Elixir dev to prod

A talk about the road taken by us at Xerpa using Elixir since day-0.

Transcript

1. Elixir
 Dev to Prod Challenges starting from Zero @nirev Guilherme Nogueira
2. nirev? whois
3. nirev? whois
4. nirev? whois
5. ?
7. Stack Elixir 1.3 + Phoenix ClojureScript + Reagent PostgreSQL ElasticSearch Cassandra Others: C#, Python, C, Bash, Jenkins (In Production)
8. What was the road like?
9. Easy steps 1.gather a team 2.code 3.????? 4.PROFIT
10. Actually… 1. Why Elixir? 2. Assembling a team 3. Starting to Code 4. Going to production 5. Feature Cycles 6. Monitoring 7. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
11. Why Elixir?
12. Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what?
13. Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what? • CPUs are not getting faster for single-thread apps • Concurrency is the next major thing for development • NO MORE FREE LUNCH (2005): • Java5 • WindowsXP • RoR launching on December
14. Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what? • What does it have to do with Functional Programming? • FP is easier for concurrency: 
 mainly because immutability + guarantees
15. Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what? • Actually, FP is a very old paradigm (even older than OOP): • 1960 → Lisp • 1973 → ML • 1980s → Lazy langs: Miranda, KRC, SASL, Orwell... • 1986 → Erlang • 1990 → Haskell 1.0
16. Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what? • Elixir embraces distributed computation and concurrency • Builds upon battle-tested Erlang • Enhances it with Metaprogramming and a arguably easier
 syntax • Created by the great VALINHO
17. Assembling a Team
18. Assembling a Team or, How I learned Elixir • Few Elixir programmers around (what a surprise!) • But increasingly number of people interested in it
 and coming from all kinds of background • No “competition” • The first one is the hardest (lol)
19. "Os alquimistas estão chegando" Jorge Ben
20. "Os alquimistas estão chegando" Jorge Ben George Guimarães
21. Starting to Code
22. Starting to Code Elixir first impressions • mix is awesome • plenty of editors: atom, vim, IntelliJ 
 Emacs + Alchemist = <3 <3 <3 • Documentation is taken seriously • Quite easy to get acquainted to the language • OTP on the other hand….
23. Starting to Code Elixir first impressions • Elixir takes the best ideas from a lot of languages: • |> from F# • Protocols e Metaprog from Clojure • the whole OTP from Erlang • Umbrella Apps from .NET • Ecto query DSL from LINQ • Doctest from Python …..
24. Starting to Code Elixir first impressions • Everything is immutable. • There is a compiler • Elixir is pragmatic • Performance is great. GC is per-process • Documentation & tooling are take seriously • Macros • The runtime & OTP are AWESOME. 
 Every process is preempted. No bad neighbors.
25. Going to Production
26. Going to Production We got this (somewhat) • Quick first way: Heroku + Elixir build pack • works great • just one server though and 
 we only used PostgreSQL at the time
27. Going to Production We got this (somewhat) • Delivery Pipeline: • SemaphoreCI embraced Elixir quite early
 works great, very easy to configure • But we just love Jenkins • Did not test any other
28. Going to Production We got this (somewhat) • Delivery Pipeline: • SemaphoreCI embraced Elixir quite early
 works great, very easy to configure • But we just love Jenkins • Did not test any other
29. • Deployment, part 2: • PITA to use GraphicsMagick in Heroku
 (we have a buildpack for it on github) • Needed: • ElasticSearch • More control Going to Production We got this (somewhat)
30. • Deployment, current: AWS • everything managed by Terraform + Ansible • Phoenix app compiled and packaged in .deb • deb is a no-brainer for us • no hot-deploy Going to Production We got this (somewhat)
31. • # TODO: • Deployment with distributed Erlang nodes • Better understand how Elixir releases should be done Going to Production We got this (somewhat)
32. Feature Cycles AKA build stuff
33. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir • Core libs (Ecto, Phoenix, Plug) are 
 incredibly reliable! • releases are hard and not 12factor • hot code reloads are not that simple • The Ecosystem is really young
34. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir • The Ecosystem is really young • no usable ElasticSearch client • (at the time) no json-api library • (at the time) no good auth libs • nothing to handle images
 github.com/Xerpa/exmagick :)
35. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir You gotta get your hands dirty!
36. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir
37. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir
38. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir
39. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir
40. Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir You gotta get your hands dirty!
41. Monitoring
42. Monitoring Everybody ships bugs • Suddenly, we were reminded that 
 writing software IS HARD • And when going too fast, 
 things are going to brake
43. Monitoring Everybody ships bugs
44. Monitoring Everybody ships bugs • Plug n Play solutions are not that common:
 Honeybadger officially supports it
 AppSignal in alpha testing • the BEAM is highly instrumentable • Great talk about it by Milhouse @ ElixirConf2016
 https://confreaks.tv/events/elixirconf2016
45. Monitoring Everybody ships bugs • But we monitor machine states and so what with SENSU, which is great!
46. The Good, The Bad
 and The Ugly Key takeaways
47. Takeways Was it worth? • Starting with a new, evolving language is hard • We had to figure out a lot of stuff ourselves • And we got it wrong a few times: • Trying to Haskellize Enums to use with Ecto • No good cassandra client (lacks a lot of features) • Not using Ecto.Type correctly from the start • Dates <o>
48. Takeways Was it worth? • But we did get a lot of things right, and the platform is
 AMAZING ~3k commits, 700 PRs
49. Takeways Was it worth? • Elixir is very promissing, and growing FAST • The community learns a lot from other languages • The community is helpful, open, inclusive and active • You have to be willing to deal with not-ready things and
 contribute yourself to the ecosystem • But even so, it’s highly recommended
50. Thanks! https://xerpa.recruiterbox.com/ Estamos contratando! @nirev Guilherme Nogueira