Elixir Adoption at Scale

If you are a developer or company evaluating Elixir and looking for convincing and compelling reasons to do so, Bleacher Report is a case study in the fulfillment of the promises of Elixir and Phoenix. Iterative code samples will illustrate how our understanding and use of Elixir and Phoenix over the last two years have led to greater developer productivity and happiness and more reliable, responsive and efficient systems. With billions of monthly visitors and push notifications sent, Bleacher Report is in a unique position to show metrics that validate the aforementioned claims. Metrics will convincingly show that technical problems with fluctuating traffic problems have been eliminated through the adoption of Elixir and Phoenix. Finally, learn how we were able to train all of our former Ruby developers to become Elixir developers with minimal effort.

Transcript

1. ELIXIR ADOPTION AT SCALE
2. BEN MARX @bgmarx LEAD DEVELOPER
3. >15M APP DOWNLOADS 1.5B VIEWS/MONTH >3B NOTIFICATIONS/MONTH >16B VIEWS/YEAR STATS
4. BEGINNING IN THE OCTOBER 2014
5. EXPECTATIONS REASONABLE
6. CODE CONSISTENT
7. TRAINING DEVELOPERS
8. EXPECTATIONS REASONABLE
9. FEATURE SLOWS DEV
10. PIECE PIECE BY
11. NGINX https://github.com/poteto/terraform/ HAPROXY TERRAFORM
12. BLOAT API
13. TRANSLATION LAYER NEW LEGACY HAPPY
14. CODE CONSISTENT
15. def for(url) do url = prepend_http(url) {_, response } = url |> discover |> HTTPoison.get([], @redirect) case response do %HTTPoison.Response{status_code: 200, body: body} -> decoded_body = Poison.decode!(body) |> strip_newline_chars cond do is_twitter?(url) -> format_twitter_response(decoded_body) is_instagram?(url) -> MESSY ELIXIR CODE
16. CREDO https://github.com/rrrene/credo
17. defp format_by_content_type(:content_type, response) do # formats responses and handles errors end defp format_url(url) do # standardizes url based on certain requirements end def for(url) do url |> format_url |> get_embed_data |> format_by_content_type end defp get_embed_data(response) do # attempts to extract embed data from external source end
18. TYPESPECS DIALYZER &
19. @type embed :: map() @spec for(String.t) :: embed def for(url) do url |> parse_response |> format_by_content_type end
20. DOCUMENTATION
21. @doc “”” Attempts to fetch and extract embed data for a url and format it according to the defined content type “”” @spec for(String.t) :: embed def for(url) do url |> get_embed_data |> format_by_content_type end
22. @doc “”” Attempts to fetch and extract embed data for a url and format it according to the defined content type “”” @spec fetch_and_extract_embed(String.t) :: embed def fetch_and_extract_embed(url) do url |> get_embed_data |> format_by_content_type end
23. CODE REVIEWS
24. Erlang indeeds facilitates solving many of these problems. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a progamming language. Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP
25. STATIC ANALYSIS TYPESPECS DOCUMENTATION TESTING
26. LOGGING SERVICE REVIEW MONITORING DATABASE PERF
27. FOCUS ON THE CODE
28. TRAINING DEVELOPERS
29. EXPECT PUSHBACK
30. MAKE EASY IT
31. TESTS MATTER
32. HOW TO SUCCESS? MEASURE
33. ONGOING PROCESS
34. HAPPEN MISTAKES
35. RAPID DEVELOPMENT
36. TYPES CONTENT
37. def insert_changeset(struct, params \\ %{}, content_type) do struct |> cast(params, @fields) |> cast_content_type(params, content_type) # omitted
38. def cast_changeset(“article”, #omitted) do changeset |> # validations omitted end def cast_changeset("gif", #omitted) do changeset |> # validations omitted end def cast_changeset(“photo”, #omitted) do changeset |> # validations omitted end
39. NUMBER CONTRIBUTORS OF
40. APPLICATION NUMBER OF CONTRIBUTORS PROJECT AGE MONOLITH 59 BEGINNINNG OF TIME
41. APPLICATION NUMBER OF CONTRIBUTORS PROJECT AGE FIRST ELIXIR APP POWERS CLIENTS 23 2.5 YEARS OEMBED 12 2 YEARS METADATA 10 8 MONTHS
42. NFL DRAFT B/R STATE OF THE UNION
43. HIGHEST CONCURRENTS
44. SPIKES
45. LATENCIES
46. SPEND TIME DEVELOPING
48. QUESTIONS? @bgmarx