EPISODE 4

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:06] AH: Welcome to Elixir Wizards, a podcast brought to you by SmartLogic, a custom web and mobile development shop based in Baltimore. My name is Alex Housand and I'll be your host. I'm joined by my co-host, Eric Oestrich.

[00:00:18] EO: Hello.

[00:00:19] AH: This season's theme – Oh, Eric, I forgot to say hello to you. I'm sorry. 

[00:00:24] EO: Hello. 

[00:00:24] AH: It's probably, because I've seen you all day. Hey, Eric. This season's theme is the impact of Elixir. We're joined today by our special guest, Adolfo Neto. Hi, Adolfo.

[00:00:35] AN: Hi, Alex. Hi, Eric. Hi, everyone.

[00:00:38] AH: How are you doing today?

[00:00:39] AN: I'm good.

[00:00:41] AH: Before we started, we were talking about rants and obsessions. You brought up Livebook. Do you want to talk about what you're currently pondering about with regards to Livebook?

[00:00:52] AN: Okay. Okay, so I really like Lifebook because as a teacher, I liked that it's something that I can use with beginners, I don't have to teach my students, “Oh, you have to install this and do that.” I just open a life book and it's there, I can test the code. But then a few days ago, fly.io launched it. You cannot have an installation, a free installation of life book on their server, their servers. But then there's this question. A Livebook, is that a markdown file with code, Elixir code me comments, but it's also, so there is the Livebook, which is these files. But there is also the softer Livebook in there is also the installation of Livebook. Also, what's a Livebook? Everything is a Livebook. I would to have better names for these things. I'm not sure if this is really that relevant for the Elixir community.

[00:02:00] AH: That's fair. There's nothing redundancy, though, to really just stick in your brain. When I think about Livebook, like as a term, I honestly think about the book from the third Harry Potter book and movie that came alive and it was a monster. I believe it was called the Monster Book of Monsters. It chopped and tried to get people. Eric's looking like, he's never seen this before. But that's what I think about, because it's a book that's alive. Anyway, we don't need to go down that tangent. I could talk about Harry Potter for a while. Adolfo, you mentioned you’re teacher. 

[00:02:35] AN: Yes. 

[00:02:35] AH: How did you become a professor? Were you always interested in teaching others?

[00:02:40] AN: Well, no, I wasn't. But when I finished my undergraduate course, in computer science at the Federal University of Alagoas, there was a master's degree in a city called Recife which was for our distance from my Maceio. I went there, I did my masters. Then there was this opportunity, “Oh, you can teach here at this Federal School. It's a nice salary. I wasn't prepared to be a teacher, but I became a teacher, because it was a good opportunity. I did that. 

Then after that, after a few years teaching, I believe six years teaching, I know, I'm going to do a PhD. Then when you do a PhD in Brazil, most of the people I know that in the United States, many people that have PhD, they go to industry, to companies, but here in Brazil, most of the people, who have PhDs, they are University professors. I became a university professor. I've had been teaching since 1995, I believe.

[00:03:56] AH: Wow. My mom has a PhD and she's also a university professor. I very much understand. What was your Ph D program? How long did it take to complete? Did you have a dissertation? What was it on?

[00:04:12] AN: Yes, I did my PhD at the University of Sao Paulo, which is one of the largest universities in Brazil. It was in computer science, it last four years, because that's the user is your length here. I know that in the US depends, sometimes it's five, even seven, but here it's most of the time it's four, five years. My PhD dissertation was describing a program which I have implemented. It was a theory improver. So, it was a program that received as input a logical problem and then produces a logical proof. This logical proof was a tree. I also draw the tree and there were – it was non deterministic. For each inputs, there were many possible outputs. I could draw several different outputs. 

The implementation was in Java, at the time, it was 2003. Java was the new, new bright thing that everyone wanted to learn. I wanted to learn Java. My advisor, he preferred, even now he prefers C, a C plus, plus guy. I believe, even mostly, but I want to know this. I want to learn this new language, Java. Then I learned Java. That's it. It's my tour improver. It's still on GitHub. But after the PhD, maybe one or two years after that I did something but then it's there, because the people that I thought that would think this theorem prover would be useful. They didn't care. So for then the people that work with research in large deal, mostly love the formulas, proving theorems. I had even to prove a theorem in my PhD dissertation. They love proving theorems. They don't care much about the implementation.

[00:06:32] AH: I'm having some serious flashbacks to taking a discrete mathematics course, in college, where we did a lot of logical proofs and –

[00:06:43] EO: The geometry. That's my like –

[00:06:46] AH: Ostalgie. 

[00:06:47] EO: Yeah, doing the proofs was the worst part of geometry.

[00:06:51] AH: I agree, Eric, because in my 15 year old brain, I thought, I don't need to prove that this is a triangle, I know. It's a triangle. 

