Elixir Wizards

Joining us for this episode of Elixir Wizards is the vastly experienced and well-traveled Francesco Cesarini! Francesco is the founder of Erlang Solutions and we are so lucky to have him here on the show to talk about his personal and professional journey, and take this great season of shows on the magic of the BEAM even further. Francesco takes us through his early interactions with computers and coding and the events that led to his decision to study computer science, before diving into his move to Sweden, and subsequently the UK, and how this all resulted in the founding of his company. Our guest touches on some helpful lessons he learned around marketing and branding, particularly related to the name of the company and we also discuss how the company grew in stages over the years. From there, the conversation turns to Francesco's work on conferences, and his commitment to this important feature of the community. We talk about the benefits of virtual conferences, what to look forward to, and the team that Francesco works with when organizing. To finish off this segment, our guest gives a few recommended resources and comments on Erlang syntax too! For today's mini-feature we welcome Jeffery Utter who works as a Senior Software Developer at Bleacher Report, so make sure to tune in to catch it all!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Today we have some extra BEAM magic for all of you! Joining us on the show is Chris Miller, who currently works as an Associate Software Engineer at Corvus Insurance. We get into a great conversation with Chris about his history with programming, his long-held interest in mathematics, and how he is trying to bring these two worlds closer together through his work. Chris weighs in with some very important expert perspectives on a range of subjects, from monads and monoids to Vim and Emacs, before we get into the different avenues of Chris' work. Along with an old college friend, Chris runs the informative YouTube Channel, Coding Cave, helps other coders through mentorship and tutoring, and is also multilingual, speaking Mandarin, Spanish, German, and English! We get some illumination on interesting and important concepts such as Turing completeness, programming language theory, and more, all delivered with an accessibility that belies the high level of the material. So for all this, plus our bonus mini-segment with Semsee employee, Sidney Leatherwood, at the end, be sure to listen in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guest: Chris Miller.

While there is magic to be found in many frameworks, having too much going on under the hood without you being able to control it is not for everybody. Today we invite Parker and Shannon Selbert to speak about their dynamic partnership and the ‘controlled magic’ of their tool Oban. Together Parker and Shannon founded Soren, where they help clients with established web apps stabilize, scale, and ‘add schmancy features’. Their tool Oban is a persistent background job processor written in Elixir whose differentiating feature revolves around keeping jobs after they're processed. We dive right in with Parker and Shannon hearing about how they got into programming before they talk about Oban and what sets it apart. Next up we get into how our guests navigate their personal relationship and professional partnership and they weigh in on homeschooling kids, writing new features, and the necessary life skills for handling Oban user support. Moving onto the topic of the BEAM, we explore the unique type of magic it offers and how this plays into some of the cooler features of Oban such as being able to cancel jobs. Our guests talk about some of the kinks they still need to work out of their tool and we wrap up our conversation on the pro version of Oban and how successful it has been. As always we close today’s show off with our mini-interview, this time with Joe Peck from Spreedly!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Elixir Wizards |> Conference — https://smr.tl/conf-podcast

Special Guests: Parker Selbert and Shannon Selbert.

Today we are joined by the Vice President of Engineering at Corvus Insurance, Erik Person! Erik continues our journey into the magic of the BEAM, our season-long theme for the Elixir Wizards Podcast, and we get to hear all about Erik's path in programming, his relationship with Elixir, and his utilization of the BEAM. Growing up in a family involved in computer science, and an early affinity for technology made the choice of what to study at college a straightforward one for Erik. He tells us about his life during and after those school years, touching on his first job and the important milestones leading up to his current position at Corvus. We talk about his early feelings for Elixir and why it appealed to him almost immediately before discussing different languages on the BEAM and his love of types! Our guest also shares some of the bigger challenges he has encountered working in Elixir and touches on the issue of scaling effectively. In this episode, we also air a mini-feature with SmartLogic's very own Stephanie Vizzi, talking about her work at the company, relationship with Elixir, and more! So for all this, plus a lot in between, be sure to tune in!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guests: Erik Person and Stephanie Vizzi.

Welcome to a brand-spanking-new season of Elixir Wizards! This time around we will be focussing on the magic of the BEAM, so get ready for an exciting journey into new territories filled with mystery and power! To kick things off in this inaugural episode we are joined by a true legend in the space of Erlang, Elixir, and the BEAM. Robert Virding is one of the three founding members of Erlang, and his unrivaled intimacy with the language and its related subjects is truly inspiring and informative. We feel like we could fill many more episodes just hearing Robert unpack the history he has been involved in, but we do manage to cover a lot in this show, touching on Robert's career arcs, the other founders of Erlang, the connection to Ericsson and the bridge to Elixir, as well as much more. Robert also shares some insight into the BEAM and the idea of a virtual machine, broaching these sometimes misunderstood concepts with simplicity and clarity. We talk about magic, hurdles, best practices, and the future of community, with Robert sharing his experiences working on Erlog, LFE, and much more. Make sure to join us for this episode and stay tuned for the rest of another great season!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic - https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guest: Robert Virding.

