Amos King
Chris Keathley
Anna Neyzberg
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Amos: Welcome to Elixir Outlaws, the hallway track of the Elixir community.
Sigu: So I guess you can get started. We have exactly 30 people on board. Um, so I don't think I'm doing you a good introduction. So I'll let you do the introduction for this particular session. I'm a big fan, for your information, I'm a big fan of Elixir Outlaws. I honestly listen to it a lot, so I just give it to you to take it over from here.
Amos: Well, Anna and Chris are not quite here yet, although I I'll give a quick little introduction. Anna Is having some trouble joining. So we started actually at an Elixir conference, three years ago now, and we've been doing this podcast, uh, we just get together and hang out and talk about Elixir and, and the community and, and what we can can do, uh, and where we think that things are headed. And sometimes our breakfast that our kids ate and other random things. And, uh, we love the community and love to be a part of it. And we were really excited when we heard that there was a new, Elixir Conf coming up in Africa, new continent, jumping in, and we just thought it was amazing and wanted to be able to take part. So thank you for having us.
Sigu: Yeah. Thank you so much. Uh, Amos and, um, what I really love about how you remember to do your podcast is, um, uh, actually, call it the chemistry between you, how you talk about things and how you dealt with issues and all that stuff, because this is something that you created over time, or that's just how you got it started.
Amos: It's kind of just how we got started. What we really wanted to do was mimic the conversations that we have in the hallway at in-person conferences. And then when there starting to be remote conferences, we were hoping that by doing live podcasts at those conferences that we could start to bring in some of that hallway track and fill, get the community involved in the talks, because this like this talk is what is really part of everybody here. If you have questions, if you do anything, just throw it in the chat inside of the Whova app. And we will get to as much as we can in the amount of time we're here and fully participate. I see Anna now.
Sigu: Yeah, I can also see Anna here. By fully participate, you mean, um, ask questions, uh, contributes. Um, so, um, how really do we get into this? Uh, do we raise our hands fast? So you mentioned our names, so
Amos: Just, just throw it in the, just throw a message in the chat on, on the Whova app is, is how we've done it in the past, works really well.
Sigu: All right. Okay.
Amos: I'm worried about the technical difficulties on our end.
Anna: Yeah, sorry about that.
Amos: Keathley's trying to get in. He's having issues, too.
Sigu: Oh, ok.
Amos: I saw the lightning talk just before this .
Anna: Oh, yeah?
Amos: It's, uh, technical issues are common this afternoon.
Sigu: Uh-oh.
Amos: Yeah. We can, we can just start and start, and start talking about Keathley, instead.
Anna: Right. Oh my god, there's so much to say about him.
Amos: I hope everybody's been enjoying the conference so far. It was, uh, I intended to get up really early in the morning and go watch all the talks today. But I think I'm going to have to do that this afternoon. Uh, it is, uh, very early 7:00 AM for Anna, um,
Anna: Yeah.
Amos: And nine o'clock for me. So it's it's yeah, definitely early in the morning. I got my coffee ready to go. I don't know if anybody else has their coffee or anything this afternoon. Um, is there, so how, how is the conference going for everybody?
Sigu: Yeah, for me as a part of the organizing team, um, as usual, you will see all the mistakes that are being made. You don't concentrate on the good things. You're just pointing things here and there, but so far it's been amazing. Uh, we started out with a very good tone on, uh, when Jose was talking about the I E X copy paste, so, Jose ultimately allowed us to copy paste it to IEX. I think I will have to explain what that means if you missed that session. So, um, previously when you are piping into, when you're copying code that has pipes in them, then you paste it into IEX. It will actually complain. Now that is actually possible in Elixir 1.12. So copy-pasting is now allowed in IEX.
Amos: Yeah, that is super, super useful.
Anna: That is very useful, yeah.
Amos: Yeah. I've been frustrated by that many, many times in the past.
Sigu: And I guess that was, uh, almost everyone's takeaway of the whole session that Jose was talking about. Everyone was like, yes finally this problem has been solved. Yeah, every-
Amos: Oh, go ahead.
Sigu: Yeah. Everyone was like, yeah, a problem in Elixir has been solved. Now we can copy paste into IEX. Thank you, Jose!
