Thinking Elixir Podcast

A new library in the Nx ecosystem under active development is called NxSignal by Paulo Valente. We talk with Paulo to learn what a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) is, how it works, and we touch on the kinds of problems it can solve. We learn about his involvement in Nx, where the library is going, and some unusual ways he's applied it. He also shares how he's using Nx Explorer in production to clea...

We were surprised to see how well Elixir and Phoenix performed in the Stack Overflow survey results for 2022! Elixir came in as the #2 most loved language and Phoenix as the #1 most loved framework! And this was their first year appearing as official choices in the survey! We discuss what it means, what we can learn from it, how it compares to other languages and frameworks and what it may indicat...

We caught up with Alex Koutmos, a co-host on an Elixir podcast, book author, and OpenSource library creator. We talk about some of his well known libraries like PromEx, but then go into some of his potentially lesser known ones like Doctor, Replug, Unplug, and MJML EEx. I'm happy to learn more about MJML EEx, an email formatting library for improved cross-mail client readers! We talk about the Ner...

The SonicPi project has been letting people live code musical performances for years. Sam Aaron joins us to talk about the project and how Elixir is playing an increased role. The project uses multiple languages and frameworks, in fact, Joe Armstrong created the Erlang portion for handling the concurrent IO needs. We talk about where the project is, what's new in the upcoming release, and more abo...

We learn about Plausible Analytics, a privacy respecting alternative to Google Analytics that is cloud or self-hostable, OpenSource and written in Elixir! Uku Taht shares how he founded the company, the mission he is on, and what he prioritizes. The company practices a “transparent by default” approach. This means they share a lot about what’s going on, this includes how they recently reached $1m...

Chris Grainger explains Explorer, Nx's recent addition. It's a “Data Frame” library which sounds far more nebulous than it is. It lets us explore and manipulate two-dimensional data like we already do with DB tables, spreadsheets, CSV files, etc. Only this works in memory, is faster, and has predefined functions that make it very powerful. Explorer fills an important slot in the overall pie for da...

James Arthur shares his project Vaxine.io, an Elixir layer built on top of a CRDT based distributed Erlang database called Antidote DB. We cover what CRDTs are and introduce how they work. We learn more about Antidote DB, the CURE protocol and especially the Vaxine.io project that adds Ecto types and makes it more approachable to Elixir applications. As applications become more global, the need fo...

Sean Moriarity, the author of Genetic Algorithms in Elixir, lays out Machine Learning in the Elixir space. We talk about where it is today and where it's going in the future. Sean talks more about his book, how that led to working with José Valim which then led to the creation of Nx. He fills us in on recent ML events with Google and Facebook and shows us how Elixir fits into the bigger picture. I...

Ben Johnson explains his project Litestream.io, an OpenSource tool that replicates SQLite databases to remote servers and to backup locations like S3 for durability. We talk about how moving data out to the user creates true edge applications. We discuss what types of problems this helps solve, the architectures that become possible, and how a globally distributed Phoenix application could use thi...

Our 100th episode is spent with José Valim celebrating 10 years of Elixir. We close out our 5-part series talking about the recent 1.13 release, the upcoming 1.14 release and looking into the future and v2.0. We learn that many features were created with Nx in mind but are still broadly helpful to Elixir developers. José gives a 1-minute explanation of how ex_unit works, explains what usually make...

Michael Davis explains Slipstream, a Phoenix channels websocket client library that enables Elixir applications to become a client of a Phoenix channel on another server. Out of this work, an underlying websocket library was created built on mint, which has now officially become part of the mint project. We talk about other libraries in the same space and why Slipstream was created. Michael was al...

Dominic Letz did something I thought was impossible. He got an Elixir application packaged up, approved, and available through the Apple App Store on iOS devices. The application runs Elixir on the device, creates a web view, and hosts Phoenix LiveView pages. They went further and created a bridge to integrate with more of the platform specific features of the device. Is Android your preferred pla...