[00:06:59] EO: Yeah. It's like, what are the steps, it's a triangle.

[00:07:05] AH: I see it. I look at it. Besides, I get it, guys. Come on. What made you go to school for computer science in the first place? 

[00:07:14] AN: That's a good question, because I have a podcast too, where I interview women in computer science. It's called a Emilia’s Podcast. It's in Portuguese, unfortunately. So you, you can't understand anything there, but we always ask that in several different answers. My answer is that when I was maybe 12 or 13, I went to a friend's house, and there was a birthday party. It was a long time ago. I may be 1985, a very, very long time ago, then he had one of those small computers that you plug it into the TV set, and it was a Sinclair version. It was a clone of a Sinclair. Sinclair it was a computer that was made in England, but at the time in Brazil, you couldn't just buy something from England. 

A Brazilian company had copied the project, and created a Brazilian clone of Sinclair. I loved that computer. I told my father, no, I want one too. I bought one. I started programming in a very basic programming language, which is called BASIC, BASIC. It's a programming language, which was created by a professor at one or two professors, I don't remember at the Dartmouth College. After that, I don’t know, I sold at – at first it was very funny to play, but then, I got bored with the computer. But when it was time for me to decide which major because here in Brazil, you have to choose your major before entering college. I had few options. There was computer science. I know. I'm going to do computer science, to choose Computer Science. I really liked it. It was a great course. That's how I chose computer science. 

[00:09:32] AH: That's a little stressful to have to know when you're applying what you want to do. I had no idea. What were your other – did you have any other ideas or options about what you might want to study?

[00:09:45] AN: Yes, actually at the time Computer science was my second option, but the first option was not available where I lived. The first option was in Recife. I was too young to live alone in Recife. That's another thing that's different in Brazil. Usually, people that go to college, they don't leave their parents house. My daughter, she has just started college. She's living with me right now. We, Brazilian parents only expect their children to leave their house after they finished college. That was it. I wanted to go to Recife, but my father said, “No, you're going to stay here in Maceio.” Because it was a lot of money that it was much cheaper to study in Maceio, where I lived.

[00:10:44] AH: Cool. Also, I think my, my parents were glad to be rid of me in a loving way. But they were ready for me to like spread my wings and fly a bit. 

[00:10:56] AN: I forgot the course that there was my first option was Statistics, because I thought, “Oh, this is math. I love math, but it's applied math, it’s even better.” So that was my reasoning at the time.

 [00:11:11] AH: Then you ended up writing a theorem prover. So I feel like you've connected your loves. 

[00:11:17] AN: Yes, yes. Sure. 

[00:11:19] AH: Do you do any statistics for fun? 

[00:11:21] AN: No, no, no. I don't have time for that. No.

[00:11:27] AH: No, absolutely not.

[00:11:31] AN: But I went to learn machine learning, because there's some statistics there. I still haven't found time to dive deeper into that.

[00:11:41] AH: You've got students and classes and papers to grade, so there’s no time.

[00:11:48] AN: Yes.

[00:11:49] AH: So, Eric discovered that you have a TikTok, where you teach Elixir, is that correct?

[00:11:57] AN: Not exactly. I have just recorded two, actually three TikTok videos. I have two accounts, one in Portuguese and one in English. The one in English has only two videos right now. But maybe I will try to do more. I am more a YouTube guy. I like that I can just start recording and I also, I am not a good editor. I don't have the patience to edit my videos, and I don't have the time and or the money to pay someone to edit my videos. I just press record and start typing and saying something and there are a lot of videos. I have also two YouTube channels, one in Portuguese and one in English, if you want after that, I can send you the links.

[00:12:51] AH: Yeah, that would be awesome. What types of videos and content do you cover over on your YouTube videos?

[00:12:57] AN: Yes, my YouTube videos recently have been mostly about Elixir and Erlang. I also teach logic. I also have some videos on Logic. But these videos on Logic are only in Portuguese. In my English only channel, I have some videos on Elixir, Erlang. There is a talk that Laura Castro gave to my students on property based testing, that there is a talk also about I don't remember the name of the talk, but it was by Simon Thompson a Professor. I believe he's partially retired now. But he was a professor at the University of Kent. 

His code examples in that talk was were Erlang and that's it. That's some videos to where I chose. Oh, I'm going to solve this exorcism problem or this advent of code problem. Oh, there is something new, for instance, there is a video about Livebook, because I love the Livebook videos that [inaudible 00:14:12] a little bit advanced for what I believe are most of my students. So let me just create a video a little bit simpler where I just saw, this is Livebook. You can do that, and that, and that, because you have a link show. Let's do machine learning with Livebook. This is a bit advanced for my average students.