Season 5 ends with a bang as we welcome back Sean Lewis, Anna Neyzber, and René Föhring onto the show to share their journey on getting their companies and teams to adopt Elixir. We open our conversation with each guest sharing their first experiences with Elixir. After chatting about the changes that they’ve seen in the Elixir ecosystem, we explore Elixir’s benefits and how they’ve persuaded companies to make the Elixir leap. From zero downtime deployment to arguing for Elixir’s ability to solve immediate problems, we touch on the most convincing reasons for stakeholders to adopt Elixir. Following this, we unpack common Elixir criticisms before looking at the importance of hiring developers for their aptitude as well as for their skill set. Later, we discuss what we most appreciate about Elixir, with each guest sharing a story from producing an Elixir app. We round off an insightful episode by talking about Elixir accessibility and the top ways to train entry-level programmers. Join us as we wrap up this season for a last deep-dive on adopting Elixir.

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guests: Anna Neyzberg, René Föhring, and Sean Lewis.

The fields of data science and machine learning are moving ever faster. Jenn Gamble has her finger on the pulse and has become an industry expert with a wealth of experience to her name. As today’s guest, she dives into these rich and often complex topics, and she helps us boil them down into palatable nuggets of knowledge. We start off by asking Jenn about her current role at Very, and she tells us about the nature of her team and the things they’re able to achieve. She touches on what the language markups look like for a data science team, before moving onto her experiences in machine learning and data science. Delving deeper, Jenn tells us why it is not a necessity to have a master’s in data science, and why you can be well enough equipped in other senses to become proficient in the area. Later on, she reveals the differences between Elixir models and data science models. Following these detailed explanations, she furnishes listener’s minds with informative comments on relating the foundations of machine learning to IoT, using priori knowledge to add nuance to your machine learning, and how she envisions the future of data science. Join us today and be sure to get all this, and much more!

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guest: Jenn Gamble.

Many organizations take an incremental approach when adopting Elixir, preferring to pick up its nuances by using it to work on non-essential projects. But not Change.org. Today we speak with Change.org Director of Engineering John Mertens about how his company adopted Elixir to create a business-critical app that handles over a billion emails per month. From building webpages on GeoCities to working as an IT intern at an Iowan prison, we open our conversation by exploring John’s coding background. After chatting about his first Elixir project, we dive into Change.org’s process in adopting Elixir. As John shares his insights into successfully integrating Elixir into your tech stack, he highlights the benefits provided by the language. Later, John discusses the advantages of event-driven architecture and how this structure makes it easier for teams to access and analyze data, while also making it easier to add product features. We wrap up this episode with John highlighting his user-centered approach to coding. Join us to hear John’s lessons on making the leap and adopting Elixir in large organizations.

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guest: John Mertens.

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:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guest: Sophie DeBenedetto.

With the prevalence of at-home learning, teachers have to compete for student attention against numerous screen-based activities. Today we speak with engineering lead Shaun Robinson and Elixir developer Toran Billups about how Legends of Learning helps educators make their classrooms fun, engaging, and productive through their curriculum-based games. After chatting about Legends’ mission to empower teachers, we talk with Toran about how he landed a job there. He then shares his insights into securing Elixir jobs, touching on the importance of networking and building a portfolio of Elixir projects. We discuss why Elixir became Legends’ language of choice before exploring their process in adopting Elixir. Reflecting on their early server structure, Shaun explains their process of refactoring from their old code base into an Elixir monolith. Responding to a previous episode, where frustrations were shared about coding in LiveView, Toran talks about its advantages, despite its issues as a new technology. Later, Shaun and Toran dive into what you can do to help your company adopt Elixir. We wrap up another incredible conversation by asking our guests about their favorite Legend of Learning games. Tune in to hear more about Legend of Learning’s Elixir journey and how they’re using it to create dynamic learning environments.

Key Points From This Episode:

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Correction: In an earlier version of this episode, the host mis-spoke and mis-named the guests' company name in the outro; that error has been corrected as of 2021-02-25 3:52PM ET.

Special Guests: Shaun Robinson and Toran Billups.