Code BEAM V US Highlights

This past week we attended Code BEAM V US, a remote conference hosted by Code Sync. This was our team’s first time speaking and attending at the event; we had a great time, even just attending remotely. Here’s a quick run-down of a handful of our team’s favorite moments and sessions from the event.

Randall Thomas - Forum over Function

As always, Randall brought a deeply thought-provoking topic; he took us on a journey, looking at the history of programming languages, and called out the current state of innovation in technical languages as primarily reactive and cyclic. Great food for thought and a good challenge to the community to broaden it’s thinking around what innovation in programming languages could look like, with a longer view.

Teaching Functional Programming with Elixir

Melvin gave an updated version of his talk on teaching Functional Programming with Elixir; he found the Code BEAM audience to be particularly engaged, with good Q&A after the presentation.

Fireside chat on Adopting Elixir with Sundi Myint and Ben Marx

Sundi Myint and Ben Marx shared thoughts and examples on the big questions that come up when organizations are considering adopting Elixir. One big takeaway — everyone seems to be hiring for Senior Elixir Developers, but Ben and Sundi make the point that Mids and even Juniors can be successful (and fast) at building Elixir projects, so long as a Senior is involved in the up-front decision-making and planning.

Fireside chat on Machine Learning in Elixir and the BEAM with José Valim and moderated by Bruce Tate

Since it was first announced in Feb 2021, Nx and its possibilities have been a hot topic in the Elixir community. We enjoyed the discussion between Bruce and José about Nx, José’s academic background with machine learning, and his upcoming plans for ML and Elixir.

History and philosophy of Erlang with its creators

We really enjoyed hearing about the history of Erlang; it was a fascinating account, and it was fun to see images and hear about how it all came to be.

Networking with the Toucan App

Our team was happy to report that the Toucan app brought Code BEAM V US closer to an in-person experience than any remote event we've participated in. A delightful example of how the Toucan app enabled fun social interaction is when a group of participants ♥️ and 👋 bombed Frank Hunleth:

What's Next?

If you're looking for a next Elixir event to attend, we've got one coming up — the first ever Elixir Wizards |> Conference. Our CFP is open now through April 18th, and the mini-conference will take place on June 16th-17th; we hope to see you then!