Amos: It feels like, uh, it's really funny how those, um, like quality of life, I would call them, improvements, it, no matter how small they are, feel like, like the biggest features and they kind of often overpower other other features that are really powerful to get our jobs done day-to-day. But that quality of life, like, I mean, it speeds us up and keeps us going. So I love those things a lot, like recently the, um, where you can, uh, load dependencies in a, in a mixed script without having within an Elixir script, without having to create a whole project in order to put some dependencies in was a really nice feature to add to. But other than that- looks like Chris is here!
Anna: Keathley, welcome!
Amos: Chris is here. Muted away, but here. Morning.
Anna: Good morning.
Chris: How's it going?
Anna: It's good. Just get, getting, getting into the morning here for me.
Chris: Yeah. It's early. I know, I barely was able to sleep in for this. Oh man.
Anna: Rough, rough for you Keathley.
Amos: You sit back like a conference organizer and get out of bed early.
Anna: I'm curious how, I mean, do we have any questions yet? I'm curious how - am I saying your name right? See-gu? No, yes.
Anna: Sorry about that. Um, I'm curious, like how, how the, how it's been kind of developing to building the Elixir community, um, where you are, is there a lot of interest? Sounds there's a lot of people here, and like, how has that been going and like what that experience has been like for you all?
Sigu: Yeah. Um, well, it's, it's literally an interesting experience because I'm in Kenya, uh, allow me to talk about Kenya because in Kenya, uh, we've based the Elixir community in Kenya. So, um, I might have been the Elixir Kenya member number zero, one, two, three or four, but I know I'm the first term of the members. And, um, we've seen the community grow with time and the interest that it's fast. This is one of the the community members, uh, is called Collins (gestures to friend next to him on the video chat) and I've been able to meet him and talk to him simply because we created a WhatsApp group, which is our main means of communication. (aside) Yeah. Dakota is saying? Okay, sorry, I'm about that. So, um, we've grown, not exponentially, uh, we've grown kind of in a linear way with time. Um, but I feel like probably we've stagnated. So this is part of our efforts to get in more people into this particular community.
Anna: Got it.
Sigu: Yeah.
Anna: I was just curious how and how people, how are people, how are people finding out about the Elixir community in Kenya?
Sigu: Okay. Yeah. I know how to redirect to that question, uh, because I didn't find out about it because we created it. So (redirects to his friend)
Anna: Well yeah. Yeah. And it was a good idea. Yeah.
Collins: That's an interesting question. Um, I think for me, I wanted to start and an Elixir community, right? So I started this WhatsApp group as we do in Kenya. And, um, I had like about five members and then I go to Twitter and I see an announcement of votes at the Kenya, um, Meetup, uh, so I'm going to find out whats going on there and I sent you guys the WhatsApp group that I had created only to find out that you guys already have a WhatsApp group. So basically what I did was go to the new WhatsApp group and close it and tell everyone guys, let's, let's go over there.
Sigu: They are way more than us.
Collins: Yeah. There's no point swimming upstream. Let's just join the rest. So that's how we ended up with the group in Kenya.
Sigu: So you actually found it out on Twitter.
Collins: Yeah. I found it on Twitter. I'm trying to get you guys to do now. The WhatsApp groups on the chat. The WhatsApp group. That's why I'm enjoying this. Um, so there seems to be created that WhatsApp group. We also join, um, both of you put that together that created it. I would say the growth has been abandoned. Um, it's it's not exponential. It's just one person at a time.
Anna: Nice.
Amos: How many people are involved in the group now?
Collins: We're gonna check the numbers right now.
Amos: Perfect. This is live.
Collins: Yeah, this is live.
Sigu: This is live data. Yeah. Um, how many?
Collins: 170.
Amos: Wow. That's amazing!
Anna: That is really awesome!
Sigu: And that she's only in Kenya, um, Imo, you can talk about, uh, Nigeria. Imo is on the call. Feel free to speak about it. And then Shuaib is also there. We've also talked to Shuaib who is in Nigeria. Um, then, uh, we also have Daniel from Uganda. So any of you can talk about the Elixir community because it's not only the Kenyan Elixir community, this is, uh,
Collins: An African language.
Sigu: It's an African, what's the English word I was looking for? Conglomerate?
Collins: Conglomeration of community.
