Elixir dev to prod - Speaker Deck

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Elixir  Dev to Prod Challenges starting from Zero @nirev Guilherme Nogueira

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nirev? whois

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nirev? whois

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nirev? whois

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Stack Elixir 1.3 + Phoenix ClojureScript + Reagent PostgreSQL ElasticSearch Cassandra Others: C#, Python, C, Bash, Jenkins (In Production)

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What was the road like?

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Easy steps 1.gather a team 2.code 3.????? 4.PROFIT

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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

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Why Elixir?

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Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what?

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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

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Why Elixir? Functional Programming; so what? • What does it have to do with Functional Programming? • FP is easier for concurrency:   mainly because immutability + guarantees

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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

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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

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Assembling a Team

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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)

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"Os alquimistas estão chegando" Jorge Ben

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"Os alquimistas estão chegando" Jorge Ben George Guimarães

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Starting to Code

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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….

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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 …..

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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.

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Going to Production

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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

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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

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• 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)

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• 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)

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• # TODO: • Deployment with distributed Erlang nodes • Better understand how Elixir releases should be done Going to Production We got this (somewhat)

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Feature Cycles AKA build stuff

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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

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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 :)

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir You gotta get your hands dirty!

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir

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Feature Cycles Building Stuff with Elixir You gotta get your hands dirty!

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Monitoring

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Monitoring Everybody ships bugs • Suddenly, we were reminded that   writing software IS HARD • And when going too fast,   things are going to brake

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Monitoring Everybody ships bugs

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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

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Monitoring Everybody ships bugs • But we monitor machine states and so what with SENSU, which is great!

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The Good, The Bad  and The Ugly Key takeaways

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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

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Takeways Was it worth? • But we did get a lot of things right, and the platform is  AMAZING ~3k commits, 700 PRs

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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

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Thanks! https://xerpa.recruiterbox.com/ Estamos contratando! @nirev Guilherme Nogueira