Jazz Clubs and Elixir
Traveling by train isn’t the fastest way of getting back to Boston, but it affords me some time to reflect on Empex. If you haven’t had the opportunity to attend this Elixir conference in NYC, I can’t recommend it enough.
The quality is apparent from the moment you step into the venue.
Does it get cooler than a jazz club on Bleecker St in NYC? It does when you have this lineup of speakers.
From learning about Elixir and it’s place in the programming language landscape from Brooklyn Zelenka (@expede) to jamming out with Mat Trudel (@mattrudel)— we covered a lot in one day. Conference talks can remind you that so much is possible with Elixir and this community.
They can remind you of things that drew you to the language (pattern matching FTW, right Kate Travers?)…or they can show the power of Elixir as James Lavin did — demonstrating how Teladoc uses it for medication and pharmacy benefits. These talks can teach you that the tools we have available make unexpected things possible. For example, if you need a drum machine for your next office party, check out Mat Trudel’s project, aptly named beats.
Talks can also challenge you to improve — to challenge the status quo and strive for an evolving truth that we call “best practices”.
As an agency, we espouse the importance of the agile process. As a project progresses, requirements often change — in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. Agile allows all of us to keep an open mind during projects. It allows us to make those shifts without the cost of tossing out a hyper-detailed project plan.
But what about the fundamentals of how Elixir “applications” are structured? What about how we write GenServers? In the closing keynote, Dave Thomas brings the challenge to the audience to consider that “we might just be writing Elixir wrong”.
If you weren’t able to make it to NYC for Empex, fret not! Videos of these talks (and several great others!) will be online in a few weeks. Unfortunately, you won’t hear the great live jazz music played in-between talks.
Until next year!