Sigu: Yes, that. Of community. So yeah Daniel, Or Imo, or any of you.
Amos: So we got Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, meetups in those three places?
Sigu: Yeah, so we would just love them to talk about them if, uh, if they're free to, or if they're in a position to .
Amos: Of if they put it in chat, I'll read it.
Anna: Yeah. If they can't hop it.
Sigu: That's awesome. Yeah. Happy to see you here, Shuaib.
Collins: Yeah, unfortunately, I think Shuaib's been split for him. Yeah. Oh, Rashid is also here.
Sigu: Oh, Rashid is also here, so they can speak, all types talking all this house.
Anna: Ope, I see something in a chat.
Sigu: Yeah, that's right. Shuaib?
Shuaib: Uh, I could talk about Uganda.
Anna: Oh, yeah.
Chris: Awesome. Yeah. Welcome.
Shuaib: Cool. So in Uganda, the Elixir community is not that big. I would say we don't have like, uh, more of a, a unified group or Meetup that we do regularly. However, for example, the com we have like very few companies that are familiar with Elixir. However, engineers, Ugandanan engineers use Elixir, but not necessarily working for companies that are in Uganda or even actually meeting because some of them might not even be living in Uganda. So for example, one company, you know, that is using Elixir, is too busy. So most of the posts, we would say the community of Elixir, is, well, all must be working for that same company. So we are like a few handful of engineers. We know each other. So mostly, for me, when I heard about the conference, I was like, this is a good opportunity for the guys to actually have more engineers join Elixir, have more Ugandan engineers use it, so I'm, the way I got about, to know about the conference was actually, I think I got an invite. The goal was to be a speaker, but I was like, no, I would rather support now getting more people too, but spend on the conference. Yeah. So definitely, Ugandan Elixir, we are growing, one step at a time, I would say, not as big as Kenya.
Anna: That's cool.
Amos: That's really cool though.
Anna: It is really cool. And I feel like, I mean, any anywhere where community is building often and it feels like, you know, when I, the work that I've done in San Francisco, the work that folks have done other places, right. Like, I feel like it often is just like one step at a time, right. And like when community is built organically. Even if it's slower, if people actually feel connected to that community and they, you know, like you feel welcome and they feel like they're able to participate and then like, they're more likely to stay, right. And so those organic connections where you're actually meeting people and like forming that community, um, is I think super valuable. So that's awesome .That's very awesome.
Amos: The best way to, to learn too, is from people that you're friends with. It's, it's so much easier to talk to people about the struggles that you went through when you know them well. So building that community allows you to get that comfort level where you can ask questions that maybe you think aren't the smartest questions in the world, but be comfortable asking. What are you up to Chris? He's all quiet today.
Anna: I know. That's very unusual for him.
Chris: I'm just, I'm just really listening.
Anna: I think this he is the least, this is the least he's spoken. Ever.
Chris: I feel so called out.
Anna: I'm curious to hear from the audience, what are folks, I mean, we have, we don't have any questions in the chat, but if folks haven't, I'm curious what books people are excited about with regards to Elixir. Unless Amos, you were going to say-
Amos: We have one question in the Q, um Q and A, um, this is like the most pointed Elixir Outlaws question I think we've had, uh, what keeps Elixir Outlaws going and have you experienced podcast fatigue and how the team, how does the team management manage it? Uh, anybody want to go first?
Chris: Well, I haven't talked yet, so I can talk about this.
Amos: All right good.
Anna: Go ahead. Go ahead, Keathley.
Chris: Yeah. I think we, we totally experience podcast fatigue. I, I know I won't speak for the others, but what keeps me going is the fact that, it's the fact that we kind of put so little effort into the show. Like, we, it's it's, we don't over produce it. We don't, you know, we don't have guests on really. We don't, everything about it is, uh, highly unpolished. It really is pretty much, I start recording, I open the Zoom call , people join, we talk about stuff, I stop recording. And then at some point the edited audio comes back and we publish it. Like that's, that's the sum total of like my involvement. And that to me is very fun. And that keeps it, that's what lets me keep going. Just because it's fun just to sit and talk with these folks and talk about this language and runtime that I, um, that has brought me so much joy in my just like personal life and, and, and like work life. And, uh, and so, yeah, so it keeps it very like low key. And getting, and then getting to do stuff like this, where I get to like, come in and be like, you know, just this like extra part of the community and get to engage with people like, um, that helps keep, keep me going through, through all of it. But totally podcast fatigue is totally a real thing. And, um, and yeah, I dunno. At this point, I think I keep doing it too, just because like, it's a bit of a, um, it's comforting just to be able to like talk to friends to some degree, like we don't have to like be on our, our best game and we don't have to, you know, have a bunch of questions lined up for somebody and like, be really polished. Like we can just be ourselves and just talk. And that, that keeps me going.
