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6 episodes with genservers
8 episodes with genservers
2 episodes with genservers
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7 episodes with genservers
Connor Rigby joins the Elixir Wizards to talk about Blue Heron BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) support for Elixir apps. Blue Heron implements the BLE specs in pure Elixir, leveraging binary pattern matching and concurrent message processing to handle Bluetooth protocols. Unlike most solutions that require C ports or NIFs, Blue Heron runs entirely in user space, so it works seamlessly in both Nerves-based embedded projects and (eventually) desktop Elixir applications. We discuss how Nerves development differs from building Phoenix apps. Connor shares challenges he's experienced with hardware compatibility, where some chips only partially implement the spec, and he discusses the surprisingly deep (but sometimes incomplete) world of BLE device profiles. His tip for anyone entering the BLE space: read the official spec instead of trusting secondhand blog posts. Tools like Nerves LiveBook give you hands-on examples, so you can get a BLE prototype running on a Raspberry Pi and your phone in no time. Key topics discussed in this episode: Blue Heron origins and “bird” naming convention BLE vs. Bluetooth Classic: core differences Pure Elixir implementation—no C dependencies Binary pattern matching for packet parsing Hardware transport options: UART, SPI, USB, SDIO GenServer patterns in Nerves vs. Phoenix Linux requirement and power-consumption trade-offs GATT (Generic Attribute Table) implementation patterns SQLite integration for Nerves apps Hardware chip quirks and spec compliance Manufacturer-specific commands and workarounds BLE device profiles and spec gaps Security Management Profile (SMP) for encryption Device connection and pairing workflows Web vs. embedded development differences Where to get started: hardware recommendations and docs Links mentioned: https://github.com/ConnorRigby/ https://github.com/blue-heron/ https://nerves-project.org/ BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BluetoothLowEnergy https://developer.apple.com/ibeacon/ https://learnyousomeerlang.com/building-otp-applications Linux https://www.linux.org/ HCI (Host Controller Interface) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostcontrollerinterface Circuits UART Library https://hexdocs.pm/circuitsuart/readme.html SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) https://github.com/elixir-circuits/circuitsspi SDIO (Secure Digital Input Output https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDIO Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.com/ Coral SoM Dev Board https://coral.ai/products/dev-board/ BeagleBone Single-Board Linux Computer https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglebone-black https://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth-resources/intro-to-bluetooth-gap-gatt/ Genservers https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.12/GenServer.html https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.html https://github.com/elixir-sqlite/ectosqlite3 https://github.com/nerves-livebook/nerveslivebook Special Guest: Connor Rigby.
Today on Elixir Wizards, Bryan Green shares how he transformed a vintage 1930s rotary phone into a fully functional cell phone using Elixir, Nerves, and a mix of hardware components. Bryan shares the highs and lows of his project, from decoding rotary dial clicks to troubleshooting hardware issues with LED outputs. He explains why Nerves was the perfect fit for this project, offering SSH access, over-the-air updates, and remote debugging. You'll also hear how Elixir's concurrency model helped him manage hardware inputs and outputs efficiently using GenStateMachine and Genservers. Elixir and Nerves really shine when modeling real-world systems. Bryan dives into how he used a finite state machine to track the phone's states and handled inputs from the rotary dial and hook switch via GPIO. For hardware enthusiasts, Bryan's advice is to embrace this “golden age” of DIY electronics. Whether you're experienced with embedded systems or just curious on where to start, Bryan's VintageCell can inspire you to tinker with a hardware engineering project. Key topics discussed in this episode: Advantages of functional programming and immutability in Elixir Building hardware projects using Adafruit components Why Nerves was the best choice for the VintageCell project Interpreting rotary dial clicks using GPIO and circuits.gpio Troubleshooting hardware issues with LED diagnostics Challenges in optimizing wiring and PCB design Benefits of Nerves: SSH access, OTA updates, and remote debugging Modeling real-world systems with Elixir and Nerves Implementing a finite state machine with GenStateMachine Managing input with Genservers for rotary dial and hook switch Leveraging community resources like Discord, Elixir Slack, and forums Practical advice for keeping hardware projects on track Potential applications from SMS servers to home automation Links mentioned: Vintage Cellphone: Bridging the Past and Future with Elixir (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4hetzVpjmo) Seven Languages in Seven Weeks https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/ Seven More Languages https://pragprog.com/titles/7lang/seven-more-languages-in-seven-weeks/ Node.js https://github.com/nodejs https://nerves-project.org/ https://www.arduino.cc/ Adafruit Circuit Playground https://www.adafruit.com/category/965 Adafruit 3D Printed Star Trek Communicator https://learn.adafruit.com/3d-printed-star-trek-communicator Adafruit FONA 3G Cellular + GPS Breakout https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fona-3g-cellular-gps-breakout/overview https://github.com/elixir-circuits/circuitsgpio Nerves SSH https://hex.pm/packages/nervesssh OTA (over-the-air) Updates with NervesHub https://www.nerves-hub.org/ https://github.com/kicad Waveshare 4G Hat for Raspberry Pi https://www.waveshare.com/sim7600e-h-4g-hat.htm https://hexdocs.pm/genstatemachine/GenStateMachine.html https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/GenServer.html https://www.sparkfun.com/ https://www.digikey.com/ USB-C Gadget Mode with Nerves https://github.com/nerves-project/nervessystemrpi4/issues/18 https://livebook.dev/ https://codestorm.me/ https://github.com/codestorm1/vintage_cell/ Special Guest: Bryan Green.
In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Xiang Ji and Nathan Hessler join hosts Sundi Myint and Owen Bickford to compare actor model implementation in Elixir, Ruby, and Clojure. In Elixir, the actor model is core to how the BEAM VM works, with lightweight processes communicating asynchronously via message passing. GenServers provide a common abstraction for building actors, handling messages, and maintaining internal state. In Ruby, the actor model is represented through Ractors, which currently map to OS threads. They discuss what we can learn by comparing models, understanding tradeoffs between VMs, languages, and concurrency primitives, and how this knowledge can help us choose the best tools for a project. Topics discussed in this episode: Difference between actor model and shared memory concurrency Isolation of actor state and communication via message passing BEAM VM design for high concurrency via lightweight processes GenServers as common abstraction for building stateful actors GenServer callbacks for message handling and state updates Agents as similar process abstraction to GenServers Shared state utilities like ETS for inter-process communication Global Interpreter Lock in older Ruby VMs Ractors as initial actor implementation in Ruby mapping to threads Planned improvements to Ruby concurrency in 3.3 Akka implementation of actor model on JVM using thread scheduling Limitations of shared memory concurrency on JVM Project Loom bringing lightweight processes to JVM Building GenServer behavior in Ruby using metaprogramming CSP model of communication using channels in Clojure Differences between BEAM scheduler and thread-based VMs Comparing Elixir to academic languages like Haskell Remote and theScore are hiring! Links mentioned in this episode: theScore is hiring! https://www.thescore.com/ Remote is also hiring! https://remote.com/ Comparing the Actor Model and CSP with Elixir and Clojure (https://xiangji.me/2023/12/18/comparing-the-actor-model-and-csp-with-elixir-and-clojure/) Blog Post by Xiang Ji Comparing the Actor model & CSP concurrency with Elixir & Clojure (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIQCQKPRNCI) Xiang Ji at ElixirConf EU 2022 Clojure Programming Language https://clojure.org/ Akka https://akka.io/ Go Programming Language https://github.com/golang/go Proto Actor for Golang https://proto.actor/ RabbitMQ Open-Source Message Broker Software https://github.com/rabbitmq JVM Project Loom https://github.com/openjdk/loom Ractor for Ruby https://docs.ruby-lang.org/en/master/ractor_md.html Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks: When Threads Unravel (https://pragprog.com/titles/pb7con/seven-concurrency-models-in-seven-weeks/)by Paul Butcher Seven Languages in Seven Weeks (https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/) by Bruce A. Tate GenServer https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.12/GenServer.html ets https://www.erlang.org/doc/man/ets.html Elixir in Action (https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/) by Saša Jurić Redis https://github.com/redis/redis Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-for-scalability/9781449361556/) by Francesco Cesarini & Steve Vinoski Discord Blog: Using Rust to Scale Elixir for 11 Million Concurrent Users (https://discord.com/blog/using-rust-to-scale-elixir-for-11-million-concurrent-users) Xiang's website https://xiangji.me/ Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/feeling-good-the-new-mood-therapy-by-david-d-burns/250046/?resultid=7691fb71-d8f9-4435-a7a3-db3441d2272b#edition=2377541&idiq=3913925) by David D. Burns Special Guests: Nathan Hessler and Xiang Ji.
In Episode 4, the Elixir Wizards are joined by Dorian Iacobescu, author of the ECSpanse ECS library for Elixir, and Daniel Luu, founder and CEO of the game development studio AKREW. The guests compare notes on backend game development using ECS, the Entity Component System approach. Akrew is currently building the multiplayer game Galactic Getaway using the Photon Unity networking framework, which employs ECS. They discuss challenges like collections of component types and persistence beyond runtime, building games for various platforms like MacOS, and handling inventory storage in a backend database. Game development is complex and has many technical hurdles, but open communication across different programming communities and game development approaches can foster collaboration, innovation, and continued learning. Topics Discussed in this Episode Dorian explains the ECSpanse ECS library and component-based architecture Dorian took inspiration for ECSpanse from the Rust library Bevy ECS and its component-based API The guests discuss popular game development platforms and languages, including C#, JavaScript, and Godot Owen and Daniel translate ECS concepts to familiar database and backend terminology for devs without game-specific experience ECSpanse uses many tools from the Elixir Erlang toolbox, including GenServers, ETS tables, tasks, queries, and Phoenix LiveView ECS challenges representing inventory collections that broke typical ECS singleton patterns AKREW is developing Galactic Getaway using the Photon Unity framework Relationships between parent and child entities in ECSpanse Persistence, serialization, and replay features to save game state Optimizing assets and code for performance on various devices Links Mentioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entitycomponentsystem https://iacobson.medium.com/elixir-for-fun-ecspanse-2852a7993ecd https://hexdocs.pm/ecspanse/Ecspanse.html https://bevyengine.org/learn/book/getting-started/ecs/ https://www.photonengine.com/quantum Add Galactic Getaway to your Steam Wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012390/GalacticGetaway/ https://godotengine.org/ https://unity.com/ https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/gdscript/gdscriptbasics.html https://www.tiktok.com/@galacticgetaway https://docs.rs/bevyecs/latest/bevyecs/ Special Guests: Daniel Luu and Dorian Iacobescu.
