QFM042: Elixir Reading List November 2024

Everything that I found interesting last month about the Elixir ecosystem.

Tags: qfm, elixir, reading, list, november, 2024

Source: Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

This month’s Elixir Reading List kicks off with Tyler Young’s article, Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024, highlighting Elixir’s efficiency in creating manageable full-stack apps. Similarly, Goulven Clech’s Directory structure with Elixir reflects on the challenges of scaling projects, offering practical strategies for maintaining structure and clarity in larger codebases.

Pragmatic problem-solving continues with Avoiding Recompilation Hell in Elixir with mix xref, which addresses the often-overlooked issues of recompilation. It provides actionable steps to streamline build processes, ensuring productivity in complex projects. This theme of optimisation is mirrored in Florian’s account of his personal blog’s rebuild, Hello World! Introduction to my website and blog, which discusses the practical application of Elixir and Phoenix to deliver a dynamic, maintainable platform.

For developers exploring integrations, the three-part series on streaming OpenAI chat completions—beginning with Streaming OpenAI in Elixir Phoenix Part I offers detailed insights into handling real-time APIs in Phoenix applications. These articles delve into techniques for managing streaming responses, maintaining state, and enhancing the user interface through websockets, providing a comprehensive guide for tackling similar challenges.

The list also highlights Elixir’s role in addressing broader issues. How Even the Simplest RAG Can Empower Your Team discusses leveraging Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to enhance developer workflows by integrating contextually relevant AI-powered tools into codebases. Meanwhile, Rashmi Nagpal’s talk, Elixir, Erlang, and the Quest for AI Justice, reflects on the ethical implications of AI development, using Elixir’s robustness to propose innovative solutions.

Together, this collection underscores Elixir’s capacity to balance technical sophistication with practical utility, making it a compelling choice for modern development. Whether you’re optimising a workflow, building scalable platforms, or exploring the intersection of AI and ethics, this month’s articles offer valuable perspectives and actionable insights.

As always, the Quantum Fax Machine Propellor Hat Key will guide your browsing. Enjoy! elixir-propellor-hat-key.png

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4-out-of-5-hats Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024: This article, written by Tyler Young, advocates for using Elixir and its Phoenix framework as the optimal choice for building bootstrapped B2B SaaS platforms in 2024. Young emphasizes the simplicity and efficiency Elixir offers by reducing the tech stack complexity, making it feasible for solo developers to manage their full development process from the frontend to the backend. The piece highlights how technologies like Phoenix LiveView and built-in concurrency and fault tolerance mechanisms streamline development and maintenance, allowing developers to focus more on business growth rather than dealing with a myriad of separate technologies.

#Elixir #Phoenix #SaaS #Bootstrapping #WebDevelopment

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4-out-of-5-hats Directory structure with Elixir: This article explores how a real estate startup tackled the challenge of organizing an Elixir/Phoenix project as it scaled. It discusses the inconsistency and confusion in the project’s directory structure that grew over three years, and presents different approaches evaluated by the team to reorganize it. The final proposal offers a balanced solution, aiming for simplicity and scalability while involving the whole development team in the decision-making process through GitHub Issues, promoting clarity and collaboration.

#Elixir #PhoenixFramework #SoftwareArchitecture #ProjectManagement #TechLeadership

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3-out-of-5-hats A Bluesky starter guide for Elixir devs: The article offers a guide for Elixir developers transitioning from X to Bluesky, outlining steps such as signing up, using custom domains as handles, and engaging with the Elixir community through updated hashtags and Starter Packs. It highlights tools for finding connections from X on Bluesky and managing feed subscriptions, along with cautioning about privacy since Bluesky is a public network. The piece underlines the ongoing migration of users to Bluesky and offers resources for importing or deleting old X content.

#Elixir #Bluesky #SocialMedia #TechGuide #Privacy

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4-out-of-5-hats Building Beacon #1 - Site Config: This article discusses the development journey of Beacon, a CMS built using OTP, Elixir, and LiveView. Despite CMS being a longstanding concept, Beacon brings a fresh perspective and innovative techniques to reimagine it. The post serves as the first in a series, introducing Beacon.Config, a straightforward and efficient method for managing site configurations in a Phoenix application.

#Elixir #CMS #Beacon #PhoenixFramework #LiveView

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4-out-of-5-hats Avoiding Recompilation Hell in Elixir with mix xref: The article explores the challenges and solutions related to recompilation issues in Elixir, a functional, concurrent language. It emphasizes how frequent recompilation of unchanged files can severely impact developer productivity by lengthening the feedback loop, and guides the reader through identifying, understanding, and fixing these problems using the ‘mix xref’ tool. Several strategies are suggested, including isolating macro dependencies and preventing compile-time transitive dependencies, to help streamline code compilation and enhance productivity.

