Elixir Outlaws

This week kicks off with a discussion about San Francisco's iconoclastic - but also incorrect - name for a specific coffee drink. Amos is, as they say, coming in hot and launches full bore into a discussion about the elixir forum’s moderation policies. Chris is primarily concerned about the angry letters they’re going to receive.

The hosts discuss the benefits of moderating a community. They all agree that moderation is a good thing and helps a community stay healthy, but they also agree that silently editing people's posts is like, kinda creepy.

Anna brings up the topic of “forever projects” and how draining they can be. She asks the guys if they have any solutions for scaling projects that don't have a defined "end". The hosts discuss burnout, the pain of invisible work, and how people can help create a more vibrant and rich community.

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This week kicks off with an explanation of Chris’s so called grooming habits. Amos explains how to properly cook fried eggs. The guys remember the early days of the show and comment on how their audio quality was somehow even worse back then.

Amos is trying to figure out the best way to give back to the community. The discussion moves towards the social contracts of open source which Chris thinks is a thorny topic. Chris encourages people to contribute in whatever way they feel is best even if it means not writing code.

Chris rails against the programming communities obsession with hero culture and the toxicity of “rockstar programmers”. The guys discuss ways to try to build successful teams. Spoilers: the first step is not to hire a bunch of people who want to build RPC when all you need is a blog.

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Links:

• Stages of team development

The hosts this week are coming in cold. Amos and Chris are drinking Starbucks, although Amos seems much more upset about it than Chris. Anna has finally returned from her vacation in Japan only to find that her microphone stand no longer works correctly.

Anna describes her longest Monday ever and Amos explains why he can’t sleep on planes. Chris has been doing nothing exciting besides not sleeping and keeping his children alive. The conversation moves to design by contract and data specification layers. Chris discusses the libraries he’s been working on and also does a pretty great internet voice.

Chris and Anna talk about their upcoming elixirconf talks and how they’re happy to see more diversity in the speaker lineup for elixirconf. This leads to a discussion of other conferences and how they pick speakers. Finally the hosts wrap up with a pitch for LazyRiverConf occurring simultaneously with ElixirConf.

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This week Elixir has been uninstalled from Amos’s laptop and Chris is reading books and writing C. Chris explains why he still chooses to write C and why most people don’t need to manually manage memory.

During the main topic Amos describes a problem he’s having with Tesla and Hackney. This leads to a discussion about how to build systems that can handle failure. Amos brings up Let It Crash and where it applies. Chris provides some insights into building stable systems and how supervisors influence design.

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This week Amos is back from his yearly vision quest and Chris faces the problem of being interested in too many things at once. Amos discusses some experiences using Broadway and GenStage which gives Chris an excuse to bring up Little’s Law (as if he needed one).

The main topic this week is observability. This topic is motivated by Amos’s latest book: Behind Human Error. Amos provides a brief rundown and Chris talks with authority about things he really doesn't understand. The guys discuss the importance of setting goals for your services and how those goals will inform your metrics gathering and alerting strategies. The show wraps up with some tips on benchmarking and profiling.

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Links:

• The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation, and Modeling

The Elixir Outlaws now have a Patreon. If you’re enjoying the show then please consider throwing a few bucks our way to help us pay for the costs for the show.

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As nerds we like to systematize the things we do. What do we do to think through our problems?

The Elixir Outlaws now have a Patreon. If you’re enjoying the show then please consider throwing a few bucks our way to help us pay for the costs for the show.

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Hey everyone, we're still wrestling with audio gremlins. This week is based on the raw audio from our call so you'll hear some artifacts in there. I just wanted you to be aware in case you're sensitive to that kind of thing. We've solved this problem so going forward this shouldn't happen again.

-Keathley

This week starts with some serious discussion about the nature of hammocks, podcasts, and the Coriolis effect.

The main topic this week is implicit vs. explicit. Chris argues that an implicit apis tend to be better apis. The hosts discuss where the lines should be drawn between making an operation explicit and hiding the internal complexity of the system. Chris describes how we should think about building a system in layers and how to avoid breaking changes.

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This week kicks off with Chris chastising Amos about always being late. The hosts discuss the value of time and recent conference trips. The discussion shifts towards talk preparation techniques, the value of speaking at conferences, and some tips for new speakers.

Chris takes control of the show and does a hard pivot towards the main topic this week; the overuse of processes and state management. Chris explains that most people can get by with a lot less OTP then they think. He and Amos discuss ways that they see OTP misused or overused, the nature of scaling systems and the dangers of building stateful services.

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The Elixir Outlaws now have a Patreon. If you’re enjoying the show then please consider throwing a few bucks our way to help us pay for the costs for the show.

Special Guest: Bruce Tate.

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