-scheduler-overhead-6e1219dcc7 - Erlef – https://erlef.org - Dave’s talk at CodeBeam SF 2019 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvfhrvAFOoQ - Dave on Twitter – https://twitter.com/davydog187 - Dave on Github – https://github.com/davydog187

# Episode 152 - The joys of Ecto This week it’s a Chris & Desmond episode! We kick things off by hearing all about Desmond’s latest project – Hire an Elixir Developer – a job board to help companies attract Elixir talent that’s launching soon. We dig into how Desmond has been writing his latest project, hear a bit about how he’s using LiveView and how he’s chasing boring technology to get this project done (Phoenix & Elixir). Chris has also been writing lots of code this week (and has kept Elixirin’) – he talks a bit about how Elixir has mostly just been getting out of his way. We then dig into one of our favorite subjects ... Ecto! We describe the joy of named binds, how we split up Ecto queries, and think about composing queries. We then go onto talk about lateral joins and the limits of Ecto preloads. ## Links * Hire an Elixir Developer – https://www.hireanelixirdeveloper.com/ * Absinthe GraphQL – http://absinthe-graphql.org * Ecto Named Binds – https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Query.html#module-named-bindings * Ecto Preloads – https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Query.html?#preload/3 * Ecto update with an atomic increment – https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Query.html#update/3 * Ecto lateral joins – https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Query.html#join/5-joining-with-fragments * Dataloader – https://hexdocs.pm/dataloader/Dataloader.html * Lateral joins in Ecto – https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/issues/1425 * Relay Connections – https://facebook.github.io/relay/graphql/connections.htm * Absinthe Relay – https://github.com/absinthe-graphql/absinthe_relay * Batch loading in Absinthe Relay while support first N – https://elixirforum.com/t/how-to-batch-load-with-absinthe-relay-while-supporting-first-x-and-after-cursor/14918 * CSS Grids – https://gridbyexample.com/examples/ * Brutalist Web Design – https://brutalist-web.design/ * ElixirConf – https://elixirconf.com/2019