As we kick off our new, seventh season of the Elixir Wizards podcast, we wanted to introduce our theme of the impact of Elixir by having a simple chat between our panel and foregoing our usual guest format. As fans of podcasts ourselves, we always like to get to know some of the personalities behind the voices, so we decided to take this opportunity to do just that, with Alex, Sundi, and Eric! So to hear a little about what to expect in the coming weeks of the show, what the teams have been up t...
Nov 04, 2021•59 min
We have reached the final episode of our season, and as we wrap up our exploration of BEAM magic, we are joined by Amos King, whose tweet was the inspiration behind this season's focus! We've had such a great time this season and hope that our listeners have enjoyed it as much as we have, and gained something in the process. Our conversation with Amos jumps around from exploring his experiences during the last year and a half, to the journey he has been on with his company, Binary Noggin, life a...
Aug 26, 2021•58 min
This episode serves as a round-up of some of the special mini-features we have recorded throughout Season 6, where we'll hear from Tyler Clemens, Elom Amouzou, Elise Navarro, and Jeremy Neal about their work and experiences with Elixir. Our first segment is with Tyler, who is a software developer at Jackpocket, where he explains what he is currently busy with and how the company is offering access to the lottery in more safe and convenient ways. We then move on to Elom, who talks about transitio...
Aug 19, 2021•39 min
Joining us on the show today is Quinn Wilton, and we have a wonderful conversation with our guest about her journey with Elixir, unusual path into programming, and her wide appreciation for different languages! We start off looking at the time Quinn spent at Waterloo University and what separates the Canadian ethos around computer science. From there, we turn to Quinn's early work in programming, the first proper job that she stepped into, and the immediate affinity she felt for working in Elixi...
Aug 12, 2021•45 min
While NIFs provide a great way to interface with native code in the BEAM machine, the process can also be rather error-prone. Thankfully, since Isaac Yonemoto built Zigler, things have become a lot simpler, and he joins us today to talk about how. Isaac is an Elixir developer with a background in biotech and we kick off the discussion by hearing about his journey into programming and some of the ways that he has combined it with science. From there we hear more about the different languages Isaa...
Aug 05, 2021•47 min
Today we are so excited to share a conversation with Maxim Fedorov, who is the Core Infrastructure Lead at communications giant, WhatsApp! In our chat, Maxim offers such interesting insight and wisdom from a long career in the space, focusing on Erlang and why he views it as such a powerful language for the work at WhatsApp. We also get some backstory from Maxim, looking at his first experiences with computers, his educational background, and some of the work he did leading up to his current pos...
Jul 29, 2021•50 min
Some of you may recognize Chelsea Troy from her popular blog of the same name or as a keynote speaker for the March 2021 Code BEAM conference. Chelsea is an instructor in the Master's Program in Computer Science at the University of Chicago and currently works as a staff software engineer at Mozilla, where she specializes in machine learning and backend systems. In our conversation with Chelsea, we discuss some of the unique aspects of coding as a career. Chelsea outlines how programming can be ...
Jul 22, 2021•48 min
While we can think of many reasons why we love Elixir, the community could always benefit from a more lively conversation around testing. It was with this in mind that Jeffrey Matthias and Andrea Leopardi decided to write Testing Elixir, and today they join us on the show to share some of the insights to be found in their new book. Our guests start by sketching out the main reasons why they decided to write a book of this nature before speaking to the process of writing it collaboratively from t...
Jul 15, 2021•56 min
Joining us for this episode of Elixir Wizards is the vastly experienced and well-traveled Francesco Cesarini! Francesco is the founder of Erlang Solutions and we are so lucky to have him here on the show to talk about his personal and professional journey, and take this great season of shows on the magic of the BEAM even further. Francesco takes us through his early interactions with computers and coding and the events that led to his decision to study computer science, before diving into his mo...
Jun 03, 2021•47 min
Today we have some extra BEAM magic for all of you! Joining us on the show is Chris Miller, who currently works as an Associate Software Engineer at Corvus Insurance. We get into a great conversation with Chris about his history with programming, his long-held interest in mathematics, and how he is trying to bring these two worlds closer together through his work. Chris weighs in with some very important expert perspectives on a range of subjects, from monads and monoids to Vim and Emacs, before...