Season 9 is in full swing and we are so excited to welcome Kate Rezentes today to dive into the particulars of GenServers. Kate is a Junior Software Developer at Simplebet, a B2B product development company using machine learning and real-time technology to make every moment of every sporting event a betting opportunity. Tune in today to learn more from today's special guest, Kate Rezentes! Key Points From This Episode: A brief breakdown of today's topic and introduction to our special guest, Kate Rezentes We learn about Kate's background and her long history with programming We discuss how many conferences she's attended and why ElixirConf has been her favorite (thus far) Find out how Kate landed a job while attending ElixirConf How GenServers as a subject came to be We get an inside look at Kate's working experience at Simplebet and her experience as a Junior Engineer in the industry so far What cases in particular cause the need for a GenServer We discuss where GenServers would be appropriate to use and why The ins and outs of ‘handle calls' and ‘callbacks' The process of testing a GenServer and data storage_ **Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:* Kate Rezentes on Twitter — https://twitter.com/rezkate Kate Rezentes on GitHub — https://github.com/KateRezentes Kate Rezentes on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfrezent/ Simplebet — https://simplebet.io/ SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ SmartLogic Twitter — https://twitter.com/smartlogic
[00:03:47] Andreas gives us a brief introduction of who he is, what he does, and how long he's been writing Ruby code and Elixir code.[00:05:59] Find out what Phoenix LiveView is, and Jason wonders if it's something that multiple processes could come in and reference or if it's tied to one kind of connection.[00:08:55] Jason asks Andreas if he's building a web app and someone tells him to use LiveView, what type of problems is he solving by using LiveView?[00:10:17] Since there's a way to get the raw JavaScript events with LiveView, Andrew wonders if that means you can make your own custom events too or if just responds to the built-in JavaScript events.[00:11:48] Jason talks about what interests him the most about LiveView and how magical it is. [00:13:24] When LiveView came out, Andreas replaced React Components and he explains what those components were doing and how he was able to replace that functionality. He also explains how the React implementation and LiveView implementations differ. [00:16:20] Andrew wonders if there are any things Andreas tried to move into LiveView that he's been unsuccessful with or if there's a specific group of things that LiveView isn't that great at handling. [00:17:17] Jason brings up the approach of making the entire layout live and asks Andreas if memory usage is ever a worry there.[00:19:21] We learn what kind of work Andreas does for Erlang Solutions, and what attracts him the Elixir language coming from a Ruby language. [00:23:01] Andreas tells us about his experience moving from Ruby to Elixir, his path to learning Elixir, and things he recommends if you're interested in doing this. [00:26:47] Find out where you can follow Andreas on the internet.Panelists:Jason CharnesChris OliverAndrew MasonGuest:Andreas ErikssonSponsor:HoneybadgerLinks:Ruby Radar NewsletterRuby Radar TwitterAndreas Eriksson LinkedInFullstackPhoenixFullstackPhoenix TwitterErlang SolutionsElixir School-Walk-Through of Phoenix LiveView
Arkadiusz Plichta joins the adventure to discuss how he built a system that tracks BitCoin value using GenServers. He explains the architecture of his application and the story behind why he built this particular application. Then the panel dives in to help explain how you can use GenServers for ongoing services like this one. Panel Adi IyengarAllen WymaCharles Max WoodSascha Wolf Guest Arkadiusz Plichta Sponsors Dev Influencers AcceleratorLevel Up | Devchat.tv Links Twitter: Arkadiusz Plichta ( @el_pikel )Using LiveView and GenServers to track BTC priceTesting GenServers with Erlang TraceTesting Elixir: Effective and Robust Testing for Elixir and its Ecosystem Picks Adi- Code BEAM America 2021Adi- To work with Adi, reach out to him at: aditya7iyengar@gmail.comAllen- Stuff You Should Know (Podcast)Arkadiusz- LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (YouTube Channel)Charles- Top End DevsCharles- Top End Devs / AuthorCharles- The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the OrganizationSascha- CGPGrey- YouTube Contact Adi: Adi Iyengar – The Bug CatcherGitHub: Adi Iyengar ( thebugcatcher )Twitter: Adi Iyengar ( @lebugcatcher ) Contact Allen: Plangora Plangora LimitedPlangora – YouTubePlangora | FacebookTech_Plangora Limited_Elixir | InstagramTwitter: Plangora ( @Plangora )LinkedIn: Plangora – Web and Mobile DevelopmentPlangora – Reddit Flying High With Flutter Flying High With FlutterFlying High with Flutter – YouTubeFlying High with Flutter | FacebookFlying High With Flutter | InstagramTwitter: Flying High with Flutter ( @fhwflutter ) Teach Me Code Teach Me CodeTeach Me Code | FacebookTeachMeCode | Instagram Contact Charles: Devchat.tvDevChat.tv | FacebookTwitter: DevChat.tv ( @devchattv ) Contact Sascha: Sascha Wolf Special Guest: Arkadiusz Plichta.
Huge batch of new then we talk with Ricardo Garcia Vega about how he paired a Phoenix application with no database Repo to an Airtable backend to quickly solve a problem but without compromising on speed or reliability. Includes great discussion of ETS tables, GenServers for syncing a caching, LiveView for live updates, links to great resources, a github repo for doing it yourself and much more! Show Notes online - https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/014-liveview-and-airtable-with-ricardo-garcia-vega/ The post #014 LiveView and Airtable with Ricardo Garcia Vega appeared first on Thinking Elixir.
Huge batch of new then we talk with Ricardo Garcia Vega about how he paired a Phoenix application with no database Repo to an Airtable backend to quickly solve a problem but without compromising on speed or reliability. Includes great discussion of ETS tables, GenServers for syncing a caching, LiveView for live updates, links to great resources, a github repo for doing it yourself and much more! Show Notes online - https://thinkingelixir.com/podcast-episodes/014-liveview-and-airtable-with-ricardo-garcia-vega/
In this episode, Adam talks to Jerod Santo of The Changelog about building their custom podcasting platform using Elixir and Phoenix. Topics include: How pattern matching works in Elixir and why it's more powerful than method overloading in other languages How Elixir's pipe operator makes the transition from OO to functional programming more natural Why you don't need to be intimidated by unfamiliar features like GenServers to use Elixir for web app development Noticeable differences between working with Rails and Phoenix and what it was like to transition How the Phoenix ORM makes n+1 queries impossible Why background tasks are a lot easier in Elixir than in an ecosystem like PHP What other tools and technology power the Changelog platform How the Changelog Phoenix app is deployed Sponsors: DigitalOcean, get your free $50 credit at do.co/fullstack Cloudinary, sign up and get 300,000 images/videos, 10GB of storage and 20GB of monthly bandwidth for free Links: Building rapid UI with utility-first CSS, Adam's episode of JS Party Elixir Phoenix Chris McCord on The Changelog The Changelog source code Confident Ruby "Why we chose Turbolinks" Programming Phoenix book Elixir Forum Our Slack
We talk with Jay Ashe from Cava about their current and past Elixir projects and how they are deployed. Jay Ashe - Cava (https://cava.com/) Find Jay elsewhere online: https://twitter.com/jgashe 0:40 - Give us a quick overview of the Elixir projects you have in production. CAVA is a fast-casual mediterranean restaurant chain with 75 stores across the US. Elixir and phoenix power CAVA’s online ordering platform (order.cava.com and the CAVA app). We’ve got a REST (and websockets) api sitting behind react and our mobile apps, and we use phoenix templates for some of our back of house systems. 1:11 - Why are you using Elixir in production? We have from the start! The application was originally implemented by Chris Bell and his team at madebymany. Chris, by the way, has a fantastic talk from ElixirConf 2016 that goes into our architecture and how we use elixir and OTP constructs to model our business logic. Chris will occasionally talk about the CAVA project on his Elixir podcast, ElixirTalk. Chris’ Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDhU-2NWJ8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkDhU-2NWJ8) 1:58 - What are some of the high level advantages / disadvantages of Elixir, from your perspective? Advantages: Elixir and Phoenix gives you rails-esque productivity/developer experience that scales. I think phoenix channels are a great example of this. Build a channel with complex real-time functionality and let it scale effortlessly. Disadvantages: Hiring and onboarding, depending on your mindset, can be difficult. If you’re used to hiring for experience in your stack, its just going to be more difficult. Lately we’ve started doing one-hour weekly knowledge shares that cover elixir basics and are closely tied to our usage of them. So, here’s a test case, and here are all of the test helpers that we have set up that will help you write that test. We also just sent a new Elixir dev to lonestar elixir 3:59 - What do you use to host your Elixir app? Heroku How do you deploy your application? Heroku-buildpack-elixir https://github.com/HashNuke/heroku-buildpack-elixir (https://github.com/HashNuke/heroku-buildpack-elixir) 4:44 - Are you able to get zero downtime deploys? - As close as possible! We get that out of the box with heroku. When we deploy, heroku won’t point traffic to the new dyno until the app is healthy. We make extensive use of Phoenix channels over websockets, and our clients will reconnect automatically and transparently. 5:10 - Do you cluster the application? Nope. 5:52 - How does your Elixir App perform compared to others in your environment? I can’t really talk about numbers here, but Elixir is not at all our bottleneck. We don’t have other production applications 6:25 - How are you solving background task processing? Quantum for cron jobs, genservers for everything else. We’re running a single elixir application that handles all synchronous and async processing 7:07 - What libraries are you using? Phoenix Phoenix_swagger for API documentation that integrates with controller tests https://github.com/xerions/phoenix_swagger (https://github.com/xerions/phoenix_swagger) Ex_rated for rate limiting calls to our integrations https://github.com/grempe/ex_rated (https://github.com/grempe/ex_rated) Timex and calendar for datetime support with timezones https://github.com/bitwalker/timex (https://github.com/bitwalker/timex) A combination of httpotion and httpoison for HTTP clients, but im interested in trying Mint https://github.com/ericmj/mint (https://github.com/ericmj/mint)https://github.com/appcues/mojito (https://github.com/appcues/mojito) Bamboo for transactional emails, like order confirmations etc https://github.com/thoughtbot/bamboo (https://github.com/thoughtbot/bamboo) 8:59 - 3rd Party Services (i.e. Email, Payment Processing, etc) Sendgrid for email, Google for geocoding, slack for some internal alerting of application health, LevelUp for payments. https://www.thelevelup.com/ (https://www.thelevelup.com/) 10:07 - Do you have a story where Elixir saved the day in production? Yes and no. So I could tell this story by explaining the issue we saw and the underlying cause at the same time, but I think it would be more fun to tell it like our team experienced it. One day at lunch our application started going down. Lots of 500 errors. Red lights flashing. Panic ensuing. Lunch is our busiest time of day, so 1) we thought it was load related and 2) we really needed to fix it None of our traditional resources (database, cpu, memory) were constrained and our integrations that were synchronous were fine. Our logs were littered with errors from an analytics integration that ran asynchronously on genservers, but it didn’t seem related because we could see the error logs at times when our application was otherwise healthy. The team that used the analytics didn’t have a pressing need for them, and we deprioritized fixing the issue because the bug we were working on was so much more important (that’s foreshadowing). I spent a little time looking at websockets, but I was easily able to match the load of the websocket portion of our application on my local machine with no degradations in performance (thanks, phoenix), so that was out. At this point the issue was going on every day at lunch and I was getting annoyed at seeing the logs from the analytics integration when debugging, so I spent like 15 minutes finding and fixing the issue (a bad API key, basically) Voila, issue gone. Time to grab some lunch. We spent a while coming up with an explanation for this. Eventually we learned about max_restarts on a supervisor. By default, if a process crashes 3 times in 5 seconds, the process won’t be restarted again. So if another process (like the one handling a web request) tries to call that process that wasn’t restarted, the caller would crash, and we’d start to get 500 errors, customers couldn’t log in, mass confusion. So there are a few takeaways from this story: For a while, elixir saved the day in production. - A supervision tree prevented failures from the analytics process from affecting customers, until the scale of our failures exceeded the max_restart level. - Our supervision tree needed some love though, clearly. - Monitor your resources. CPU is a resource, but calls to another API are also a resource and can get unhealthy too. 15:00 - Are you using any cool OTP features? GenServers, definitely. There’s lots we can do asynchronously especially in terms of our integrations. One process per store is a cool model that scales well and keeps issues isolated to a single store. 15:50 - If you could give one tip to developers out there who are or may soon be running Elixir in production, what would it be? If you’re on a small team, Heroku or a similar provider might give you a lot of value in terms of infrastructure you can set up and forget. Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir. (https://smr.tl/2Hyslu8) Special Guest: Jay Ashe.
Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus .TECH – Go.tech/Elixir and use the coupon code “ELIXIR.TECH” and get a 1 year .TECH Domain at $9.99 and 5 Year Domain at $49.99. Hurry! CacheFly Panel Charles Max Wood Josh Adams Mark Ericksen Joined by Special Guest: Mika Kalathil Summary Mika Kalathil introduces genservers and how they are misused. The panel plays with an analogy that explains how people think genservers work versus how genservers actually work. Mika Kalathil shares some ways to avoid the common mistakes with genservers. Tasks are introduced and explained by Mika Kalathil; the panel adds their input on the usefulness and the importance of tasks. Mika Kalathil shares his background and his transition to elixir from javascript. The panel asks Mika Kalathil questions about the libraries he uses, the types of projects that he works on and what improvements he would like to see in elixir. The episode ends with a discussion about the wonderful elixir community. Links https://lure.is/blog/elixir/dangers-of-genserv https://lure.is/blog/elixir/dangers-of-genservers https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Mark Ericksen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpv1fxCV3sI&feature=youtu.be https://brainlid.org/elixir/2019/03/06/pattern-match-format-text.html Josh Adams https://twitter.com/TaylorPearsonMe Charles Max Wood https://podfestexpo.com/ https://podcastmovement.com/ Find a positive place charlesmaxwood.com Mika Kalathil exercism.io https://github.com/discordapp
Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus .TECH – Go.tech/Elixir and use the coupon code “ELIXIR.TECH” and get a 1 year .TECH Domain at $9.99 and 5 Year Domain at $49.99. Hurry! CacheFly Panel Charles Max Wood Josh Adams Mark Ericksen Joined by Special Guest: Mika Kalathil Summary Mika Kalathil introduces genservers and how they are misused. The panel plays with an analogy that explains how people think genservers work versus how genservers actually work. Mika Kalathil shares some ways to avoid the common mistakes with genservers. Tasks are introduced and explained by Mika Kalathil; the panel adds their input on the usefulness and the importance of tasks. Mika Kalathil shares his background and his transition to elixir from javascript. The panel asks Mika Kalathil questions about the libraries he uses, the types of projects that he works on and what improvements he would like to see in elixir. The episode ends with a discussion about the wonderful elixir community. Links https://lure.is/blog/elixir/dangers-of-genserv https://lure.is/blog/elixir/dangers-of-genservers https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Mark Ericksen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpv1fxCV3sI&feature=youtu.be https://brainlid.org/elixir/2019/03/06/pattern-match-format-text.html Josh Adams https://twitter.com/TaylorPearsonMe Charles Max Wood https://podfestexpo.com/ https://podcastmovement.com/ Find a positive place charlesmaxwood.com Mika Kalathil exercism.io https://github.com/discordapp
Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus .TECH - Go.tech/Elixir and use the coupon code “ELIXIR.TECH” and get a 1 year .TECH Domain at $9.99 and 5 Year Domain at $49.99. Hurry! CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Joined by Special Guest: Jack Marchant Summary Mark Ericksen and Josh Adams ask Jack Marchant, a software engineer from Australia, about a few of his blog articles. Jack Marchant compares supervision trees to react component trees using his background in both the frontend and the backend. The panel exchanges views on what these observations might look like and how they can help elixir developers. Mark Ericksen turns the discussion to Jack Marchant's articles on genservers, and the lessons he learned in working with genservers. Jack Marchant explains that there are so many different uses for a genserver. The panel considers when it is useful to use a genserver and when it is better not to. Jack Marchant shares a way to better manage work using a task and genservers for asynchronous work. The panel reviews a few things that they appreciate about elixir and how productive it makes developers. Jack Marchant shares his experience working in an elixir based company, in hiring, training, and productivity. The panel discusses the experience of switching to elixir and asks Jack Marchant about his experience coming from PHP. Jack Marchant shares and discusses with the panel some highlights from the lonestar elixir conference and updates the panel on phoenix live view. Links https://reactjs.org/ http://absinthe-graphql.org/ https://reactjs.org/docs/error-boundaries.html https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/you-might-not-need-a-genserver https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/using-a-genserver-to-handle-asynchronous-concurrent-tasks https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/lonestar-elixir-conf-2019-highlights https://medium.com/@Bettio/atomvm-how-to-run-elixir-code-on-a-3-microcontroller https://twitter.com/jackmarchant10 https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Josh Adams https://github.com/spencertipping/writing-self-modifying-perl Mark Ericksen Deep Work by Cal Newport Jack Marchant https://www.jackmarchant.com
Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus .TECH - Go.tech/Elixir and use the coupon code “ELIXIR.TECH” and get a 1 year .TECH Domain at $9.99 and 5 Year Domain at $49.99. Hurry! CacheFly Panel Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Joined by Special Guest: Jack Marchant Summary Mark Ericksen and Josh Adams ask Jack Marchant, a software engineer from Australia, about a few of his blog articles. Jack Marchant compares supervision trees to react component trees using his background in both the frontend and the backend. The panel exchanges views on what these observations might look like and how they can help elixir developers. Mark Ericksen turns the discussion to Jack Marchant's articles on genservers, and the lessons he learned in working with genservers. Jack Marchant explains that there are so many different uses for a genserver. The panel considers when it is useful to use a genserver and when it is better not to. Jack Marchant shares a way to better manage work using a task and genservers for asynchronous work. The panel reviews a few things that they appreciate about elixir and how productive it makes developers. Jack Marchant shares his experience working in an elixir based company, in hiring, training, and productivity. The panel discusses the experience of switching to elixir and asks Jack Marchant about his experience coming from PHP. Jack Marchant shares and discusses with the panel some highlights from the lonestar elixir conference and updates the panel on phoenix live view. Links https://reactjs.org/ http://absinthe-graphql.org/ https://reactjs.org/docs/error-boundaries.html https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/you-might-not-need-a-genserver https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/using-a-genserver-to-handle-asynchronous-concurrent-tasks https://www.jackmarchant.com/articles/lonestar-elixir-conf-2019-highlights https://medium.com/@Bettio/atomvm-how-to-run-elixir-code-on-a-3-microcontroller https://twitter.com/jackmarchant10 https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix https://twitter.com/elixir_mix Picks Josh Adams https://github.com/spencertipping/writing-self-modifying-perl Mark Ericksen Deep Work by Cal Newport Jack Marchant https://www.jackmarchant.com
We talk with developers from the team here at SmartLogic about our current practices on deploying Elixir and Phoenix in production. Dan Ivovich - Director of Development Operations @ SmartLogic Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir. (https://smartlogic.io/phoenix-and-elixir) 00:00 - Fade In 00:30 - Introductions to Eric, Dan and SmartLogic Dan Ivovich - Director of Development Operations @ SmartLogic Eric Oestrich - Developer, Elixir Lead @ SmartLogic Justus Eapen - Full stack developer @ SmartLogic Introduced to Elixir by an old colleague. 1:20 - What Elixir projects do you have in production? Several client projects in production. Several Mobile Apps with APIs powered by Phoenix and Elixir. Baltimore Water Taxi. A digital marketplace. And more! 1:57 - Advantages and disadvantages to using Elixir. We made the switch when a colleague was stoked about Functional Programming and introduced us to Elixir. We were won over by the performance and rich feature sets, OTP, etc. 2:43 - Where are we hosting our Elixir Apps? Heroku AWS Linode Digital Ocean 6:20Deployment process, tools, scripting Ansible - for underlying VPS’s, servers, and more recently deployment itself. (Similar to Capistrano). Distillery Mix.release 7:18 - Zero Downtime Deployments Old school load balancers and rolling restarts 7:46 - What are the performance metrics like? Comparatively. Ruby ends up with memory leaks. That doesn’t happen with Elixir. Memory utilization is flat and low no matter what. “Phenomenal response times” 8:54 - How does Eric think about clustered applications in Elixir? Going Multi Node (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCUKQnkjajo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCUKQnkjajo)) Pg2 (http://erlang.org/doc/man/pg2.html) - process groups Mnesia (http://erlang.org/doc/man/mnesia.html) distributed database (beware!) “Just sending messages to pids because Erlang is great” Swarm (https://github.com/bitwalker/swarm) / Horde (https://github.com/derekkraan/horde) 12:40 - How do we handle background tasks? Started with verk (https://github.com/edgurgel/verk) Recently becoming more comfortable with spinning up GenServers (https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/GenServer.html) “The language itself is built to be concurrent.” 15:06 What libraries are we using in prod? First thing: You don’t need a whole lot because the language is so well designed. Phoenix (https://phoenixframework.org/) - web framework Ecto (https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.html) - sort of an ORM Distillery (https://github.com/bitwalker/distillery) - for releases Bamboo (https://github.com/thoughtbot/bamboo) - for sending emails Quantum (https://github.com/c-rack/quantum-elixir) - for task scheduling Timex (https://github.com/bitwalker/timex) - for dates and times, and timezones Cachex (https://github.com/whitfin/cachex) - for caching 18:20- What third party integrations have we attempted Stripe Square Twilio Mindbody Always building our own clients. Using HTTPoison (https://github.com/edgurgel/httpoison) 19:58Has Elixir ever saved the day in production? It’s saved many days by PREVENTING ISSUES. Systems are architected for reliability and fault-tolerance. 21:48 - Where do supervision trees come from? What is OTP? OTP is an Erlang standard lib Includes supervision trees, genservers, ETS, and a lot of stuff we don’t even know about! gen_tcp (http://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_tcp.html) Mnesia dets (http://erlang.org/doc/man/dets.html) 23:43- Tips for devs considering running elixir in production. Jump in and read the docs Understand how systems boot, distillery releases, config providers, etc. “Good server monitoring hygiene” “DIVE IN!” 19:54 Outro Learn more about how SmartLogic uses Phoenix and Elixir. (https://smr.tl/2Hyslu8) Special Guest: Dan Ivovich.
