Podcast · Tech & Science

Elixir Wizards

by SmartLogic LLC · English · Tech & Science

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 47 min
Latest: 23 Jul 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

23 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

What Changed and What Remains True with James Gray

In the final episode of Season 15, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by James Gray, co-author of Designing Elixir Systems with OTP , to talk about what has changed in software development and what still holds true. Years after the book’s release, many of its core ideas around architecture, boundaries, supervision, and system design remain deeply relevant, even as AI tools reshape how developers learn, build, and collaborate. James brings a unique perspective to the conversation: he is an experienced Elixir and OTP educator who only recently began using LLMs in his own workflow. He…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S15 · 16 Jul 2026 · 1 hr

Owning Your AI Stack with Zach Daniel

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Zach Daniel, creator of the Ash Framework and Igniter, VP of Engineering at Remedy Meds, and upcoming ElixirConf keynote speaker, to talk about what sits between an LLM and useful engineering work. Zach reflects on how much has changed since his last appearance on the podcast in October 2024, moving from Igniter, code generation, and project patching into AI agents, context layers, and custom engineering workflows. The conversation explores how deterministic tools and probabilistic LLMs can work together, and why…
S15 · 9 Jul 2026 · 50 min

What Should Software Remember? with Flora Petterson

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Flora Petterson, a self-taught Elixir developer, speaker, and maker, to talk about what happens when software systems forget and how developers can design for recovery. Flora shares her unconventional path to programming, from puppetry and creative work to discovering Elixir through Nerves and hardware projects. The conversation centers on her talk, “After the Crash,” which uses forgetting as a way to think about failure in software systems. Flora and the hosts explore process crashes, lost state, GenServer…
S15 · 2 Jul 2026 · 56 min

The State of Career Growth in Elixir with Bruce Tate

In this episode, Elixir Wizards Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Bruce Tate, founder of Groxio and longtime Elixir educator, to discuss career growth and mentorship in the age of AI. Bruce reflects on Elixir’s evolution and explores how AI coding agents are changing the way developers learn, work, and advance. He explains his “anti-vibe coding” philosophy and recommends practices for maintaining code quality, arguing that many struggles attributed to junior developers are really failures of training and mentorship. Rather than using AI productivity gains to eliminate entry-level…
S15 · 25 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

The State of the Open Internet with Mallory Knodel

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Mallory Knodel, executive director and founder of the Social Web Foundation, to talk about internet governance, open standards, and the future of the social web. Mallory shares how her work as an activist, systems administrator, and public interest technologist led her into the organizations and working groups that shape how the internet functions, including the IETF, W3C, ICANN, and ITU. The conversation explores how the internet shifted from a collection of open protocols toward a small number of dominant…
S15 · 18 Jun 2026 · 54 min

The State of the Power Grid with Mike Ratliff

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Mike Ratliff, co-founder and CTO of GridVar, to talk about the role software plays in the changing energy infrastructure. With over 30 years of experience in technology, Mike shares the path that took him from the early internet and cloud computing into energy and utility software, along with what he has learned about staying adaptable as the industry continues to shift. Mike explains why building software for the power grid comes with a very different set of constraints than building a typical web application…
S15 · 11 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

Curiosity, Courage, and the Human Side of Software with Ellyse Cedeno

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Ellyse Cedeno, founder of Heuristic Salvo and a software engineer and product leader with more than 25 years of experience across early internet platforms, gaming, health tech, and distributed systems. Ellyse shares the winding path that took her from early search engines and Netscape to game development, medical research at Mount Sinai, and eventually to Elixir. Along the way, she talks about staying curious over a long technical career, rediscovering joy through side projects, and why being willing to feel like…
S15 · 4 Jun 2026 · 42 min

The Missing GitHub Status Page with Marek Šuppa

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, hosts Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond sit down with Marek Šuppa, creator of the Missing GitHub Status page, a project that reconstructs GitHub's historical uptime data and reveals discrepancies between official status reporting and the platform's actual reliability. Marek tells us about his dev journey from open source contributor at DuckDuckGo to machine learning engineer at Cisco-acquired Slido. Then, we discuss GitHub’s evolution from a hosted Git service into a critical developer tool. We cover reliability, transparency, AI-driven platform growth,…
S15 · 28 May 2026 · 56 min

The State of Code Quality with Saša Jurić

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, hosts Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond sit down with Saša Jurić, Elixir mentor and author of Elixir in Action, to discuss software craftsmanship in the age of AI. As AI coding tools become increasingly capable, Saša argues that the real challenge isn't generating code, it's maintaining quality, clarity, and shared understanding within a codebase. We explore the difference between correct code and good code, and why code is more than a set of instructions for a machine to execute. Code is also documentation, communication, and a long-term investment that…
S15 · 21 May 2026 · 46 min

