WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Good morning .. ahh I'm really excited to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
do this talk because it's actually the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
first time I can give a talk about Elixir

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and assume that the audience knows what

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Elixir is, right?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So that's really great, that's really..ah

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
changing face because usually I'm going

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to other conferences and I'm always giving

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the introductory talk, right? What Elixir

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is about, what are the language goals.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So this talk is not about that okay?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This talk is about Elixir past and future.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I think it's kind of expected to talk

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
about from where the language came,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because now we are close to reach 1.0.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And I think there are important lessons,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
things that happened throughout this

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
process that we could share, that could

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
help the community grow.. ah.. together.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So if we want to talk about Elixir past,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
one think we could do is that we could go

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the Elixir timeline. So this, I got it

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from GitHub. So, the vertical, we got the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
number of commits, and I think it's per

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
week, and we have the whole year of 2011

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in there. And the first commit was right

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
at the beginning of 2011, okay, it was

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like 9 January or something like that. But

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I actually want to rewind a little bit

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
more, okay, I want to go a little bit back

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
before 2011 but not too much.. it's not

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
about my birth or anything like that. It's

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when...I'm going back to 2005 and I choose

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this article, The Free Lunch is Over,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because it was about this time that I was

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
personally starting to get aware of the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
changes that are happening. So The Free

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Lunch is Over is a paper from Sutter and

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
basically what he's referring to .. ah ..

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the free lunch, it's not about this

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
conference, you still have free lunch, so

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
don't worry. But basically, what he was

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
talking about is that ah throughout the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
previous two decades or even more, you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
wrote software and then you could just

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
wait like two years? and your software

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
will run twice faster, that was amazing

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
right? You didn't need to do anything just

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
wait and bam, it's faster. But..and we

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
heard this story already, a couple of times

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
now right? It's almost ten years since

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that article, that our machines are not

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
getting any faster now, in terms of we're

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
not having, we don't have machines with

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
8 GHz, right, the CPUs. We're starting to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
have more and more core, so if we actually

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
want to leverage all the capacity of the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
machine, it's not just waiting anymore,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
right, we need to change the way you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
write software. So, the free lunch is over

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And then, other important things happened

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
for example in 2007, we had the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Programming Erlang book, published by

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Pragmatic Programmers, by Joe Armstrong,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
which is one of the creators of the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
language. And I have it here because it

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
was when I first started to hear about

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Erlang, right. It brought Erlang into

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
other communities and in particular

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it brought it to communities I was

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
involving with. And then, another event

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that happened in this timelines is that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in 2009, Rails, we had a Rails release,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that said that Rails was "threadsafe".

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And the reason why they did that, is the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Rails Core Team, they did that, is because

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there was, if you were around the Rails

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
community around that time, you.. there

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
was a pressure, at that time right, on the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Rails Core Team, exactly that we need to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
make Rails threadsafe, exactly because

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Rails developers wanted to leverage the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
ability of using all the cores on the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
machine, and use the machine efficiently.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And one year later, I joined the Rails

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Core Team, and I actually found out ah

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that Rails was actually not really

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
"threadsafe", that's why I put it in

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
between quotes. Because I was constantly

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
fixing bugs, and there was actually many

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
reasons, not going to go into details,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that Rails was not actually threadsafe. So

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I was working on fixing those bugs, and it

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
was kind of frustrating, it was kind of

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
hard, and it was about that time that I

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
start to put the pieces together, right?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So if I'm doing this work and it feels

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
hard, it feels frustrating, but I know

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that concurrency is becoming more and

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
more important, and I know that there

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
are languages like Erlang and many other

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
languages, that solve this concurrency

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
well, okay, um, I need to do something,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
right? I don't want to, we need to see

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
ways, I can make this situation better.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And then I started to study, learn, play

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
with other languages, and throughout this

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
process, so I was reading many books,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
trying to get ideas from different places.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I found this book, 7 Languges in 7 Weeks

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
by Bruce who'll be speaking later today.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And I was actually familiar with the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
majority of the language in the book, but

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the thing that really stood out in that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
book is that it got languages like Haskell

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Scala, Clojure, Erlang, and a few other

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
more, and it was talking about those

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
languages, and also their concurrency

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
models but it was, to me, the book really

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
put them, like, in separate places, right,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and okay, this the advantages of the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
approach, followed by this language,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
here are the advantages, here are the

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
trade-offs. And after I read the book,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what really stood out, was the Erlang

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
virtual machine. I was saying, I want to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
write software that going to run on this

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
runtime, on this ecosystem, and so that's

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the lesson I got from it. And the way I

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like to say is that I like it so I went

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and bought more books on Erlang, and I

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
also actually really like Clojure after I

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
read the book so I went to study Clojure

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
too. It kinda shows later in the languages

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
some of our features. And the way I like

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to say about when I was studying Erlang,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
writing software in Erlang now, trying to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
put some things in production, is that

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I like it, everything I saw, but I hated

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the things I didn't see. Okay, and at

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
first, the things I didn't see was a

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
little bit unclear, but I decided okay, so

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I want to try my own language, just for

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
fun, to see if I could get some of those

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
ideas, some of those things I'm missing,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if I can get it there, and see how it's

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
going to play out.