** SHOW NOTES ** * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3JQgyj17hk&index=2&t=2s&list=PLyO-58-sOapyHWNFBapGOz40efbJuwmx2 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LlpbWuB9Hc&index=3&t=1s&list=PLyO-58-sOapyHWNFBapGOz40efbJuwmx2 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9216dUNgKCU&index=11&t=4s&list=PLyO-58-sOapyHWNFBapGOz40efbJuwmx2 * http://empex.co/nyc.html * http://elixirschool.com
Panel: Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Kamil Lelonek In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Kamil Lelonek who is a full-stack developer and programmer. Chuck, Mark, and Kamil talk about Elixir, Postgrex, databases, and so much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:48 – Chuck: Hello! Our panel today is Mark and myself. Friendly reminder to listeners: check out my show the DevRev. Our guest today is Kamil Lelonek! 1:23 – Guest. 1:43 – Chuck: Today, we are talking about databases. 1:55 – Guest. 3:10 – Mark: We have your blog that you wrote in our show notes. Talk about your experience with exploring these features? 3:39 – Chuck. 3:46 – Mark: I didn’t know those features are in Postgrex. Can you talk about your experience and your journey? 4:10 – Guest. 6:17 – Mark: I am curious, what problem were you trying to solve? 6:31 – Guest. 8:12 – Mark: I like you saying: rather than modifying the application code itself, you created a separate application. I think Elixir is a good fit for that – what’s your experience with this? 8:40 – Guest: I agree with this, but let’s think about it in the other way. 9:48 – Mark: Yeah I can see that. It’s good to be aware of the upsides and downsides. It’s an interesting idea. 10:40 – Guest. 11:38 – Chuck: My experience is mostly in Rails. The other way I have solved this problem is “pulling” but this way is more elegant. Before we have talked with Chris McCord about LiveVue. Is there a way to hook this handler up to LiveVue to stream the changes all the way up to the frontend of web application with Phoenix? 12:20 – Guest. 12:55 – Mark talks about Elixir and GenServer. 13:29 – Guest. 13:49 – Mark: Please go and read Kamil’s blog post because it’s simple and it’s written well! Mark: I think Elixir is a great usage for GenServers. 14:28 – Guest. 14:35 – Chuck: You setup a store procedure, which I don’t see a lot of people doing within the communities. How necessary is that store procedure that you’ve created there? 15:00 – Guest. 16:16 – Chuck: What if you want to do targeted notifications? 16:28 – Guest. 17:33 – Mark: I am curious if you have experimented with the practical limitations of this? Like at one point does it start to break down? 18:00 – Guest. 20:00 – Chuck: I will be honest I am kind of lazy. Outside of the general use I don’t go looking for these, but when I hear about them I say: wow! 20:09 – Guest. 20:57 – Chuck. 21:15 – Guest talks about solutions that he’s found. 22:08 – FreshBooks! 23:17 – Mark: What other kind of databases have you had experience with for comparison reasons? 23:40 – Guest. 24:56 – Mark: You talked about defaults and I want to come back to this topic. 25:08 – Mark asks Chuck a question. 25:12 – Chuck: I don’t know. 25:23 – Mark talks about the databases that his work utilizes. 26:45 – Mark and Chuck go back-and-forth. 27:49 – Guest mentions a solution to the before-mentioned problem that Mark gave. 28:47 – Mark: It can get messy. I don’t repose this as a permanent solution, but it allows you do a staged-migration. 29:15 – Chuck: Do you run into problems with Postgrex? Most technologies if you don’t run into problems you aren’t pushing it enough (at least that’s my experience). 29:29 – Guest answers the question. 30:26 – Mark talks about active, active, active. 31:14 – Guest. 33:25 – Mark: In Elixir, we talk about the things that are in the box and one thing that comes up is “mnesia.” Can you talk about this please? 33:47 – Guest talks about mnesia. 35:17 – Mark talks about mnesia some more. Mark: It is an available option (mnesia), but I don’t know if it’s something that people want when they are looking for something more traditional. 37:04 – Guest. 37:30 – Mark: Yeah something people should be aware of. If you are encountering problems it’s good to know the different tools that are out there and available. 38:42 – Mark: One question: What are some of your favorite features of Postgrex? 38:57 – Guest. 41:08 – Mark talks about Postgrex’s features. 42:14 – Guest. 43:10 – Mark: I had a case where Elixir and Erlang and you can convert term to binary and binary to term. I took some data structure and converted it to a binary and using Ecto and tell it: serialize this and when it loads back out it is a native Elixir type. It’s not always the right solution, but in my cases it actually worked. 43:59 – Guest talks about a library that he wrote back-in-the-day. 44:40 – Chuck: Anything else? Nope? Okay – Picks! 44:52 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React “How to use LISTEN and NOTIFY PostgreSQL commands in Elixir?" By Kamil Lelonek Guest’s Medium Blog Postgrex.Notifications Redis.io Event Store PostgreSQL MongoDB Erlang: mnesia GitHub: cachex GitHub: meh / amnesia PostGIS When to use Ecto, when to use Mnesia PostgreSQL Ecto.Type GitHub: Exnumerator YouTube: Entreprogrammers Kamil’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Being professionally proactive! Chuck Get A Coder Job eBook Challenge: Pomodoro Technique Kamil Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman My Blog My Site
Panel: Mark Ericksen Charles Max Wood Special Guest: Kamil Lelonek In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Kamil Lelonek who is a full-stack developer and programmer. Chuck, Mark, and Kamil talk about Elixir, Postgrex, databases, and so much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:48 – Chuck: Hello! Our panel today is Mark and myself. Friendly reminder to listeners: check out my show the DevRev. Our guest today is Kamil Lelonek! 1:23 – Guest. 1:43 – Chuck: Today, we are talking about databases. 1:55 – Guest. 3:10 – Mark: We have your blog that you wrote in our show notes. Talk about your experience with exploring these features? 3:39 – Chuck. 3:46 – Mark: I didn’t know those features are in Postgrex. Can you talk about your experience and your journey? 4:10 – Guest. 6:17 – Mark: I am curious, what problem were you trying to solve? 6:31 – Guest. 8:12 – Mark: I like you saying: rather than modifying the application code itself, you created a separate application. I think Elixir is a good fit for that – what’s your experience with this? 8:40 – Guest: I agree with this, but let’s think about it in the other way. 9:48 – Mark: Yeah I can see that. It’s good to be aware of the upsides and downsides. It’s an interesting idea. 10:40 – Guest. 11:38 – Chuck: My experience is mostly in Rails. The other way I have solved this problem is “pulling” but this way is more elegant. Before we have talked with Chris McCord about LiveVue. Is there a way to hook this handler up to LiveVue to stream the changes all the way up to the frontend of web application with Phoenix? 12:20 – Guest. 12:55 – Mark talks about Elixir and GenServer. 13:29 – Guest. 13:49 – Mark: Please go and read Kamil’s blog post because it’s simple and it’s written well! Mark: I think Elixir is a great usage for GenServers. 14:28 – Guest. 14:35 – Chuck: You setup a store procedure, which I don’t see a lot of people doing within the communities. How necessary is that store procedure that you’ve created there? 15:00 – Guest. 16:16 – Chuck: What if you want to do targeted notifications? 16:28 – Guest. 17:33 – Mark: I am curious if you have experimented with the practical limitations of this? Like at one point does it start to break down? 18:00 – Guest. 20:00 – Chuck: I will be honest I am kind of lazy. Outside of the general use I don’t go looking for these, but when I hear about them I say: wow! 20:09 – Guest. 20:57 – Chuck. 21:15 – Guest talks about solutions that he’s found. 22:08 – FreshBooks! 23:17 – Mark: What other kind of databases have you had experience with for comparison reasons? 23:40 – Guest. 24:56 – Mark: You talked about defaults and I want to come back to this topic. 25:08 – Mark asks Chuck a question. 25:12 – Chuck: I don’t know. 25:23 – Mark talks about the databases that his work utilizes. 26:45 – Mark and Chuck go back-and-forth. 27:49 – Guest mentions a solution to the before-mentioned problem that Mark gave. 28:47 – Mark: It can get messy. I don’t repose this as a permanent solution, but it allows you do a staged-migration. 29:15 – Chuck: Do you run into problems with Postgrex? Most technologies if you don’t run into problems you aren’t pushing it enough (at least that’s my experience). 29:29 – Guest answers the question. 30:26 – Mark talks about active, active, active. 31:14 – Guest. 33:25 – Mark: In Elixir, we talk about the things that are in the box and one thing that comes up is “mnesia.” Can you talk about this please? 33:47 – Guest talks about mnesia. 35:17 – Mark talks about mnesia some more. Mark: It is an available option (mnesia), but I don’t know if it’s something that people want when they are looking for something more traditional. 37:04 – Guest. 37:30 – Mark: Yeah something people should be aware of. If you are encountering problems it’s good to know the different tools that are out there and available. 38:42 – Mark: One question: What are some of your favorite features of Postgrex? 38:57 – Guest. 41:08 – Mark talks about Postgrex’s features. 42:14 – Guest. 43:10 – Mark: I had a case where Elixir and Erlang and you can convert term to binary and binary to term. I took some data structure and converted it to a binary and using Ecto and tell it: serialize this and when it loads back out it is a native Elixir type. It’s not always the right solution, but in my cases it actually worked. 43:59 – Guest talks about a library that he wrote back-in-the-day. 44:40 – Chuck: Anything else? Nope? Okay – Picks! 44:52 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React “How to use LISTEN and NOTIFY PostgreSQL commands in Elixir?" By Kamil Lelonek Guest’s Medium Blog Postgrex.Notifications Redis.io Event Store PostgreSQL MongoDB Erlang: mnesia GitHub: cachex GitHub: meh / amnesia PostGIS When to use Ecto, when to use Mnesia PostgreSQL Ecto.Type GitHub: Exnumerator YouTube: Entreprogrammers Kamil’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Being professionally proactive! Chuck Get A Coder Job eBook Challenge: Pomodoro Technique Kamil Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman My Blog My Site
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Edgar Pino In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background? 1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah. 1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready! 1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great! 2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth. 2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements? 2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago. 3:32 – Panel. 3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto. 4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)? 4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it. 4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all. 4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too. 5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps? 5:32 – The guest answers the question. 5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing. 6:24 – Mark. 7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond. 7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did. Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had. 8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching? 8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it? 9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started. 10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option. 10:46 – Guest. 11:01 – Mark asks a question. 11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data... 11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features. 12:09 – Mark chimes-in. 12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad. 12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators. 13:54 – Guest talks about web applications. 14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases? 14:23 – Panelist chimes-in. 14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here. 16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and... 16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed. 17:25 – Panel. 17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts. 18:10 – Panel. 18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL. 18:50 – Panel. 19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing. 19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those. 20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations. 20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box. 20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema? 20:48 – Panelist explains. 21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me. 21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine. 21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer. 22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too! 22:50 – Mark. 23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard. 23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could. 24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations. 24:12 – Panelist continues. 24:32 – Guest: I wonder if... 24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature. 24:48 – Guest. 24:53 – FreshBooks! 26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have? 26:21 – Guest answers the question. 28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there. 28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else. 28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries. 29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point. 29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes. 31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS. 31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too. 32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow. Mark continues. 33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw. 33:30 – Mark continues. 33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario. 34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there. 34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes. 35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade. 35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next! 41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Edgar Pino A sneak peek at Ecto 3 Ecto Active Record Pattern Repository Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Plex Josh This Erlang Life Guest Ecto Documentation! Edgar Pino – My blog!
Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Edgar Pino In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background? 1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah. 1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready! 1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great! 2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth. 2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements? 2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago. 3:32 – Panel. 3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto. 4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)? 4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it. 4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all. 4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too. 5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps? 5:32 – The guest answers the question. 5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing. 6:24 – Mark. 7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond. 7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did. Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had. 8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching? 8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it? 9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started. 10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option. 10:46 – Guest. 11:01 – Mark asks a question. 11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data... 11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features. 12:09 – Mark chimes-in. 12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad. 12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators. 13:54 – Guest talks about web applications. 14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases? 14:23 – Panelist chimes-in. 14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here. 16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and... 16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed. 17:25 – Panel. 17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts. 18:10 – Panel. 18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL. 18:50 – Panel. 19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing. 19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those. 20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations. 20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box. 20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema? 20:48 – Panelist explains. 21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me. 21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine. 21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer. 22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too! 22:50 – Mark. 23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard. 23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could. 24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations. 24:12 – Panelist continues. 24:32 – Guest: I wonder if... 24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature. 24:48 – Guest. 24:53 – FreshBooks! 26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have? 26:21 – Guest answers the question. 28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there. 28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else. 28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries. 29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point. 29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes. 31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS. 31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too. 32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow. Mark continues. 33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw. 33:30 – Mark continues. 33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario. 34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there. 34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes. 35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade. 35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next! 41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Edgar Pino A sneak peek at Ecto 3 Ecto Active Record Pattern Repository Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Plex Josh This Erlang Life Guest Ecto Documentation! Edgar Pino – My blog!
Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Brujo Benavides In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Brujo Benavides (Argentina) who is a software engineer and uses a mix of Elixir, Erlang, and GO. They talk about the similarities and differences between Erlang and Elixir. Brujo talks about conferences that he organizes. You can find the guest through GitHub, Twitter, and About Me. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Our special guest is Brujo B.! Let’s talk about the topic today, which is: Lessons from a decade of Erlang! We really haven’t talked about Erlang in the past. 1:47 – Mark: Can you give us your introduction, please? 1:55 – Guest: I started programming at 10 years old. I translated a guest to Spanish. Then after school I started working with other languages, until I did my thesis at the university. I got hired and then while there they taught me Erlang. After 2 years the company went away and died. When that happened I had my honeymoon plan to go to Europe. I went to Poland and found a company that interviewed me, I passed the test, and got hired. The best solution I could ever make. I moved from developer to another position, to director and then to CEO. 6:16 – Chuck: You have been doing Erlang for a while. My brain said 10 years of Elixir and that’s not possible – my bad. When Erlang came onto the scene how did that affect you? 6:40 – Guest answers Chuck’s question. 9:06 – Chuck: See show note links, please. It’s cool to see that you took cautious approaches to the language. What’s the balance between Erlang and Elixir? 9:33 – Guest: It’s about 45/45, because I also do GO. I don’t really like GO, but it’s whatever. 9:59 – Chuck: What has changed in the last 10 years? 10:09 – Guest: It’s my personal view on this and what I see at conferences. I saw a change from beginning Elixir as much acceptance and the community is more open. The people are already so developed already. 11:53 – Mark: I know there is an effort to make the beam languages more compatible. I know using a colon in the name and there’s a lot of communication there. At the last conference, they were talking about this. I think it’s neat that the community is not fighting this. In the early days it seems that the Erlang community were fighting it – what’s that transfer been like? 13:00 – Guest: There were other languages outside of Elixir with the beam. They failed and didn’t catch-on. 15:00 – Panel: How have you liked/disliked coding in Elixir vs. Erlang? 15:14 – Guest: I like many things that Elixir and Erlang can offer. Elixir is a mature and young language. There are many things that they corrected from day one. One thing I don’t like about Amber is that... 17:36 – Mark: I also use it b/c it does give that consistency. It normalizes all the different ways you can code. When I review people’s code I will take the code formatter and get it to be normalized. I am happy with it and I will take it. 18:17 – Guest: Everybody understands everybody’s code. 18:48 – Guest mentions Elvis. See links below. 19:00 – Chuck: It’s interesting. It comes down to community and in some ways it’s not that Erlang community isn’t a good one, but sounds like... 19:17 – Guest: The other thing that happened with the Erlang community is the topic of building websites. In 2015 it was in the Elixir Conference in San Francisco – I think – this is what happened... 20:47 – Mark: I think it’s a credit to both communities. I’ve watched those talks before. I was watching these Erlang Conferences and there have been Elixir speakers there. Good collaboration and I’m happy for that. 21:19 – Chuck: Will these 2 technologies grow together? 21:30 – Guest: Great mix of talks from Erlang and Elixir and talking about how to build systems. 22:49 – Mark: This blog post that you wrote – see show note links before. Can you mention the main topics that you wrote within this blog post? General lessons you’ve learned? 23:23 – Guest: The most important is how we start building stuff over common abstractions. 26:07 – FreshBooks! 27:11 – Mark: You mentioned the behaviors and the abstraction that is available through OTP is through the genserver. Those are and yes it’s true to educate people you will start with a spawn to see how simple things are. Yes, you don’t build a system on that. 27:55 – Guest: I recommend the talk to Spanish speakers. See links below. I asked for a translation but he said no. 29:10 – Mark: You talked also about test-driven development. How has testing in the Erlang community from the past and how has it been influenced by Elixir if at all? 29:53 – Guest: I am not sure. 32:34 – Mark: I don’t know how to spawn another node and have a disconnect in a testing framework? There might be other ways to do it? I would like to borrow that between the two. I’ve built some code that is cluster aware. Yeah I would love to have integration tests. Maybe that is available through Elixir- thanks for talking about that! 33:27 – Chuck: Anything else? Let’s talk about the Sawn Fest! 33:40 – Guest: It started in 2011 and started with a contest that anybody could participate. Judicators judged it and then awards were given. 34:38 – Chuck. 34:44 – Guest: The next year in 2012 the sponsors gave prizes. We were eagerly waiting but there was no contest that year. 37:47 – Chuck and guest go back-and-forth. 37:57 – Guest: There is a team of four now. If you go to the website it actually looks amazing unlike last year!! 39:19 – Mark: People will not hear about this, though, at the time it broadcasts b/c your episode is coming out after Nov. 24th - 25th. Can you do the game/contest remotely? 39:54 – Guest: Yes, people are playing from around the world from India, Denmark, Romania, Africa, and China! So yes you can do it from your house. 40:18 – Mark: What can people do or see or read about the winners? And after-the-fact? 40:32 – Guest: Yes when judges are judging we make the depositories public!! 42:05 – Chuck: My Sunday’s are usually pretty full. 42:19 – Guest: Yes that happened to me. As an organizer I cannot quit b/c I still have to be there. Time with my wife and kid is important, but yes it’s fun! 42:43 – Mark: Yes that shows how passionate they are about the community and the language. 42:56 – Chuck: Mind-blown! 43:10 – Chuck: You organize some conferences right? 43:17 – Guest: Yes. 44:25 – Chuck: Anything else? 44:30 – Mark: Dialyzer and curious about you organizing a Meetup? I have organized an Elixir Meetup. With Meetups how can you tell us how to make it successful? Are you doing both Erlang and Elixir? How are you running it? 45:10 – Guest answers the question. 51:53 – Chuck: How can people find you? 52:00 – Guest: GitHub! Twitter! About Me! (See links below.) 52:19 – Chuck: Picks! 52:20 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Solutions Inaka Inaka Credo_Server Erlang Solutions Elvis 114 RR Elixir Show 048 RR Show 10 Lessons from Decade with Erlang YouTube Video in Spanish Erlang: Common_Test ExUnit Smalltalk SpawnFest 2018 SpawnFest Zoom Brujo’s Twitter Brujo’s Website Credo Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Zoom Meeting Charles Mastodon Brujo Katana Test
Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Brujo Benavides In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Brujo Benavides (Argentina) who is a software engineer and uses a mix of Elixir, Erlang, and GO. They talk about the similarities and differences between Erlang and Elixir. Brujo talks about conferences that he organizes. You can find the guest through GitHub, Twitter, and About Me. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:58 – Chuck: Our special guest is Brujo B.! Let’s talk about the topic today, which is: Lessons from a decade of Erlang! We really haven’t talked about Erlang in the past. 1:47 – Mark: Can you give us your introduction, please? 1:55 – Guest: I started programming at 10 years old. I translated a guest to Spanish. Then after school I started working with other languages, until I did my thesis at the university. I got hired and then while there they taught me Erlang. After 2 years the company went away and died. When that happened I had my honeymoon plan to go to Europe. I went to Poland and found a company that interviewed me, I passed the test, and got hired. The best solution I could ever make. I moved from developer to another position, to director and then to CEO. 6:16 – Chuck: You have been doing Erlang for a while. My brain said 10 years of Elixir and that’s not possible – my bad. When Erlang came onto the scene how did that affect you? 6:40 – Guest answers Chuck’s question. 9:06 – Chuck: See show note links, please. It’s cool to see that you took cautious approaches to the language. What’s the balance between Erlang and Elixir? 9:33 – Guest: It’s about 45/45, because I also do GO. I don’t really like GO, but it’s whatever. 9:59 – Chuck: What has changed in the last 10 years? 10:09 – Guest: It’s my personal view on this and what I see at conferences. I saw a change from beginning Elixir as much acceptance and the community is more open. The people are already so developed already. 11:53 – Mark: I know there is an effort to make the beam languages more compatible. I know using a colon in the name and there’s a lot of communication there. At the last conference, they were talking about this. I think it’s neat that the community is not fighting this. In the early days it seems that the Erlang community were fighting it – what’s that transfer been like? 13:00 – Guest: There were other languages outside of Elixir with the beam. They failed and didn’t catch-on. 15:00 – Panel: How have you liked/disliked coding in Elixir vs. Erlang? 15:14 – Guest: I like many things that Elixir and Erlang can offer. Elixir is a mature and young language. There are many things that they corrected from day one. One thing I don’t like about Amber is that... 17:36 – Mark: I also use it b/c it does give that consistency. It normalizes all the different ways you can code. When I review people’s code I will take the code formatter and get it to be normalized. I am happy with it and I will take it. 18:17 – Guest: Everybody understands everybody’s code. 18:48 – Guest mentions Elvis. See links below. 19:00 – Chuck: It’s interesting. It comes down to community and in some ways it’s not that Erlang community isn’t a good one, but sounds like... 19:17 – Guest: The other thing that happened with the Erlang community is the topic of building websites. In 2015 it was in the Elixir Conference in San Francisco – I think – this is what happened... 20:47 – Mark: I think it’s a credit to both communities. I’ve watched those talks before. I was watching these Erlang Conferences and there have been Elixir speakers there. Good collaboration and I’m happy for that. 21:19 – Chuck: Will these 2 technologies grow together? 21:30 – Guest: Great mix of talks from Erlang and Elixir and talking about how to build systems. 22:49 – Mark: This blog post that you wrote – see show note links before. Can you mention the main topics that you wrote within this blog post? General lessons you’ve learned? 23:23 – Guest: The most important is how we start building stuff over common abstractions. 26:07 – FreshBooks! 27:11 – Mark: You mentioned the behaviors and the abstraction that is available through OTP is through the genserver. Those are and yes it’s true to educate people you will start with a spawn to see how simple things are. Yes, you don’t build a system on that. 27:55 – Guest: I recommend the talk to Spanish speakers. See links below. I asked for a translation but he said no. 29:10 – Mark: You talked also about test-driven development. How has testing in the Erlang community from the past and how has it been influenced by Elixir if at all? 29:53 – Guest: I am not sure. 32:34 – Mark: I don’t know how to spawn another node and have a disconnect in a testing framework? There might be other ways to do it? I would like to borrow that between the two. I’ve built some code that is cluster aware. Yeah I would love to have integration tests. Maybe that is available through Elixir- thanks for talking about that! 33:27 – Chuck: Anything else? Let’s talk about the Sawn Fest! 33:40 – Guest: It started in 2011 and started with a contest that anybody could participate. Judicators judged it and then awards were given. 34:38 – Chuck. 34:44 – Guest: The next year in 2012 the sponsors gave prizes. We were eagerly waiting but there was no contest that year. 37:47 – Chuck and guest go back-and-forth. 37:57 – Guest: There is a team of four now. If you go to the website it actually looks amazing unlike last year!! 39:19 – Mark: People will not hear about this, though, at the time it broadcasts b/c your episode is coming out after Nov. 24th - 25th. Can you do the game/contest remotely? 39:54 – Guest: Yes, people are playing from around the world from India, Denmark, Romania, Africa, and China! So yes you can do it from your house. 40:18 – Mark: What can people do or see or read about the winners? And after-the-fact? 40:32 – Guest: Yes when judges are judging we make the depositories public!! 42:05 – Chuck: My Sunday’s are usually pretty full. 42:19 – Guest: Yes that happened to me. As an organizer I cannot quit b/c I still have to be there. Time with my wife and kid is important, but yes it’s fun! 42:43 – Mark: Yes that shows how passionate they are about the community and the language. 42:56 – Chuck: Mind-blown! 43:10 – Chuck: You organize some conferences right? 43:17 – Guest: Yes. 44:25 – Chuck: Anything else? 44:30 – Mark: Dialyzer and curious about you organizing a Meetup? I have organized an Elixir Meetup. With Meetups how can you tell us how to make it successful? Are you doing both Erlang and Elixir? How are you running it? 45:10 – Guest answers the question. 51:53 – Chuck: How can people find you? 52:00 – Guest: GitHub! Twitter! About Me! (See links below.) 52:19 – Chuck: Picks! 52:20 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Erlang Solutions Inaka Inaka Credo_Server Erlang Solutions Elvis 114 RR Elixir Show 048 RR Show 10 Lessons from Decade with Erlang YouTube Video in Spanish Erlang: Common_Test ExUnit Smalltalk SpawnFest 2018 SpawnFest Zoom Brujo’s Twitter Brujo’s Website Credo Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Zoom Meeting Charles Mastodon Brujo Katana Test
Panel: Josh Adams Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Devon Estes In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Devon Estes who is a software developer who uses Elixir. He currently resides in Berlin, Germany and has been working there for the past four years. The panelists and the guest talk about Elixir, testing, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:49 – Chuck: I am starting a new show called The DevRev. Check it out here! Our special guest today is Devon Estes. Episode 18 is a past episode you’ve been on – check it out here! 1:26 – Devon: I am American but live in Berlin, Germany for about 4 years now. I was a freelancer, but now I am at a “real” job now where I am a software developer using Elixir. 1:50 – Chuck: Cool! 2:05 – Guest: Something to always talk about testing – it’s evergreen! 2:15 – Chuck: What are the benefits you get from testing and what is your approach? 2:24 – The guest answers the question. 3:53 – Panelist chimes in. 4:18 – Panel: I like playing around and I know when something is terrible. I have to poke around to figure out if I like it or not. I am an exploratory developer. I write a test and it looks great at first but the implementation is terrible or something. 5:54 – Mark comments on developers and how they interact with their code. 7:15 – Mark: How do you approach that? I heard you talking about tests, spikes and other things. 7:22 – Guest: If it is something that is small I will write the test first. If it’s larger I will usually do 2-3 spikes to figure out what is going on. The guest continues with this topic. 8:54 – Panel: I found that over the years I couldn’t do that. 9:21 – Guest: With the topic of testing in Elixir I have these “rules” but I break them all the time. Sometimes you get better, cleaner tests out of it if you were to break the rule(s.). Tests are only there for 90% of the time, in my own opinion. Sometimes you have to play around to see what’s going on. 10:36 – Panel: I agree a lot, especially with integrations. 10:49 – Guest. 12:18 – Panel: You have these guidelines or rules and you know when to break those rules. You talked about these specific rules and I thought it was interesting. I was reading through these and I have the same rules but you codified them with examples. Can you walk us through your guidelines? 13:00 – Guest: To be super clear I am talking about unit tests. When I think of testing there is this testing pyramid. 13:52 – Panel. 14:57 – Guest: Like I said, these rules are meant to be broken, if appropriate. 16:39 – Guest continues with unit testing and other types of testing. He talks about easier to more difficult kinds of tests. 17:42 – Guest (continues): Sometimes the tests are accurately true, and sometimes not. It can be easy to get into those traps. Hopefully they will tell you what is expected. 18:25 – Panel: In Ruby, there is a test that would modify your code and remove stuff? Was it Mutant? Mutant testing. 19:03 – Guest answers the question. 19:38 – Guest: I don’t know if Elixir has anything like that, yet, but it would be pretty cool. It would be a good idea for someone to take on! 20:00 – Chuck: I have had conversations with a colleague – they both pushed back and talked more about Cypress.io and integrated tests. 21:04 – Chuck: I think it’s interesting to see the different approaches! 21:14 – Guest: We are lucky to have great tooling in Elixir!! The guest mentions Wallaby.js! 24:39 – The guest talks about unit levels. Check it out here! 26:35 – Panel. 26:48 – Chuck: How does it affect my workflow? I like end-to-end tests. The efficiency, if it’s repeating stuff – I don’t care – as long as it’s fast enough. If it ruins my workflow then it’s a problem. 27:22 – Panel. 28:12 – The topic “test coverage” is mentioned by Chuck. 28:25 – Panel. 29:02 – FreshBooks! 30:10 – Guest talks about Wallaby.js. 32:24 – Panel: We’ve had you on before, and the idea is that you are all into Elixir and its path. (EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes) 32:57 – Guest: I think testing in Elixir is simpler. 34:04 – Panel. 34:07 – Guest: You have commands and you have queries. The guest gives a hypothetical example! The guest also mentions GenServers, too. 35:42 – Guest: There are two ways that you can interact with the process: command & queries. 37:00 – Guest talks about different libraries such as: MoX. 37:41 – Panel: Any tips on testing the servers; just any GenServer? 38:25 – Panelist shares his approach with this. 39:54 – Guest: I don’t test name servers b/c they are by definition global state. The guest goes into great detail about testing – check it out! 46:29 – Panel. 47:01 – Guest: I kind of hate the term dependency interjection in the functional context. 47:17 – Panel: I think it’s helpful, because... 47:28 – Guest. 47:49 – Panelists go back-and-forth! 48:20 – Panel: Sending a message to the testing process – this was something that was stated by Devon earlier. I find this really helpful. 49:00 – Chuck: Picks! 49:05 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Wallaby Cypress.io Mutation Testing – GitHub MoX MRS 003 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 295 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 330 – Episode with Devon Estes EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes Devon’s GitHub Devon’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Get Alias Blog - Mox Josh GitPitch.com Slide Deck by Josh Charles Values Extreme Ownership Sit down with your team Discord server for DevChat Recommendation Page for Elixir Devon Dell Laptop XPS 13 Play Station Mini Test - devonestes@gmail.com
