October 21, 2025

275: From Slop to Success?

29 minutes

News includes the release of Elixir v1.19.0-rc.2 with impressive deps compile times and optimized set-theoretic type checking, a timeline update on typed structs arriving by next year, the new "mix help app:phoenix" command for building AI Agent context, gRPC library v0.11.0 with client load balancing, ReqCassette for recording test requests, German Velasco's video walkthrough of Phoenix's AGENTS.md file, Brian Cardarella's insights on the influx of AI-generated codebases needing rescue, Elixir Observer's major updates with categories and semantic search, Chris McCord's demonstration of isolated AI coding sandboxes on Fly Machines, NPM's new security changes for token management, and more!

Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/275

Elixir Community News

https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.

https://netter.net/josevalim/status/1975605515313979674 – José Valim announces Elixir v1.19.0-rc.2 release

https://elixirforum.com/t/elixir-v1-19-0-rc-2-released/72805 – Elixir Forum discussion of v1.19.0-rc.2, the last stop before official v1.19 release

Remote.com confirmed their codebase compiles 55% faster on v1.19 with type checking still ~1ms/module on average

José and Guillaume Duboc went beyond current state-of-the-art to optimize key operations for set-theoretic type checking, articles to be published later

https://nitter.net/josevalim/status/1975588421201715334 – New "mix help app:phoenix" command in Elixir v1.19 lists all modules with first paragraph of docs

Great shortcut tool for building AI Agent context with brief module descriptions

https://nitter.net/z_4seven/status/1975795139739357404 – José Valim provides update on Elixir's typesystem status and timeline

Plan shifted from typed structs by end of year to providing type inference of all constructs; typed structs might arrive by end of next year

https://nitter.net/sleipni_r/status/1977901944329875893 – Elixir gRPC library v0.11.0 release announcement

https://github.com/elixir-grpc/grpc – Full-featured Elixir implementation of gRPC protocol with new Client Load Balancing following official specs

https://hexdocs.pm/req_cassette – ReqCassette documentation - new Req library for recording and serializing real requests in tests

https://github.com/lostbean/req_cassette/ – ReqCassette GitHub repository, similar to ExVCR but works with Req and supports async tests

https://github.com/parroty/exvcr – ExVCR library for comparison

https://nitter.net/karlclement/status/1976677105980072238 – Karl Clement's Twitter thread asking who's using Elixir in production with numerous company replies

https://nitter.net/germsvel/status/1976264583682625776 – German Velasco's new ElixirStream video walking through Phoenix 1.8 AGENTS.md file

Full video is ~25 minutes or split into 12 shorter videos showing what AI typically gets wrong in new Phoenix apps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBpDaUVxiII – Episode

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fpbWpunfLVg – German Velasco's short video illustrating Ecto's datetime helpers

https://nitter.net/bcardarella/status/1976217163754070372 – Brian Cardarella shares insight about clients needing help finishing AI-generated apps

DockYard seeing many AI slop generated apps that are nightmares to build on top of

https://elixir-observer.com/packages/req – Elixir Observer website updates by Mimiquate with better design and new features

https://elixir-observer.com/categories – New categories feature for package discovery (Actors, AI, Audio, Authentication, etc.)

Categories include semantic search and show unreleased changes per package

https://nitter.net/chris_mccord/status/1976813860742217754 – Chris McCord demonstrates creating isolated Claude Code sandbox instances on Fly Machines in 15 seconds

Interesting approach for running AI agents fully isolated from local machine

https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-29-strengthening-npm-security-important-changes-to-authentication-and-token-management/ – NPM announces new security changes including more frequent token rotation and Trusted Publishers (OIDC) support

Response to recent supply chain attacks showing compromised long-lived tokens are critical vulnerability

Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir or email at [email protected]

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