Anna: Yeah, I believe, I mean, we've talked about, I mean, there, you know, podcast fatigue is a real thing and you know, that's a conversation that we've definitely had before and talked about like, you know, are you still having fun? Do we still, at one point we're like, are you still having fun? Do you want to keep doing this? And I think like that agreement that we came to echoing Chris's sentiment was that, you know, if we're, as long as we're still having fun doing this thing, we'll keep doing it. But if it's, if there's a reason that we don't have people sponsor and we don't like it so that we, you know, it's on our terms and if we stop having fun or if we're tired or it doesn't seem like a thing we want to keep doing anymore, we can just stop. And so I think that also just makes it feel easier. There's less pressure, again, to perform or be on. And then again, to Chris's sentiments, I think, especially this last year, which has been crazy for everybody, it's been like a nice thing to be able to just talk to friends and talk about what's going on and not always have it be, I mean, have it be, have it be able to like a, kind of distract ourselves with, with, you know, interesting things happening in Elixir. Cause there's so much else going on in the world, but also just having like a fun, safe space, talk to friends, um, just been great.
Amos: Yeah. I am so on board with the fact that we, we don't plan a whole lot and we keep it organic. Like the whole idea when we started, this was, you know, I said earlier was to, um, be like a hallway track at a conference. Like what would you talk to people that you see at the conference? People that maybe you only get to see once a year at the conference? What, what things do you talk about? Sometimes it's Elixir. Sometimes it's family, sometimes kids. And every week I get to sit down with Chris and Anna who I love very much. I love talking to them. They challenge me as a person. They challenge me in writing software and the thoughts that I have. Um, and I get to keep going. Even, even sometimes we have been on here. We re almost get on every Thursday, but because we don't have things planned, if we're just not feeling it that day, we don't have to record. We don't have to show up , when we do show up, we talk to each other. Sometimes we don't even record. We just say, hey today, I just need your support. So I have like a little support group within the community. Um, so that keeps it going. And there are days where I just, I'm like guys, I, I don't want to record, maybe not next two weeks. I'm exhausted. I can't do this. There's too much going on in life. So I mean, podcast fatigue or life fatigue. I'm not real sure which one it is, but it's very involved. And keeping it light on the work that we have to put in, makes it fun. Uh,
Anna: I'm curious-oh go ahead.
Amos: No, I was just going to read the next question, but um,
Anna: Oh, yeah do it!
Amos: Oh, we have two of them now. Um, "Elixir is a beautiful language and lots of folks love it. What can we say is it's downside specific to a language and a community at large?" Ooh! Hard-hitting question.
Anna: That's a good question.
Amos: That is a good question. I don't know. I've seen so much good lately. It's, it's hard to hard to find the downsides. Like I've watched local Meetups through, you know, everybody being locked down, Meetups spreading out and inviting people from other countries and other locations and really, um, taking advantage of the situation we've all been put in. So, that's, it's hard for me to find a community-wise a downside. Programming wise, Elixir wise, as a language, I think there is a, for me, there's a lot of emphasis on, um, like web programming specifically. And, and I think that in a lot of ways that can hold us back as a community cause you can do so much more with Elixir. The Nerves, Nerves group shows that, they do, they do other things. There's, I'm hoping NX coming in, will bring some more ML type stuff and start to show that there's, there's a lot more to Elixir than Phoenix and writing web apps, even though that's powerful and a lot of fun to do. Um, I dunno. How about, how about you guys? Chris wants to say not enough people are using it, I think. I'm gonna put words in his mouth.