Panel: Josh Adams Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Special Guest: Devon Estes In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Devon Estes who is a software developer who uses Elixir. He currently resides in Berlin, Germany and has been working there for the past four years. The panelists and the guest talk about Elixir, testing, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:49 – Chuck: I am starting a new show called The DevRev. Check it out here! Our special guest today is Devon Estes. Episode 18 is a past episode you’ve been on – check it out here! 1:26 – Devon: I am American but live in Berlin, Germany for about 4 years now. I was a freelancer, but now I am at a “real” job now where I am a software developer using Elixir. 1:50 – Chuck: Cool! 2:05 – Guest: Something to always talk about testing – it’s evergreen! 2:15 – Chuck: What are the benefits you get from testing and what is your approach? 2:24 – The guest answers the question. 3:53 – Panelist chimes in. 4:18 – Panel: I like playing around and I know when something is terrible. I have to poke around to figure out if I like it or not. I am an exploratory developer. I write a test and it looks great at first but the implementation is terrible or something. 5:54 – Mark comments on developers and how they interact with their code. 7:15 – Mark: How do you approach that? I heard you talking about tests, spikes and other things. 7:22 – Guest: If it is something that is small I will write the test first. If it’s larger I will usually do 2-3 spikes to figure out what is going on. The guest continues with this topic. 8:54 – Panel: I found that over the years I couldn’t do that. 9:21 – Guest: With the topic of testing in Elixir I have these “rules” but I break them all the time. Sometimes you get better, cleaner tests out of it if you were to break the rule(s.). Tests are only there for 90% of the time, in my own opinion. Sometimes you have to play around to see what’s going on. 10:36 – Panel: I agree a lot, especially with integrations. 10:49 – Guest. 12:18 – Panel: You have these guidelines or rules and you know when to break those rules. You talked about these specific rules and I thought it was interesting. I was reading through these and I have the same rules but you codified them with examples. Can you walk us through your guidelines? 13:00 – Guest: To be super clear I am talking about unit tests. When I think of testing there is this testing pyramid. 13:52 – Panel. 14:57 – Guest: Like I said, these rules are meant to be broken, if appropriate. 16:39 – Guest continues with unit testing and other types of testing. He talks about easier to more difficult kinds of tests. 17:42 – Guest (continues): Sometimes the tests are accurately true, and sometimes not. It can be easy to get into those traps. Hopefully they will tell you what is expected. 18:25 – Panel: In Ruby, there is a test that would modify your code and remove stuff? Was it Mutant? Mutant testing. 19:03 – Guest answers the question. 19:38 – Guest: I don’t know if Elixir has anything like that, yet, but it would be pretty cool. It would be a good idea for someone to take on! 20:00 – Chuck: I have had conversations with a colleague – they both pushed back and talked more about Cypress.io and integrated tests. 21:04 – Chuck: I think it’s interesting to see the different approaches! 21:14 – Guest: We are lucky to have great tooling in Elixir!! The guest mentions Wallaby.js! 24:39 – The guest talks about unit levels. Check it out here! 26:35 – Panel. 26:48 – Chuck: How does it affect my workflow? I like end-to-end tests. The efficiency, if it’s repeating stuff – I don’t care – as long as it’s fast enough. If it ruins my workflow then it’s a problem. 27:22 – Panel. 28:12 – The topic “test coverage” is mentioned by Chuck. 28:25 – Panel. 29:02 – FreshBooks! 30:10 – Guest talks about Wallaby.js. 32:24 – Panel: We’ve had you on before, and the idea is that you are all into Elixir and its path. (EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes) 32:57 – Guest: I think testing in Elixir is simpler. 34:04 – Panel. 34:07 – Guest: You have commands and you have queries. The guest gives a hypothetical example! The guest also mentions GenServers, too. 35:42 – Guest: There are two ways that you can interact with the process: command & queries. 37:00 – Guest talks about different libraries such as: MoX. 37:41 – Panel: Any tips on testing the servers; just any GenServer? 38:25 – Panelist shares his approach with this. 39:54 – Guest: I don’t test name servers b/c they are by definition global state. The guest goes into great detail about testing – check it out! 46:29 – Panel. 47:01 – Guest: I kind of hate the term dependency interjection in the functional context. 47:17 – Panel: I think it’s helpful, because... 47:28 – Guest. 47:49 – Panelists go back-and-forth! 48:20 – Panel: Sending a message to the testing process – this was something that was stated by Devon earlier. I find this really helpful. 49:00 – Chuck: Picks! 49:05 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Wallaby Cypress.io Mutation Testing – GitHub MoX MRS 003 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 295 – Episode with Devon Estes RR 330 – Episode with Devon Estes EMx 018 – Episode with Devon Estes Devon’s GitHub Devon’s Twitter Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Get Alias Blog - Mox Josh GitPitch.com Slide Deck by Josh Charles Values Extreme Ownership Sit down with your team Discord server for DevChat Recommendation Page for Elixir Devon Dell Laptop XPS 13 Play Station Mini Test - devonestes@gmail.com
Panel: Mark Ericksen Eric Berry Special Guest: Arjan Scherpenisse In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Arjan Scherpenisse who is the technical co-founder at BotSquad. Arjan lives in the Amsterdam area of the Netherlands. Also, he is currently working with Miracle Things. Check out today’s episode where the panel and Arjan talk about his article and his latest projects. Show Topics: 0:50 – Hello! 1:23 – Is that right – got to drink Heineken in Amsterdam? 1:30 – Arjan: It’s the Bud Light version here in Amsterdam. 1:47 – Panelist: I feel pretty stupid now. 1:58 – Eric: I actually just visited Amsterdam to visit a good friend. The canals were gorgeous! 2:25 – Arjan: I actually worked 7 years in the city center and I cycled to work over the tiny bridges. Now I live outside of Amsterdam. 2:47 – Panelist: You have this article on Bubblescript, which is a creation of yours. Can you tell what it is? 3:08 – Arjan: I have been a software developer for 8 years. I have been using Elixir more in the past 2 years. So at some point an agency asked if I could build something for their museum. I thought let’s do it, because that’s a nice project! I got to work with three historical figures, which has their own stories. 4:45 – Is it spoken? 4:51 – Arjan: Just text. It was really meant for a young audience. The creators wrote stories about these figures. Get the younger generation engaged. I thought, well, how could I build something like this? I don’t want to hardcode it because I am the one maintaining it and I don’t want to be a SMS person. I thought, I wanted them to maintain it, but CMS is limited. Then I thought, I will give them a Jason file – each instruction on one line. Those file formats are for... Then I thought why couldn’t I use Elixir...? I just wrote something that looped out and spit-out all of these messages through messenger with a timer. Then I made it very simple through UI. Then it would tell you that line the error is. Then in the background you are checking to see if your syntax is correct or broken. Then there is a run button on the side. That’s how it started. It was a lot of work for one project. I found the idea really fascinating, and then last year I showed them this to my friend. He, too, was in Elixir and loved the idea and so we started a company. 8:47 – Panelist: That’s where BotSquad came from? One of the questions I had been: Is it done through macros? 9:01 – Arjan: Yes, but there is... I don’t compile it to an Elixir code; I use it as a functional thing. “Hey! Give me the next message...” If that makes sense? 9:59 – Panelist: I see that you have an example through the article. If something is invalid then you can see that it’s on “line 2.” Never used string to coder – I think that’s a great application to that. 10:26 – Arjan: Yep! String to coder. 11:09 – Your path to Elixir went through Erlang first right (2009)? 11:22 – Arjan: Maybe earlier? I was working through an agency back then, and they were building a platform for projects. One of the co-founders left and he started to work (for a year) and worked on this language called Erlang. That was back in 2008/2009. He later went onto create... He was working on that and he convinced me to use Erlang. I like Erlang because it’s a logical language. 13:06 – What was the path to Elixir? Why would you use Erlang? 13:21 – Arjan: Good question. I haven’t left Erlang totally, yet. It was due to the community. I wasn’t interested the first few years into Elixir, because all of the concepts are the same just different skin. For me, the community was completely different! I think it’s the truth. There is no Erlang Meetup in Amsterdam! For me it was the difference in the communities. 15:22 – We are glad you are here! 15:28 – Arjan: We are trying to make it Open Source. People ask me this all the time. For us we still have to find the right form for it, and it will be a lot of work to maintain it and support it. 16:10 – Panelist: Your chat app – let’s talk about that. It’s a very staple process. You don’t want to keep repeating the story for the characters. Along the lines of... I am wondering how well they are being a solution for... GenServers are mentioned. 17:15 – Arjan: That’s exactly how it works. You could do it differently if you wanted to. The interpreter itself is purely functional – you put a message in and you get a message out. What I wrote around that... 19:20 – Panelist: What process registry are you using for that? 19:24 – Arjan answers the question. 20:18 – Panelist comments. 20:53 – Arjan: It is a nice piece of software. And while most of the things are done now it’s making sure that everything is ready for everybody. If you use Swarm then... 21:57 – Panelist: I think it’s fun that you have this GenServer intentionally built in delays? 22:18 – Arjan: Yes, exactly. 22:46 – Yeah it has to feel real – that’s fun. 22:53 – Arjan: Yes. It can actually help with a... 23:12 – Advertisement – Loot Crate – check out the code! 24:09 – DeState Struct – I love that pattern – Plus 1 to that and let listeners know. It’s a great way to test how a... 24:48 – It’s a great way to test because you don’t have to wait for anything! Arjan continues this conversation. 26:03 – Arjan: It’s fun to test one bot with another bot. 26:14 – Panelist: The bots don’t have to go through the messaging protocol. 