Dave Lucia released version 2.0 of AvroEx, an Elixir library for working with Avro protocols and schemas. To understand Avro, we need an overview of the whole Kafka-centric flow! He gives us a taste of the Enterprise soup of JVM tools used for populating data lakes, all for the business benefit of data analysis and machine learning. We may work on Elixir systems that are tasked with hooking into t...

José Valim returns for part 4 in our 5 part series as we count down to the 10 year anniversary of the Elixir project we know and love! In Part 4, we talk through the Elixir releases of 1.10, 1.11, and 1.12. We go deeper on the philosophy of “explicit vs implicit” and how that informs many design decisions about the language. We learn about how Elixir and Erlang loggers were unified, how matching o...

The recent announcement of Rustler Precompiled prompted a lot of interest and questions. We talk with Philip Sampaio to understand what he created and what problem it helps solve. The project helps lower the bar for using Rust libraries for NIFs in Elixir making it possible to see more libraries using Rustler in the future. He explains what prompted the work initially and how projects can benefit...

We talk with Tobias Pfeiffer about his popular performance benchmarking tool Benchee. We learn about why he created it, what's special about it, and the big features in the latest release. It was 2 years between this release and the previous one. Tobi talks openly about the technical challenges that compounded with personal challenges, feelings of obligation, anxiety, and the drive for perfection....

We talk with Michael Lubas about steps we can take to protect our Phoenix applications from common automated bot attacks. We cover API abuse to send email spam, carding attacks, and credential stuffing. We learn how Michael started paraxial.io which aims to specifically serve the Elixir community and more! Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/93 Elixir Community News https://erlef...

We talk with Mitchell Hanberg and learn about why he created the alternate Phoenix templating language called “Temple”. He explains how Temple works, some of its unique benefits and where he's going with it in the future. Mitchell also took over maintenance of the testing project Wallaby from Chris Keathley. We revisit what Wallaby is and the special place it can have when building automated full...

José Valim returns to continue with part 3 of our 5 part series as we count down to the 10 year anniversary of the Elixir project we know and love. In Part 3, we talk through the Elixir releases of 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9. We talk about the unification efforts between Elixir and Erlang. These came through changes to error stacktraces, how documentation is stored, a unified logger, and more. We learn how...

We talk with Tetiana Dushenkivska, the creator of Elixir Cards, a series of Elixir flashcards with multiple ways to use them. We talk about why she created the cards, how they helped her, and how others have used them. We talk about learning models and the importance of repetition for memorizing things. Tetiana shares how LiveView is used in the creation of the cards and more! David shares how he...

We talk about how designing applications with lower friction points is a valuable goal. LiveView plays a powerful role in that mission. Mark pitches why he thinks it's time to take another look at LiveView if you haven't lately. We talk over some of the business benefits, efficiencies gained and we address some common reasons given for "why it can't work." We also cover some remaining areas of imp...

We talk with Michael Crumm, the primary author of the Phoenix Live Dashboard, about a new project of his. He is working on a development toolbar that is rendered on your pages and helps profile performance, expose route info, show crash info and more. It’s called PhoenixProfiler and it ties into Telemetry events for data. While still early, it can be a great tool for teams. We also talk about anot...

José Valim returns to continue with part 2 of our 5 part series as we count down to the 10 year anniversary of the Elixir project we know and love. In Part 2, we talk through the Elixir releases of 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. We still manage to sneak in discussions about some new things in Elixir 1.13 and the upcoming release. We go deeper on GenStage, Registry, and growing up through production releases....

We talk with Derrick Reimer about his product SavvyCal. He used Elixir as a solo dev to create a service that can take on an 800lb gorilla like Calendly. He shares what competitive advantages he feels he has both from Elixir but also in being more nimble. We also talk about creating a company as an independent, solo developer and how that can work. Derrick shares some tips and resources that were...

We talk with Cocoa Xu about his PhD robotics project and his related Evision project that creates Elixir bindings to the OpenCV library. The project enables computer vision in Elixir much easier by building on existing projects. We learn about the kinds of features this enables and how it can target embedded devices as well. His goal of a clustered, collaborative, hoard of Elixir robots is terrify...