May 27, 2021•54 min
While there is magic to be found in many frameworks, having too much going on under the hood without you being able to control it is not for everybody. Today we invite Parker and Shannon Selbert to speak about their dynamic partnership and the ‘controlled magic’ of their tool Oban. Together Parker and Shannon founded Soren, where they help clients with established web apps stabilize, scale, and ‘add schmancy features’. Their tool Oban is a persistent background job processor written in Elixir wh...
May 20, 2021•50 min
Today we are joined by the Vice President of Engineering at Corvus Insurance, Erik Person! Erik continues our journey into the magic of the BEAM, our season-long theme for the Elixir Wizards Podcast, and we get to hear all about Erik's path in programming, his relationship with Elixir, and his utilization of the BEAM. Growing up in a family involved in computer science, and an early affinity for technology made the choice of what to study at college a straightforward one for Erik. He tells us ab...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Welcome to a brand-spanking-new season of Elixir Wizards! This time around we will be focussing on the magic of the BEAM, so get ready for an exciting journey into new territories filled with mystery and power! To kick things off in this inaugural episode we are joined by a true legend in the space of Erlang, Elixir, and the BEAM. Robert Virding is one of the three founding members of Erlang, and his unrivaled intimacy with the language and its related subjects is truly inspiring and informative...
May 06, 2021•50 min
Season 5 ends with a bang as we welcome back Sean Lewis, Anna Neyzber, and René Föhring onto the show to share their journey on getting their companies and teams to adopt Elixir. We open our conversation with each guest sharing their first experiences with Elixir. After chatting about the changes that they’ve seen in the Elixir ecosystem, we explore Elixir’s benefits and how they’ve persuaded companies to make the Elixir leap. From zero downtime deployment to arguing for Elixir’s ability to solv...
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 2 min
The fields of data science and machine learning are moving ever faster. Jenn Gamble has her finger on the pulse and has become an industry expert with a wealth of experience to her name. As today’s guest, she dives into these rich and often complex topics, and she helps us boil them down into palatable nuggets of knowledge. We start off by asking Jenn about her current role at Very, and she tells us about the nature of her team and the things they’re able to achieve. She touches on what the lang...
Mar 18, 2021•48 min
Many organizations take an incremental approach when adopting Elixir, preferring to pick up its nuances by using it to work on non-essential projects. But not Change.org. Today we speak with Change.org Director of Engineering John Mertens about how his company adopted Elixir to create a business-critical app that handles over a billion emails per month. From building webpages on GeoCities to working as an IT intern at an Iowan prison, we open our conversation by exploring John’s coding backgroun...
Mar 11, 2021•43 min
As users increasingly demand interactivity from their web experiences, Phoenix LiveView is becoming the dominant way of writing interactive Elixir applications without a loss to reliability. Today we welcome back an old friend of the show and GitHub engineer Sophie DeBenedetto to talk about her upcoming book, Programming Phoenix LiveView. We open our conversation with Sophie by hearing about her work at GitHub, as well as what we can expect from the Code BEAM V conference. As she doesn’t always ...
Mar 04, 2021•48 min
With the prevalence of at-home learning, teachers have to compete for student attention against numerous screen-based activities. Today we speak with engineering lead Shaun Robinson and Elixir developer Toran Billups about how Legends of Learning helps educators make their classrooms fun, engaging, and productive through their curriculum-based games. After chatting about Legends’ mission to empower teachers, we talk with Toran about how he landed a job there. He then shares his insights into sec...
Feb 25, 2021•51 min
ClusterTruck, a master of vertical integration, is rewriting the method of end-to-end food delivery and ghost kitchens. Today we speak with ClusterTruck Product VP Brian Howenstein to find out more about his journey in programming, ClusterTruck as an end-to-end food service, and how Elixir became mission-critical to the success of the business. We kick things off by hearing more on Brian’s childhood and how he became interested in programming. We then hear about his internship at Apple where he ...
Feb 18, 2021•59 min
Building a successful development company requires having a leader with technical know-how and excellent management skills. Today we speak with SmartLogic President and Founder Yair Flicker about his company’s origin story, evolution, and their Elixir adoption process. Early in the episode, we talk about Yair’s first jobs before diving into how he founded SmartLogic. An important transition point, we then chat about how he moved from writing code to running a business. Reflecting on his tech bac...
