Is Elixir the Future? feat. José Valim | S2 E01

José Valim discusses the design decisions behind Elixir, including static typing, cross-machine communication, and its future.

We're back for Backend Banter Season 2, and we bring a very special guest, José Valim, the creator of the Elixir Programming Language, one of the most popular and loved functional programming languages of today. (Fun fact: it's used in production at Discord). We cover the nitty-gritty of the language, ranging from simple topics such as the decision behind not making Elixir be statically typed, into the more complex cross-machine communication. We go over how Elixir's features compare with those of other languages, work habits of today's developers, José's own day-to-day development, and a lot more! Today's talk encompasses a great variety of themes, so grab your coffee and tune in! Learn back-end development - boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: backendbanter.fm Livebook & Elixir Talk: youtube.com/watch?v=pas9WdWIBHs Elixir Programming Language: elixir-lang.org/ Livebook: livebook.dev/ Elixir In Action Book: manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-third-edition José's Socials: X/Twitter: x.com/josevalim LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/josevalim GitHub: github.com/josevalim Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:06 - Embarrassing Stories with Foreign Languages 02:58 - Who is José Valim? (and Elixir's Popularity) 06:51 - Does José Use Phoenix a Lot? 08:28 - Why Isn't Elixir Statically Typed? 16:51 - External Input vs. Internal Code Logic 28:16 - Quick Overview of BEAM languages 31:23 - Elixir’s Equivalent to Golang’s Goroutines & Channels 42:43 - Cross-Machine Communication in Standard Libraries 49:15 - Do You Need RabbitMQ When Writing Elixir? 54:53 - Built-In Features in the Standard Library 01:01:52 - Why People Are Too Used To Work The Hard Way 01:04:22 - José and DHH 01:08:01 - Favorite Elixir Features & Immutability 01:17:49 - Purity in Functional Programming 01:21:35 - Where to find José Like & subscribe for the algo if you enjoyed the video!