26:33 – Arjan: Yep! 26:42 – Anything you want to talk about Bubblescript or BotSquad before another topic? 26:55 – Arjan: It’s not Elixir it looks like Elixir – but check it out! Trial account at BotSquad.com! 27:17 – You are also talking with Code Elixir in London and you are doing a boot camp series. You are running an actual boot camp – I would love to hear what you are doing there! 27:42 – Arjan: the form is 2 days – it’s meant for programmers who are already well knowledgeable. We have done it 2 years in a row. I teach it with a partner who is from Amsterdam. Two years ago we got together and there were always questions on whether a boot camp was available. So we thought we needed to put something together. There are about 20 students in each boot camp. 29:34 – What are some of the challenges? Where these people are coming from pure functional stuff? 29:51 – Arjan comments. We start teaching them at the beginning of the boot camp: recursion and better matching. Better matching, in other languages, isn’t there. Recursion can be hard to grasp. Those are the building blocks. Going from there: how can you expand... 31:39 – Panelist: I saw from your video how you showed the elevator experience? 31:56 – Arjan: I didn’t know that was HIS analogy. 32:10 – Panelist talks about the creator of Erlang. 33:01 – Arjan: Yes the elevator example is for... Arjan continues talking about the elevator example and how students need to implement to be successful with tests and more. 34:48 – Arjan: It’s good to see how people reason with state and to see your thought process. 35:49 – Arjan: The second morning we actually give them the solution. Second day is getting practical – how can you build something and deploy something with Elixir. 36:32 – Panelist: I think it’s great that you are introducing Elixir to more people. I would like to see more people doing that. I love teaching people and Elixir concepts and other things. I had a Ruby background. It was a head-trip to get that difference – and once you do then you feel powerful: Oh I get it! I get these beneficial properties... All of these problems I had before don’t exist over here. When I get to see the 37:48 – Arjan: Yes at those Meetups and those boot camps – you see those light bulb moments. Yes, that’s why I do the teaching because it’s very rewarding. 38:43 – Panelist: Anything else? 38:50 – Arjan: Yes, my company BotSquad is working on a one-day conference – check it out here! 39:46 – Picks! 39:50 – Fresh Books’ Advertisement! 30-Day Trial! Links: Ruby Elixir JavaScript Vue React GenServers Meetup Jekyll StaticGen BotSquad BotSquad: Bubblescript – Beyond the DSL Miracle Things Arjan through Code Sync Arjan’s LinkedIn Arjan’s Twitter Arjan’s GitHub Arjan’s Video: Bootcamp Stories Code Beam Lite Amsterdam 2018 Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Loot Crate Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Eric Jackal Mark To Be List Arjan Experimenting Elixir Parser
Panel: Mark Ericksen Eric Berry Special Guest: Arjan Scherpenisse In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Arjan Scherpenisse who is the technical co-founder at BotSquad. Arjan lives in the Amsterdam area of the Netherlands. Also, he is currently working with Miracle Things. Check out today’s episode where the panel and Arjan talk about his article and his latest projects. Show Topics: 0:50 – Hello! 1:23 – Is that right – got to drink Heineken in Amsterdam? 1:30 – Arjan: It’s the Bud Light version here in Amsterdam. 1:47 – Panelist: I feel pretty stupid now. 1:58 – Eric: I actually just visited Amsterdam to visit a good friend. The canals were gorgeous! 2:25 – Arjan: I actually worked 7 years in the city center and I cycled to work over the tiny bridges. Now I live outside of Amsterdam. 2:47 – Panelist: You have this article on Bubblescript, which is a creation of yours. Can you tell what it is? 3:08 – Arjan: I have been a software developer for 8 years. I have been using Elixir more in the past 2 years. So at some point an agency asked if I could build something for their museum. I thought let’s do it, because that’s a nice project! I got to work with three historical figures, which has their own stories. 4:45 – Is it spoken? 4:51 – Arjan: Just text. It was really meant for a young audience. The creators wrote stories about these figures. Get the younger generation engaged. I thought, well, how could I build something like this? I don’t want to hardcode it because I am the one maintaining it and I don’t want to be a SMS person. I thought, I wanted them to maintain it, but CMS is limited. Then I thought, I will give them a Jason file – each instruction on one line. Those file formats are for... Then I thought why couldn’t I use Elixir...? I just wrote something that looped out and spit-out all of these messages through messenger with a timer. Then I made it very simple through UI. Then it would tell you that line the error is. Then in the background you are checking to see if your syntax is correct or broken. Then there is a run button on the side. That’s how it started. It was a lot of work for one project. I found the idea really fascinating, and then last year I showed them this to my friend. He, too, was in Elixir and loved the idea and so we started a company. 8:47 – Panelist: That’s where BotSquad came from? One of the questions I had been: Is it done through macros? 9:01 – Arjan: Yes, but there is... I don’t compile it to an Elixir code; I use it as a functional thing. “Hey! Give me the next message...” If that makes sense? 9:59 – Panelist: I see that you have an example through the article. If something is invalid then you can see that it’s on “line 2.” Never used string to coder – I think that’s a great application to that. 10:26 – Arjan: Yep! String to coder. 11:09 – Your path to Elixir went through Erlang first right (2009)? 11:22 – Arjan: Maybe earlier? I was working through an agency back then, and they were building a platform for projects. One of the co-founders left and he started to work (for a year) and worked on this language called Erlang. That was back in 2008/2009. He later went onto create... He was working on that and he convinced me to use Erlang. I like Erlang because it’s a logical language. 13:06 – What was the path to Elixir? Why would you use Erlang? 13:21 – Arjan: Good question. I haven’t left Erlang totally, yet. It was due to the community. I wasn’t interested the first few years into Elixir, because all of the concepts are the same just different skin. For me, the community was completely different! I think it’s the truth. There is no Erlang Meetup in Amsterdam! For me it was the difference in the communities. 15:22 – We are glad you are here! 15:28 – Arjan: We are trying to make it Open Source. People ask me this all the time. For us we still have to find the right form for it, and it will be a lot of work to maintain it and support it. 16:10 – Panelist: Your chat app – let’s talk about that. It’s a very staple process. You don’t want to keep repeating the story for the characters. Along the lines of... I am wondering how well they are being a solution for... GenServers are mentioned. 17:15 – Arjan: That’s exactly how it works. You could do it differently if you wanted to. The interpreter itself is purely functional – you put a message in and you get a message out. What I wrote around that... 19:20 – Panelist: What process registry are you using for that? 19:24 – Arjan answers the question. 20:18 – Panelist comments. 20:53 – Arjan: It is a nice piece of software. And while most of the things are done now it’s making sure that everything is ready for everybody. If you use Swarm then... 21:57 – Panelist: I think it’s fun that you have this GenServer intentionally built in delays? 22:18 – Arjan: Yes, exactly. 22:46 – Yeah it has to feel real – that’s fun. 22:53 – Arjan: Yes. It can actually help with a... 23:12 – Advertisement – Loot Crate – check out the code! 24:09 – DeState Struct – I love that pattern – Plus 1 to that and let listeners know. It’s a great way to test how a... 24:48 – It’s a great way to test because you don’t have to wait for anything! Arjan continues this conversation. 26:03 – Arjan: It’s fun to test one bot with another bot. 26:14 – Panelist: The bots don’t have to go through the messaging protocol. 26:33 – Arjan: Yep! 26:42 – Anything you want to talk about Bubblescript or BotSquad before another topic? 26:55 – Arjan: It’s not Elixir it looks like Elixir – but check it out! Trial account at BotSquad.com! 27:17 – You are also talking with Code Elixir in London and you are doing a boot camp series. You are running an actual boot camp – I would love to hear what you are doing there! 27:42 – Arjan: the form is 2 days – it’s meant for programmers who are already well knowledgeable. We have done it 2 years in a row. I teach it with a partner who is from Amsterdam. Two years ago we got together and there were always questions on whether a boot camp was available. So we thought we needed to put something together. There are about 20 students in each boot camp. 29:34 – What are some of the challenges? Where these people are coming from pure functional stuff? 29:51 – Arjan comments. We start teaching them at the beginning of the boot camp: recursion and better matching. Better matching, in other languages, isn’t there. Recursion can be hard to grasp. Those are the building blocks. Going from there: how can you expand... 31:39 – Panelist: I saw from your video how you showed the elevator experience? 31:56 – Arjan: I didn’t know that was HIS analogy. 32:10 – Panelist talks about the creator of Erlang. 33:01 – Arjan: Yes the elevator example is for... Arjan continues talking about the elevator example and how students need to implement to be successful with tests and more. 34:48 – Arjan: It’s good to see how people reason with state and to see your thought process. 35:49 – Arjan: The second morning we actually give them the solution. Second day is getting practical – how can you build something and deploy something with Elixir. 36:32 – Panelist: I think it’s great that you are introducing Elixir to more people. I would like to see more people doing that. I love teaching people and Elixir concepts and other things. I had a Ruby background. It was a head-trip to get that difference – and once you do then you feel powerful: Oh I get it! I get these beneficial properties... All of these problems I had before don’t exist over here. When I get to see the 37:48 – Arjan: Yes at those Meetups and those boot camps – you see those light bulb moments. Yes, that’s why I do the teaching because it’s very rewarding. 38:43 – Panelist: Anything else? 38:50 – Arjan: Yes, my company BotSquad is working on a one-day conference – check it out here! 39:46 – Picks! 39:50 – Fresh Books’ Advertisement! 30-Day Trial! Links: Ruby Elixir JavaScript Vue React GenServers Meetup Jekyll StaticGen BotSquad BotSquad: Bubblescript – Beyond the DSL Miracle Things Arjan through Code Sync Arjan’s LinkedIn Arjan’s Twitter Arjan’s GitHub Arjan’s Video: Bootcamp Stories Code Beam Lite Amsterdam 2018 Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Loot Crate Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Eric Jackal Mark To Be List Arjan Experimenting Elixir Parser
Lots of developers coming to Elixir misuse GenServers and Umbrella applications, thinking that just because they have these tools, they should use them. But that's not always so! Have a listen for our perspective on when to reach for GenServers and when not to.
How should you think about storing state in your Elixir apps? Should you use a traditional external datastore? Or one of the built-in constructs: GenServers, ETS, DETS, or mnesia?
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