Feb 11, 2021•56 min
Despite its welcoming character, the Elixir community struggles with diversity; as the 2020 ElixirConf community survey shows, only 2% of Elixirists are women. Today we speak with Blinker software engineer Alexandra Chakeres about her experience of the community, as well as what we can do to make it more inclusive. We open by exploring Alexandra’s background and coding career. After expressing her enthusiasm for the Turing School, we talk about Alexandra’s learn-by-doing approach to picking up E...
Feb 04, 2021•48 min
In this episode we continue our conversation about adopting Elixir, this time with Matt Nowack and Jake Heinz from Discord, hearing them get into the features of Elixir that make it a great fit for building a real-time chat infrastructure system! We also invite Arthi Radhakrishnan from community.com for our mini-interview in the last chunk of the episode. Our chat begins with Jake and Matt telling Elixir developers exactly why they should not use Mnesia. They subsequently dive into their journey...
Jan 21, 2021•53 min
Welcome back to the Elixir Wizards podcast! In this episode, we will be continuing our conversation on the theme of adopting elixir, and our great guest for today is Jason Axelson! Jason is a back-end developer for a mixed reality studio called Animal Repair Shop and has also made some significant contributions to the Elixir Language Server project. We kick off our conversation with Jason hearing about his programming journey and then dive into the event chat service app he helped build using El...
Jan 14, 2021•34 min
Anyone who has written software for the travel industry can tell you that it is in desperate need of innovation — shockingly many of their cobwebbed systems were built in the 70s. Today we speak with Duffel CEO Steve Domin, who is building tech that can finally align travel with the expectations of modern consumers. We open by exploring Steve’s journey into coding before diving into how Duffel is innovating travel. After touching on how the pandemic has impacted Duffel’s roll-out, Steve shares h...
Jan 08, 2021•39 min
To beat out their competitors, startups need to code quickly, simply, and in a language that attracts top engineers. Enter Elixir. Today we speak with Shawn Vo, Axle Payments Co-Founder and CTO, about his journey with Elixir and how it has given his company a competitive advantage. We open our conversation by exploring how Shawn got into coding while automating his work as an investment banker. After touching on why he sees programming as a superpower for adding value, he shares his growth hacks...
Dec 29, 2020•39 min
Today we sit down with Erlanger Viktória Fördős, who talks with us about Erlang and how it is used at Cisco. We open the show by finding out about Viki’s background in coding and her unorthodox entry into the field. After hearing about her experiences in her school choir and her transition into the informatics faculty, Viki talks to us about her first experiences in coding and the thrills she found in it. She then expands on the topic, revealing how she approached people to build their websites ...
Dec 22, 2020•47 min
Today’s guest is Simon Glenn-Gregg, News Engineer at The Washington Post. He joins us to talk about using Elixir to build a prototype for a platform the news house recently implemented to visualize the results of the November 2020 elections in real-time. While the job title of ‘News Engineer’ makes it seem like Simon invents news, this is not the case. He is focused on software related to publishing at The Washington Post, and in particular, has been working on building their election visualizat...
Dec 17, 2020•37 min
The culture of your programming community directly impacts your professional success. As Thunderbolt Labs Founder Randall Thomas explains in this episode, a community that practices openness and which warmly welcomes its newer members leads to greater career happiness. We open our chat with Randall by exploring his start in coding and how he discovered Elixir. He shares some of the teething problems that he had moving from Ruby to Elixir before we touch on how learning other languages expands yo...
Dec 10, 2020•53 min
Welcome back to Elixir Wizards, season five, episode one! The theme for this season is ‘Adopting Elixir’, and for today’s show the team at Elixir Outlaws play host! Chris Keathley, Amos King, and Anna Neyzberg give the Elixir Wizards a chance to talk about what they love about Elixir, how they learned it, and some of their experiences using it at SmartLogic! We kick off the conversation with some memories of college and the different degrees everybody did, how these experiences fit into programm...
Dec 03, 2020•57 min
To close off this season and conclude our deep dive into system and application architecture, today’s episode is a special panel discussion on a topic that has provoked a mix of answers that range from the controversial to the philosophical — “What does domain-driven design mean to you?” For the final word on this subject, we welcome back software developers Chris Keathley, Japa Swadia, Mark Windholtz, and Miki Rezentes. Our first hot take comes from Miki, who shares her thoughts about how domai...
Oct 15, 2020•59 min