Chris: No. I think, um, as someone who recently went through, uh, like the process of finding a new job, I'll just say that like, um, there's a lot more jobs, but definitely, you know, like you don't have a huge, like there's just, I think there's a lot more people who want to be doing Elixir than there are people to employ them, like at this point. Um, so that's a little bit of a bummer, but yeah, I mean, I think, I think the community is just, let's see how do I say it?- The community is just smaller and when you have a smaller community like that, like a lot of the, like I'm going to call it like medium level information, right. The stuff that you need when you're not just getting started anymore. Um, you've learned a bit about the language and now you want to do the next thing. When, when you're ready for that, there's not a ton of like documents or books or videos or any of that sort of stuff to like help get you to the next thing. And so I think a lot of people have a hard time going from, like, I know a lot about this language I've I really am excited about this language. How do I become an expert in this language? There's like a pretty big gap between those two things. And I think we can benefit a little bit from more, from more like, um, share from sharing knowledge in that sort of range. Um, I keep saying like, I'm going to write a book on how to do like more advanced, like, system design and then I'm like, that seems like so much work. I am not, I don't have time for that right now. So, but like, I think that is kind of the thing that I, I would say that's one of the things that is missing to help people get, get their kind of level up and get to the next thing
Anna: Yeah, I would agree with that. It's really an astute kind of assessment of where the community is, which is good in the sense of the community is growing and that there more people working more with the language. We do need that more and more of that, more of those resources to help people level up. To Chris's point about like companies hiring, I think that's kind of one of the, just react going now with the downsides is that, it's good that there are now more people who want to work in the language and there are opportunities, but now trying to bring the other side of that so that there are more opportunities for people to be able to actually work and get paid for writings, language. Um, that would be awesome.
Chris: There's definitely way more companies than when I started.
Anna: Oh, yes. It's changing.
Chris: It's been amazing to watch. Um, and, and I think it's, yeah, it's, it's getting better and better and better. So-
Amos: -And there's a lot of secret companies out there too. There's, there's a lot of companies that I field calls from that are like, "Don't tell anybody but we're doing Elixir" and like startups to even like large companies that just, they don't want to let everybody know yet. Like maybe they have something hidden that they're trying to work on. And so they don't want to say we're doing Elixir. And then people say, well, what are you working on? And they say, we can't say. So they just stay quiet until they can, can be public with whatever they're working on. So there's, there's a lot going, I think we have a really good question for Anna, has got a few up votes. It says "What advice would you give someone who wants to start a community or Meetup?"
Anna: Oh, wow. Yeah. Um,
Amos: In the US, it’s pizza.
Anna: Pizza. Um, I think the, actually the biggest piece of advice that I would give is try and find if you can, a couple other people to do it with you, it's really hard to stay- that stuff takes a lot of work. Um, as the conference organizers can probably tell you or anybody who's organized a Meetup can tell you, um, it's a lot of work to keep it going. Um, and it's, you know, it's really easy. I've experienced burnout on this stuff myself, um, with Elixir Bridge, cause it was all, you know, it's all volunteer based. So it's all just you and your time. And the biggest success I've had, I actually ran for a few years, a, Ruby Meetup in San Francisco with two other people and that made it way more sustainable, ran it for three years. It was really successful. We had people show up and we do talks once a month, um, at different places. And so the fact that we have kind of shared the responsibility and the workload made it way easier to keep it going for that long. So that'd be my biggest piece of advice is if you can find people who are also excited who are willing to do it with you, it'll make it a lot easier and make it way more sustainable in the long run.
Amos: I feel like same as doing a podcast, like, find people that you enjoy being around and, and start to grow that community and keep adding people that you enjoy being around to it. Um, but if you, if you have those people that you can work with and that you like working with, it's so much easier, even when, when some days it's hard.
Anna: Totally. Um- there's another question-
Sigu: Can I add something on to what Anna just said about building a community? The single, uh, single piece of advice that I would give anyone who asks you, that question is, uh, you need to be consistent. So if you're having your meetups every Monday, just have your Meetups every Monday whether it's three, four or five of you or 50 of you, just have Meetups every Monday. And with time you will get more and more people interested. And in about six months, you realize that you've covered a lot more than if you are waiting for a quorum for you to to come into. Yeah. And pizza is also important!
Anna: Yeah, totally, that totally makes sense.