Cloud Fragility & Distributed Systems with Somtochi Onyekwere

In Elixir Wizards S15E04, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Somtochi Onyekwere, a software engineer at Fly.io and contributor to the Corrosion distributed database project, to talk about distributed systems, infrastructure resilience, and the growing fragility of centralized cloud platforms. We discuss what recent outages across major providers reveal about modern infrastructure and why more teams are starting to rethink assumptions around reliability, failover, and system design. Somtochi explains how Fly.io approaches geographic distribution, eventual consistency, and…
S15 · 14 May 2026 · 51 min

The State of Hiring and Jobs in Elixir with Greg Medland

In Season 15 episode 3, Charles Suggs sits down with Greg Medland, aka “The Elixir Fixer,” to talk about the current state of hiring and the software jobs market in 2026. Greg shares what he’s seeing from both sides of the hiring process as an Elixir-focused recruiter, from shifting company expectations to the growing importance of specialization, communication skills, and real-world product thinking. We discuss how the market has changed since the 2021–2022 hiring boom, why things feel more uncertain today, and how developers are adapting to a slower, more competitive landscape. The…
S15 · 7 May 2026 · 47 min

Supervised State Replication in Elixir with Micah Cooper

In Season 15 episode 2, Elixir Wizards Sundi Myint and Charles Suggs chat with Micah Cooper to talk about distributed systems, data replication, and what it actually looks like to build these ideas in Elixir. Micah shares his journey from Ruby to Elixir and walks us through Visor, a library he’s building based on the Viewstamps replication algorithm. Inspired by systems like TigerBeetle, Visor explores how you can replicate state across nodes using GenServers, giving you fault tolerance and recovery without relying entirely on traditional database patterns. We talk about the difference…
S15 · 30 Apr 2026 · 42 min

The State of Security in Elixir with Holden Oullette

In the Elixir Wizards season 15 premiere, host Charles Suggs is joined by Holden Oullette, Senior Security Software Engineer at Netflix and maintainer of Sobelow, to talk about how security is evolving in the Elixir ecosystem. We discuss how certain features of the Elixir programming language (like functional patterns and server-side rendering) provide natural immunity against some common vulnerabilities, and what that means as the language continues to grow. Holden shares how tools like Sobelow are adapting and how new technologies like LLMs and Elixir's type system may help to strengthen…
S14 · 28 Aug 2025 · 34 min

Enter the Elixirverse: Season 14 Wrap-Up

Today, the Elixir Wizards wrap up Season 14 “Enter the Elixirverse.” Dan, Charles, and Sundi look back at some common themes: Elixir plays well with others, bridges easily to access languages and tools, and remains a powerful technology for data flow, concurrency, and developer experience. We revisit the popular topics of the year, from types and tooling to AI orchestration and reproducible dev environments, and share what we’re excited to explore next. We also invite your questions and takeaways to help shape future seasons and conference conversations. Season 14 doubles as a handy primer…
S14 · 14 Aug 2025 · 47 min

Elixir DevOps & Interoperability with Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, host Sundi Myint chats with SmartLogic engineers and fellow Wizards Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs about the practical tooling that surrounds Elixir in a consultancy setting. We dig into how standardized dev environments, sensible scaffolding, and clear observability help teams ship quickly across many client projects without turning every app into a snowflake. Join us for a grounded tour of what’s working for us today (and what we’ve retired), plus how we evaluate new tech (including AI) through a pragmatic, Elixir-first lens. Key topics discussed in this…
S14 · 7 Aug 2025 · 40 min

Vibe Coding the LoopedIn Crochet App with Kimberly Erni & Pei Pei Wang

Today, co-founders Kimberly Erni and Pei Pei Wang join the Elixir Wizards to discuss their crochet app, LoopedIn. Recognizing a gap in the market for a more user-friendly and interactive crochet pattern experience, they're building an app that makes following patterns easier and more enjoyable for crocheters of all skill levels. They're building features such as step-by-step guidance, video tutorials, and the ability to upload and convert PDF patterns into an interactive format. Kimberly explains how she's leveraging AI tools to vibe code in Elixir and LiveView. They highlight the challenges…
S14 · 31 Jul 2025 · 35 min

Python in Elixir Apps with Victor Björklund

In this episode, Elixir Wizard Charles Suggs sits down with Victor Björklund to map out the landscape of Python integration in Elixir applications. From HTTP APIs and external services to embedded runtimes like ErlPort, PythonX, and the Venomous library, we evaluate each approach’s impact on performance, coupling, and developer experience. Victor draws on real-world examples like Scrapy-based web scraping and the Swedish BankID authentication to illustrate best practices for error handling, process pooling, and effective telemetry across the BEAM boundary. We also tackle the practical side…
S14 · 24 Jul 2025 · 43 min

