Backend Banter

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 - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Livebook & Elixir Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pas9WdWIBHs Elixir Programming Language: https://elixir-lang.org/ Livebook: https://livebook.dev/ Elixir In Action Book: https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-third-edition José's Socials: X/Twitter: https://x.com/josevalim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josevalim GitHub: https://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

Today, we bring you the final episode of the first season of Backend Banter! It’s a wrap up for now. With 69 episodes behind us, we want to tell you the story of Boot Dev and how far we’ve come from our beginnings, and for that, we bring Allan Lires, the first official employee and the second person to work on our platform! We’re going to cover our entire timeline, achievements, hardships, how Lane and Allan were able to go all-in on building Boot Dev and our visions and plans for the future. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Allan's X/Twitter: https://x.com/AllanLires Boot.Dev Discord: https://discord.com/invite/EEkFwbv Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:01 Last episode of Season 1 of Backend Banter 01:45 Boot.dev Story and what this episode will be about 02:26 How and when Allan was hired to work at Boot.dev 05:33 Timeline on Boot.dev 08:53 Guessing game 10:34 The Rebranding Process 12:43 Going Full-time 14:56 What was the curriculum in the beginning? 18:38 What was the original vision for Boot.dev 19:17 Being honest about how long it'll take you to learn to code 22:48 Setting expectations for difficulty 29:55 On learning the fundamentals 34:42 The Long Term vision of Boot.dev 41:30 Old gamification features and why we changed them 50:26 The Track is Never Complete 55:01 We cover a lot of the basics that traditional colleges don't cover 01:00:06 Why do we want to remove JavaScript from the learning course 01:06:12 Million Lessons Completed in a single month 01:08:28 You got to be comfortable being uncomfortable 01:13:25 Where to find Allan

Today we welcome Chuck Carpenter aka Charles The 3rd, co-host at Whiskey Web and Whatnot. As two content creators in the tech scene, we discuss if and how celebrity developers and tech influencers are a good thing for the community, how we should be careful when choosing technologies based on influencers’ opinions, why so many people nowadays want to speedrun their whole career and how that could be self-sabotage, and a lot more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Whiskey Web and Whatnot: https://whiskey.fm/ Charles' X/Twitter: https://x.com/charleswthe3rd Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:27 Does Charles listen to his own podcast episodes? 03:33 Are celebrity developers a good thing? 09:11 Podcasts are usually centered around a business 10:06 We are essentially entertainers 14:04 Tech choices being influenced by creators 17:37 Why ThePrimeagen stood out from other tech influencers 20:26 Career speedrunning 23:44 The biggest miss when starting something 24:51 What is wrong with Full-Stack application frameworks? 29:03 How Frankenstein is the Boot.dev web application stack 37:41 Rolling your own stuff vs using a provider 46:01 It's easy to screw up your architecture 50:53 What is Charles building with in 2024 and what is his preferred stack 56:39 Does it seem like people don't talk about security anymore? 01:00:30 Accessibility 01:02:02 The amount of people that are "kinda" interested in cybersecurity 01:11:03 Have some patience 01:11:37 Where to find Charles

In today’s episode, we bring back Aaron Francis. If you haven’t watched our previous episode with him, he is a software developer, fellow content creator and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. In the past he’s been an accountant at a Big 4 but now he focuses on Laravel, web development and all things business and video. This episode will step away from the usual tech focused content and we’ll talk a bit more about the business side of things, how you have to balance entertainment and education when creating courses, Aaron’s High Performance SQLite course, building a personal brand through the discomfort of centering it around yourself, how good presentation matters and how proactiveness puts you miles ahead of the majority, so stay tuned! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Aaron's X/Twitter: https://x.com/aarondfrancis Aaron's Website: https://aaronfrancis.com/ High Performance SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com/ Mostly Technical Podcast: https://mostlytechnical.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Podcast listening going up when having a kid 02:25 Podcast about earning the first million 08:54 You have to choose the entertainment vs education levels 10:37 You have to shape your material to the platforms 16:40 Long hour videos vs 2 minute ones 20:16 Are the videos in the High Performance SQLite in linear order? 24:19 Figuring out the metrics 28:06 Building courses on other domains 31:46 Building brands is difficult 35:55 quick disclaimer 36:30 Personal brand vs company 37:57 Is this sellable? 40:23 Do you need an audience? 44:26 The strategy is simple but it is also hard to execute 49:31 The presentation matters a LOT 51:54 On being proactive 57:00 Where to find Aaron