Amos: You don't have to have a speaker. That's the other thing, uh, to get a Meetup going, you're just building a community. You don't have to have a talk every month. Um, we actually just had an Elixir meetup last night. Um, one of the first in-person ones. So we were at a park and all spread apart, sitting on, on different benches and talking and, and we didn't have a speaker. It was just, Hey, let's get together again. Let's talk to each other, see how everybody's doing and support each other, wherever we are in our journey in Elixir or in life.
Anna: And that point, that point about consistency is really a key, like, no matter how, it doesn't matter if it's every week, if it's like once a month, but it's like the same time every month. Right? Like people, most people that are used to pattern patterns right. And schedules and so like, or have schedules, right. And so being consistent so people know when they can show up, um, is definitely, definitely important.
Amos: Yeah. And in person, if you're meeting in person don't change locations, either I ran a Meetup before that, we had a lot of people coming. It was a Ruby meetup many years ago. And, um, we lost our location and had to move locations and we lost about half the people. They just stopped coming because they were used to going to this one place. And then we like almost immediately lost the next location and had to move again. Uh, and it really kind of destroyed the group. It dropped from, you know, we would have anywhere between 30 and 60 people per month showing up. And it dropped down to like 10, within a couple of months just because of inconsistent locations. Uh, and I would get messages from people that they were at the right location. They would be at like an old, uh, the original location they’re like, "Hey, I'm here, but I can't get in. Where is everybody?" And you have to, you have to deal with that. And then they're just frustrated and they don't come back. Unless you have like a really close relationship with him.
Anna: Makes sense. Um, there's another question about, I think someone asked that there's been a little bit of talk about it in the chat, but, uh, it looks like it’s about Elixir not being friendly to juniors, especially in the context of career options.
Amos: Um, yeah, yeah. Uh, I I've seen that a lot. Is that a lot of the places that are hiring are, they're saying, I want somebody who's been doing this for a few years. And the number of us that have been doing this for a few years is a lot smaller than, than the number of people who want to get on board. If you're in that position, I think you reach out and start, uh, I mean, Meetup groups are a great way and you start to find those people that probably fit the bill and fit what you need. Even if they may have not done a lot of Elixir or you can start training them. Reach out to your managers. If you're not in a hiring position and say, Hey, look, I think we can take in, this, uh, person that, yeah, they don't have a lot of Elixir experience, but they've been programming for a while or they have this experience that, that can help us. And you almost have to be a sales person for, for bringing, bringing the people in, uh, and, and growing community. And that will benefit all of us. So bringing in those juniors and being that sales person is really important.
Anna: Yeah. I think someone's talking about the, more about, as I'm looking at the chat, I think there's some, there are some questions around, um, like employers saying they don't actually have the opportunity yet to hire or onboard Elixir developers.
Amos: Oh, they can't find them?
Anna: Or like, um, well someone's saying they've like, they've not had the opportunity, to write, uh, Elixir, full time, but they're referring to like employers claiming that they don't have the opportunity to hire Elixir developers. Like The Elixir developers are out there, but maybe they're not willing to hire developers. They're not willing to hire developers, like to what, to your point, that don't have a certain amount of experience. You're not willing to hire developers that are newer to the language. And that's a tough question too. Like it's hard to search to know the approach, like exactly what the answer is to that.
Chris: Like, I, I I'm, I think you should lie. It's the trick. Cause it's the same, it's the same thing of like, um, this, this, uh, this, this web framework is five years old. The company is hiring 10 years of experience with the one framework or whatever. It's, it's that thing. So I think if, if companies are going to play those sorts of silly games, like, you're allowed to play that game back at them, like, you know, I don't know. It's such an industry-wide problem. It's not even an Elixir thing.
Anna: That's true. It’s totally an industry wide problem.
Chris: It's just like, industry is so screwed up. This is like, yeah, I need 20 years of Docker experience. It's like.
Anna: Totally.
Chris: Absolutely me. I like,
Amos: Are you answer, are you answering Paul's question?
Chris: The question here was, "Who has the least love for Ruby among the Outlaws? My guest is Chris Spot on. Like I don't even need to ask the other two. And I know it's me.
Anna: He has very strong opinions.