Explorer: Data Frames in Elixir with Chris Grainger

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs sits down with Chris Grainger, co-founder and CTO of Amplified and creator of the Explorer library. Chris explains how Explorer brings the familiar data-frame workflows of R’s dplyr and Python’s pandas into the Elixir world. We explore (pun intended!) how Explorer integrates with Ecto, Nx, and LiveView to build end-to-end data pipelines without leaving the BEAM, and how features like lazy evaluation and distributed frames let you tackle large datasets. Whether you’re generating reports or driving interactive charts in LiveView, Explorer makes…
S14 · 17 Jul 2025 · 41 min

Nix for Elixir Apps with Norbert (NobbZ) Melzer

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs sit down with Norbert “NobbZ” Melzer to discuss how Nix enables reproducible builds, consistent development environments, and reliable deployments for Elixir projects. Norbert shares his journey from Ruby to Elixir, contrasts Nix with NixOS, and walks us through flakes, nix-shell workflows, sandboxed builds, and rollback capabilities. Along the way, we cover real-world tips for managing Hex authentication, integrating Nix into CI/CD, wrapping Mix releases in Docker, and avoiding common pitfalls, such as flake performance traps.…
S14 · 10 Jul 2025 · 46 min

Set Theoretic Types in Elixir with José Valim

Elixir creator José Valim returns to the podcast to unpack the latest developments in Elixir’s set-theoretic type system and how it is slotting into existing code without requiring annotations. We discuss familiar compiler warnings, new warnings based on inferred types, a phased rollout in v1.19/v1.20 that preserves backward compatibility, performance profiling the type checks across large codebases, and precise typing for maps as both records and dictionaries. José also touches on CNRS academic collaborations, upcoming LSP/tooling enhancements, and future possibilities like optional…
S14 · 3 Jul 2025 · 49 min

SDUI at Scale: GraphQL & Elixir at Cars.com with Zack Kayser

Zack Kayser, Staff Software Engineer at cars.com, joins Elixir Wizards Sundi Myint and Charles Suggs to discuss how Cars.com adopted a server-driven UI (SDUI) architecture powered by Elixir and GraphQL to deliver consistent, updatable interfaces across web, iOS, and Android. We explore why SDUI matters for feature velocity, how a mature design system and schema planning make it feasible, and what it takes, culturally and technically, to move UI logic from client code into a unified backend. Key topics discussed in this episode: SDUI fundamentals and how it differs from traditional…
S14 · 26 Jun 2025 · 49 min

Rustler: Bridging Elixir and Rust with Sonny Scroggin

Rustler Core Team Member Sonny Scroggin joins Elixir Wizards Sundi Myint and Charles Suggs. Rustler serves as a bridge to write Native Implemented Functions (NIFs) in Rust that can be called from Elixir code. This combo leverages Rust's performance and memory safety while maintaining Elixir's fault tolerance and concurrency model, creating a powerful solution for CPU-intensive operations within Elixir applications. Sonny provides guidance on when developers should consider using NIFs versus other approaches like ports or external services and highlights the considerations needed when…
S14 · 19 Jun 2025 · 44 min

Nx and Machine Learning in Elixir with Sean Moriarity

Today on Elixir Wizards, hosts Sundi Myint and Charles Suggs catch up with Sean Moriarity, co-creator of the Nx project and author of Machine Learning in Elixir. Sean reflects on his transition from the military to a civilian job building large language models (LLMs) for software. He explains how the Elixir ML landscape has evolved since the rise of ChatGPT, shifting from building native model implementations toward orchestrating best-in-class tools. We discuss the pragmatics of adding ML to Elixir apps: when to start with out-of-the-box LLMs vs. rolling your own, how to hook into…
S14 · 12 Jun 2025 · 38 min

LangChain: LLM Integration for Elixir Apps with Mark Ericksen

Mark Ericksen, creator of the Elixir LangChain framework, joins the Elixir Wizards to talk about LLM integration in Elixir apps. He explains how LangChain abstracts away the quirks of different AI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini) so you can work with any LLM in one more consistent API. We dig into core features like conversation chaining, tool execution, automatic retries, and production-grade fallback strategies. Mark shares his experiences maintaining LangChain in a fast-moving AI world: how it shields developers from API drift, manages token budgets, and handles…
S14 · 5 Jun 2025 · 46 min

Blue Heron: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for Elixir & Nerves with Connor Rigby

