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Mike Zornek

ElixirConf Talks of Interest

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I’m attending ElixirConf this week, and in preparation, I looked over the session schedule to see what talks are of interest to me. I figured I’d share my notes in case anyone is curious about what’s on my mind. If you are also in attendance, please say hi.

https://2022.elixirconf.com/schedule

Tuesday

Tuesday is the training day. I picked Instrumenting Elixir Applications.

I’ve been on projects using observation tools like open telemetry and DataDog but have never been personally responsible for setting it up, so I have a lot to learn.

Wednesday

Wednesday starts with a curious “virtual-only” morning session list. I think this was done to allow the sister NervesConf “sub-conference” to do its thing in the meeting spaces. I am not attending, so will most likely look to watch some virtual sessions in the hotel lobby and make friends with other stragglers.

After José Valim keynote, we have tracks of three topics:

  • Robust, Distributed, and Parallel Processing for Enormous Images Using SuperVisor, Node, Flow, Nx, and evision.
  • Porting Legacy Backend Services into Elixir, Seamlessly
  • Building a HEEX component library

I’ll be attending the HEEX component library talk. Improving my skill set at building components is high on my interest list right now, and I’m curious to see what Matthew has to share.

I’m likely to watch the recording of the Porting Legacy Backend Services later as that is also something of interest to me. So often, I try to encourage people to avoid the big rewrite, and this sounds like a good match for that since the summary includes “while keeping the user experience the same during the whole migration process.” 👍

I don’t have a current need for scalable image processing but will keep the talk recording in mind in the future.

Next up:

  • Livebook smart cells are amazing
  • Classifying Bot IP Addresses in Phoenix
  • The Elixir Of Web Scraping

I think I’ll be going to the Livebook talk. I’ve only done some basic Livebook writing in the past, but I have some ideas about building LiveView/collaborative UX demo tools and it would be helpful to see what’s new.

The other talks sound useful but are not active topics for me right now.

For the final Wednesday morning choices, we have:

  • Make a Soundcloud like app in a week and make it fit in a seven dollar box
  • Dx - a pragmatic inference system based on your Ecto schema
  • Cryptography and Elixir

I’ll be attending the Soundcloud app talk. Curious to hear how that project has progressed and very interested in the topics around file uploading.

After lunch, we have two choices:

  • Ecto in Production - Migration Edition
  • Let’s talk to Industrial devices with Elixir & Nerves

I’m not doing an IoT or Nerves stuff, so this is an easy call for me. Improving large-impact Ecto migrations is a welcome focus, particularly given my client’s data sizes.

Next up:

  • Delightful Multiplayer Editing with Phoenix
  • Workflows and use cases for Elixir Nerves

Anxious to see how the Felt team is doing UI collaboration. This is one of the big reasons a project should choose Phoenix LiveView. It’s a great fit.

Next up:

  • Going Global with a Normal Phoenix App
  • Keeping your IoT fleet afloat with Sink

I’m curious to hear how Fly.io deployments are working out and will surely appreciate people sharing their edge cases and other considerations.

Next up:

  • Match Specs: Fast Functional Filtering with Matcha
  • Introducing Juvet: Building Bots in Elixir

That Match Specs talk seems too deep so for me. The Juvet one sounds interesting. Some of my product ideas are tools to make Slack more reasonable, so bot programming seems like a topic I would enjoy.

Wednesday’s final sessions:

  • Time algebra - a new way to think about and work with time
  • Making Elixir Honk: Implementing An Elixir Audio Library In Zig

I’m interested in both of these talks, though I’ll probably give the audio talk my attention. I’ve worked alongside Chris and am curious about what he has come up with. Also, have a passive interest in continued interest in Zig and what people are up to.

Thursday

Thursday starts with a morning keynote from Brian Cardarella.

Afterward, session tracks start with:

  • Onboarding New Elixir Members
  • In Production with Elixir, Rust, and WebAssembly
  • Caching with the Postgres WAL

I’ll probably watch the recording of the WebAssembly talk and attend the onboarding talk. I’m less confident I’ll be doing education as a business moving forward, but I’m still big on mentoring and curious about what this talk has to share.

In-between sessions, Test Double is offering a “Double Up with Test Double” session, and I might stop by to say hi and get some advice on my CQRS project.

Next track choices include:

  • “How to Grow your own Juniors”: A guide to mentoring in an Elixir Environment
  • Quick Iteration in Elixir - Tips from 6 Years of Professional & Hobby Elixir Development
  • WebAuthn + LiveView

I’m interested in all of these talks, but WebAuthn is high on my interest level. I’ll be there.

Next up:

  • Selling Elixir
  • Seems Good Enough to Me: Working with Testers to Derisk Elixir Upgrades
  • Wordle: Elixir Flavour

I’m curious about these talks, but none are on fire for me. I might take this slot as an opportunity to mingle a bit. We’ll see.

Next up:

  • Roll Cages, Pit Stops, and Victory Laps: The Launch of Elixir and LiveView at Scale on the New Cars.com
  • Self Taught to First Job!
  • E2E Reactivity - using Svelte with Phoenix LiveView

As a contributor to the cars.com project, I’m anxious to see Zack’s retrospective.

Next up:

  • Axon: Functional Programming for Deep Learning
  • Serverless to Serving Elixir: Migrating Serverless app to run on Phoenix
  • Have you got the ExFactor? Writing a refactor helper

I’ll probably go to the refactor talk. Kind of curious how that project works, though again, I might use this time for mingling.

Next up:

  • SOLID code isn’t flexible
  • Using Livebook to Teach Elixir
  • Review of using Elixir for 4 years in production

Very anxious to see Brooklin Myers’s Livebook talk. I hear he is using it a ton in the upcoming DockYard class. The other talks look cool too but I will have to wait till the recordings.

Final tracks for Thursday:

  • Learn you some pattern matching for great good!
  • Connect the Docs
  • Shifting Left: Secure Coding in Elixir Livebooks

I’m interested in all of these talks, but the one on documentation is close to my heart, and I will attend.

Friday

Morning track choices start with:

  • To MVP and beyond, a year in LiveView
  • A Javascripter’s trip to Phoenix and LiveView
  • Exploring Elixir Codebases with Archeometer

Probably going to stop by the Archeometer talk. Curious to see what that project is all about.

Next up:

  • Flame On: Profiling Elixir and Phoenix apps with Flame Graphs in Live Dashboard
  • Designing Data Intensive Applications in Elixir with Flow
  • Understanding common network protocols with Elixir

I would like to try out that flame graph tool but will probably attend the Flow talk since it aligns with my event-sourcing interests.

Next up:

  • I was wrong about LiveView
  • Searching Your Elixir Code
  • Embedded Web Apps in Elixir with LiveState

I’ll probably sit in on Jason’s talk. While I like LiveView and think it’s an excellent choice for many projects, I’m not sure I’m as all in (as it sounds like he is). I still feel like if the app lends itself to request-response it can be better to embrace that simplicity, particularly for user-facing pages that are often presented on mobile phones.

The day closes with closing keynotes from Chris Grainger and then Chris McCord.

It feels like this is going to be a packed conference. While I’ve outlined talks that interest me, I need to remember that the value of going in person is seeing others, so if I have to skip out on some of these and catch the recordings, I think that is fine too. I suspect the recordings will have a quick turnaround since they are already doing the virtual component, but we’ll see.