#Elixir #Programming #Development #Coding #TechTips

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2-out-of-5-hats Hello World! Introduction to my website and blog: The article introduces the newly redesigned personal blog of the author, Florian, explaining the choice of using Elixir and Phoenix over a static site generator for its dynamic capabilities. The blog also discusses features like syntax highlighting using MDEx for faster markdown parsing and live reloading of content. Design elements are finalised using Tailwind CSS and daisyUI, providing ease in theme-switching without hard-coded colors. Overall, it serves as a technical playground for experimenting with new technologies, offering a look into the development processes behind a modern, interactive blog.

#WebDevelopment #ElixirLang #PhoenixFramework #TailwindCSS #Coding

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3-out-of-5-hats Introducing Paraxial.io License Scan: Paraxial.io introduces a new feature called License Scan aimed at managing open source license compliance for Elixir applications. This tool automates the process of tracking allowed licenses and provides a dependency inventory at compile time, making it convenient for organizations with specific license requirements. It also integrates with GitHub to alert developers of license violations, offering a detailed overview for both compile-time and runtime dependency checks.

#Paraxial #LicenseCompliance #OpenSource #Elixir #Automation

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4-out-of-5-hats Streaming OpenAI in Elixir Phoenix: This article introduces how to integrate OpenAI’s chat completions endpoint using Elixir Phoenix. Initially, the author discusses creating a module to perform non-streaming requests to OpenAI and the setup required for authentication. The focus then shifts to handling streaming responses, detailing how to parse these responses into Elixir data structures. The article provides code examples and guidance for setting up an API in a Phoenix application to stream chat completions to clients in a format that’s easy to parse.

#Elixir #OpenAI #PhoenixFramework #ChatbotIntegration #APIDevelopment

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4-out-of-5-hats Streaming OpenAI in Elixir Phoenix Part II: This article is the second part of a series on streaming OpenAI chat completions using Elixir Phoenix. It revisits stream parsing and discusses the advantages of incorporating stateful parsing to handle partial event streams effectively. The author highlights the enjoyment of using Elixir’s pattern matching and recursion for binary iteration and proposes a stateful solution with agents to manage incomplete chunks, ensuring robust event parsing. Additionally, it challenges whether such complex implementations are necessary, as simpler, working integrations usually suffice.

#Elixir #OpenAI #Streaming #Parsing #TechTalk

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4-out-of-5-hats Streaming OpenAI in Elixir Phoenix Part III: This article is the final part of a series exploring how to stream OpenAI chat completions in Elixir Phoenix using LiveView. It discusses implementing streaming features without a database by holding state in memory. The piece emphasizes creating responsive user interfaces with real-time exchange of messages via websockets, detailing the step-by-step code process involved. Additionally, it explores UI enhancements like keyboard shortcuts and styling to improve user experience.

#ElixirPhoenix #OpenAI #LiveView #Websockets #TechTutorial

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4-out-of-5-hats How Even the Simplest RAG Can Empower Your Team: The article introduces the concept of using a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system to empower development teams, focusing on its application for managing source code. It explains how RAG enhances Learning Language Models (LLMs) by using relevant context from an indexed codebase, allowing developers to obtain more precise answers without sharing their code externally. The piece highlights the potential of this system to improve codebase understanding and provides a lightweight prototype using open-source tools like LangChain and JinaAI.

#RAG #LLM #Codebase #AI #Development

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3-out-of-5-hats TIL: Sum Types With instructor_ex: The article explores the use of the Instructor Elixir library to extract structured data from language models like OpenAI’s GPT. It highlights the challenge of working with sum types, particularly in generating survey questions where responses involve multiple choice or sliding scales. The author illustrates how Ecto schemas and JSON schemas can be used to handle these types, allowing developers to generate and validate different question types, even though Ecto does not natively support sum types.

#Elixir #JSONSchema #SoftwareDevelopment #OpenAI #ProgrammingTips

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4-out-of-5-hats Elixir, Erlang, and the Quest for AI Justice - Rashmi Nagpal | Code BEAM America 2024: This talk, delivered by Rashmi Nagpal at Code BEAM America 2024, explores the interdisciplinary use of Elixir and Erlang in advancing AI justice. The presentation delves into the potential these programming languages hold in creating fair AI systems, highlighting real-world applications and innovative solutions. The speaker aims to inspire attendees to utilize these robust languages to tackle ethical challenges in AI.

#Elixir #Erlang #AI #AIJustice #CodeBEAM

Regards, M@

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Originally published on quantumfaxmachine.com and cross-posted on Medium.

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