Connor Rigby joins the Elixir Wizards to talk about Blue Heron BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) support for Elixir apps. Blue Heron implements the BLE specs in pure Elixir, leveraging binary pattern matching and concurrent message processing to handle Bluetooth protocols. Unlike most solutions that require C ports or NIFs, Blue Heron runs entirely in user space, so it works seamlessly in both Nerves-based embedded projects and (eventually) desktop Elixir applications. We discuss how Nerves development differs from building Phoenix apps. Connor shares challenges he's experienced with hardware…
S14 · 29 May 2025 · 43 min

Zigler: Zig NIFs for Elixir with Isaac Yonemoto

In the Season 14 premiere, hosts Dan Ivovich and Sundi Myint chat with Isaac Yonemoto, creator of the Zigler library, to explore how Zigler brings Zig’s performance and safety to Elixir through Native Implemented Functions (NIFs). Isaac walks through the core design of Zigler and how it auto-generates the Elixir-to-Zig bridge, enforces type safety, and exposes multiple execution modes (normal, dirty, threaded). The conversation covers real-world applications, from SIMD-powered token selection for LLM hardware acceleration to OTP-style fault tolerance in low-level code. Isaac shares his own…
S13 · 26 Dec 2024 · 54 min

Building an Open Vehicle Control System using Elixir and Nerves with Marc, Thibault, and Loïc

For the Season 13 finale, Elixir Wizards Dan and Charles are joined by Spin42 Engineers Marc Lainez, Thibault Poncelet, and Loïc Vigneron to discuss their work retrofitting a 2007 VW Polo and creating an Open Vehicle Control System (OVCS). Using Elixir, Nerves, and Raspberry Pis, the team is reimagining vehicle technology to extend the lifespan of older cars and reduce waste—all while making the process approachable and open source. The Spin42 team shares the technical details behind OVCS and how they use Elixir and Nerves to interact with the CAN bus and build a Vehicle Management System…
S13 · 19 Dec 2024 · 45 min

Creating Horizon: Deploy Elixir Phoenix Apps on FreeBSD with Jim Freeze

The Elixir Wizards welcome Jim Freeze, organizer of ElixirConf and creator of the Horizon library. Jim shares his journey from organizing Ruby conferences to founding and growing ElixirConf into the community cornerstone it is today. He reflects on the challenges of running a major conference, how COVID-19 shaped the event, and why the talks remain an evergreen resource for the Elixir ecosystem. We discuss Horizon, Jim’s deployment library for Elixir and Phoenix applications with Postgres on FreeBSD. Driven by a need for simplicity and cost-effectiveness, Jim explains how Horizon minimizes…
S13 · 12 Dec 2024 · 43 min

Telemetry & Observability for Elixir Apps at Cars.com with Zack Kayser & Ethan Gunderson

Zack Kayser and Ethan Gunderson, Software Engineers at Cars Commerce, join the Elixir Wizards to share their expertise on telemetry and observability in large-scale systems. Drawing from their experience at Cars.com—a platform handling high traffic and concurrent users—they discuss the technical and organizational challenges of scaling applications, managing microservices, and implementing effective observability practices. The conversation highlights the pivotal role observability plays in diagnosing incidents, anticipating system behavior, and asking unplanned questions of a system. Zack…
S13 · 5 Dec 2024 · 52 min

Scaling the Daylite Apple-Native CRM Using Elixir with AJ

AJ (Alykhan Jetha), CEO and CTO of Marketcircle, joins the Elixir Wizards to share his experience building and evolving Daylite, their award-winning CRM and business productivity app for Apple users. He details his experiences as a self-taught programmer and how Marketcircle has navigated pivots, challenges, and opportunities since its founding in 1999. AJ explains why they migrated Daylite’s backend to Elixir, focusing on their sync engine, which demands high concurrency and fault tolerance. He highlights how Elixir has improved performance, reduced cloud costs, and simplified development…

About Elixir Wizards

Elixir Wizards is an interview-style podcast from SmartLogic featuring conversations with developers, engineers, and industry leaders about the Elixir programming language and the broader software development landscape. Each episode explores how modern systems are built, from distributed architectures and infrastructure to developer workflows, security, and emerging technologies like AI. While rooted in the Elixir ecosystem, the show often branches out to compare approaches across languages, platforms, and disciplines. Whether you’re working in Elixir or just interested in how software is evolving, Elixir Wizards offers practical insights and thoughtful perspectives from the people building today’s systems.

Elixir Wizards is a English tech & science podcast from SmartLogic LLC. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: SmartLogic LLC
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 47 min
Latest episode: 23 Jul 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1454287242
Website: smartlogic.io/podcast/elixir-wizards

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