Chris:Why? Oh, I just didn't. I would say it's like, it's more like I have no affinity to it. Like, I didn't really, like, I worked in Ruby, but I never had that, like, I think a lot of people who are coming from Ruby had this sort of this moment with Ruby where they, it like reinvigorated their love for programming or like, or was special to them in, in some, in some specific way. And I never had that. It was like part of my job that I needed to, when I worked at Carbon 5, that I needed to write Rails and write Ruby. And it was like, okay, sure. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Whatevs. Like, I just never had that like attachment to the language on like kind of a personal, emotional level. And I actually think like, there's a lot of things that I care about that Ruby doesn't care about, which I, you know, like I care about performance.
Amos: Ouch!
Chris:
Um, and like, that's not, that's not like I care about it first class thing, right. Like as like a thing that I, that that is like not important to Ruby as a design. It's important now, because it turns out that companies used it for some reason, right. Like, you know, like it's kind of, it's kind of makes no sense. Right. Um, when you look at like, at that language and like what it was designed to do, it was like designed for programmer happiness. That's like, that's like literally stated, right. It's not designed for anything else. That's totally fine. There's no shade against picking developer happiness or your personal happiness or whatever. When you build a language, it's your language, build your language, how ever you want, like, I have no problem with that. But it means that when you, any, anything you pick when you build a language, any, and this is true for any system, any, any choices you make are a tacit choice to not focus on something else, you can't focus on all the things, unless you're JavaScript.
Anna: And then that's a whole different story.
Chris: You know what I mean? Like that's the language that is all the languages.
Anna: For better or for worse.
Chris: Yeah, um, and so whatever you're picking, you're choosing to not pick a bunch of other things. And like, not having a concurrency model was like part of Ruby's design, like having a Gil was part of Ruby's design. Nothing wrong with that. That's a design choice. It's just not a design choice that like makes me happy. And so Ruby is optimized for someone's developer happiness, but it wasn't optimized for Chris Keathley's developer happiness.
Amos: Perfect!
Anna: So what, what was, what was that moment for you with Elixir, Chris? Do you remember?
Chris: Where I was like, "Oh, this rocks, like, this is cool"?
Anna: Yeah.
Chris: Um, yeah. It was a functional language, which I dug already. I'd liked functional programming, kind of , to begin with and it, but it had like the concurrency story. It had the supervision and OTP, and that was, um, that was it for me, like, like seeing how supervisors and that sort of stuff could solve so many problems that I had had in every system that I'd worked in, uh, that like I was instantly sold. And then add on to that like, oh, here look, data. And functions. Oh, sweet. Like, I don't want anything besides data and functions. That's awesome. Yeah. That was it for me. And I just, I never really looked back,
Amos: We have to end. I didn't want to, I want to hear more. Um, but I think it's a great place to end on like why, why you were drawn to Elixir and why Elixir's awesome. Um, data and functions. Concurrency. I think " What else can you ask for?" right.
Anna: Totally.
Amos: Thank you all for having us.
Anna: Yeah, thank you so much.
Amos: Have a great rest of the conference. I will be going back and watching the shows or the talks. I just couldn't. I couldn't drag myself out of bed that early this morning. I tried. 3:00 AM was way too early for me. But thank you for having us. Thanks so everybody.
Anna: Yeah, thanks y'all. Bye.
Sigu: Yeah, uh, thank you so much, everyone. Uh, thank you Amoa. Thank you, Anna. Thank you, Chris. Nice to see you again. Uh, we'll see you again on the next session, uh, Chantelle will be taking us through the Erlang.
Collins: Erlang Ecosystem Foundation.
Sigu: Erlang Ecosystem Foundation, uh, on the next session, then we are going to have an amazing closing session. Chris, there's a question that we were asked by Francisco. You never answered it. I don't know how that skipped my mind. Will you read that, then we go?
Amos: The question was, from Francesco to Chris was "Want to write a book with me, Chris?"
Chris: Oh, no. (laughter from all 3 Outlaws)
Amos: Ouch.
Chris: No, no, no. So I'm saying, Oh, no, like I have to think about it. Well, not "Oh. No!" It’s a, "Hmm, let me think about that"
Amos: Uh, just like, like starting a community or a podcast, finding people to do it with you and, and make you stick to is the secret.
Chris: Yeah. I'll think about it.
Sigu: Thank you very much, everyone. We will see you on the next one. Bye.
Anna: Thank you.
Amos: Have a good day. Bye!