[00:14:36] AH: Are you teaching your students Elixir?

[00:14:38] AN: Every year, I offer a course called Introduction to Functional Programming, which is not mandatory. How do you say that? It's elective. So the students can choose not many students choose this course. I don't know why but – 

[00:14:59] EO: They are missing out.

[00:15:01] AN: Yes, but I so what did I do this year? I said, “Oh, so I don't have many students from here, so let's open to the world.” 

[00:15:10] AH: Cool.

[00:15:11] AN: I had some students from other Universities, one student from England, one student from Italy. It was great. It was a great experience, the half produces some – as I said that I implemented that to your improver in Java, I know, now you are going to implemented, to the improver, just that in Elixir. I'm still reviewing their projects when they are okay, I'm going to show them to the world.

[00:15:48] AH: Awesome. You teach Functional Programming. How did you find it yourself? Did you also have a class that you took in college? Or did you stumble upon it like I did?

[00:16:00] AN: That’s interesting, because when I was an older graduate student, I had a course in I believe it was Artificial Intelligence and the professor used Lisp and he told me “No, you are going to do that in.” His speech was a softer for his master's systems, the master thesis, and I program it in Lisp, but I didn't know it was a functional programming language. It was only a Lisp for me. Only after some years, when I was in my master's, I had two colleagues, they were doing functional programming, but with ML, which is an old Functional Programming language, but I wasn't studying at the time. 

So many years later, I found a book by Bruce Tate, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, and reading that book, I discovered Clojure, which is a lisp for the Java Virtual Machine. At the time, it was throughout 2011. I already knew a little bit of Java. So, whoa, that's nice. I know, a little bit of Lisp, like travel. But it was my past, my hobby. I didn't use Clojure seriously. I'm not a professional programmer and my students it was too much for my students. But Clojure became my favorite programming language at the time. 

When I went to the US to spend a year, I visit Cognitech, I believe that's the name of the company. Cognitech is the company behind this Clojure, Stuart Halloway works there. A few months ago, it was bought by a Brazilian company, Nubank, which is the same company that bought Platform Attack, which is the company behind Elixir. There is some relationship there, but that's more coincidence, because Nubank is a very big digital bank in Brazil, and it use Clojure in their banking services. I even went to a Clojure conference when I was in the US in 2014. But that's it, I liked Clojure. I studied Clojure, but I wasn't planning on doing much with it. 

Then when I was in the US, I went to a lot of meetups. In some meetups, people used to mention there are these new languages, Rust, Elixir, and I believe at the time, I already knew that Elixir was a programming language, which was created by a Brazilian Jose Valim. When I came back to Brazil, I bought Dave Thomas' book. I saw, that's even better than Clojure for me. I mean, not for I'm not saying that Clojure is not good. No, I like more – I like Elixir more than Clojure, because there are not a lot of parentheses. Then I started studying and giving talks to my students. Then at some point I decided to offer these, Introduction to Functional Programming course. That's basically my story with Functional Programming. I'm not a person who does research in functional programming, which is much more advanced than what I usually do with Elixir.

[00:19:46] AH: What do you think the benefits are of a functional programming language, be it Elixir or Clojure?

[00:19:53] AN: I liked that the idea that most of the things you do is creating functions where you process data. There is input and output. Of course, we know that not all functions are going to be mathematical functions. A mathematical function is a pure function, where for the same input, it's always the same output. Sometimes we need something that is not a mathematical function that for instance, in Node dot shuffle, for the same input, you can have several different outputs. It's, I believe it's, for me for the kind of things that I do, it's easier to think about the data, I'm going to represent for instance, in large scale I’m going to represent a formula or turf table or Diablo proof as data and I'm going to pass this structure through several functions, until I have as a result, that thing that is the result of this logical procedure.

[00:21:10] AH: So what do you want your students to take away from your functional programming class? Like if there was one thing that they could really take away? What would you want it to be?

[00:21:21] AN: What I want them to take from my course, is that most of the functions that the implement that the represent our mathematical functions, because they, I believe, as most of my students, no, not most, all my students up to now, they already knew how to program in some other language. They miss that state, they want to change the state. What I wanted – now you forget about state, think about the input, and the outputs, and your function is going to get that input process it and produce an output.

[00:22:05] EO: I know this happened with me, but for the students that take the functional course and are used to that mutating state, like do you see if you have them again next semester, for a different class? Do you see that they're, like coding style had changed at all to be slightly more functional?

[00:22:22] AN: Unfortunately, I don't see – I have never seen any one of them after my course, because the they come from different places, and they go, but I see that some – now for this last course, even for the previous one I keep in touch with them. I know some of them. I know they are working with functional programming. So that's something that I like about it.

[00:22:54] AH: That's exciting. You know that you had a hand in their functional programming journey. 

[00:22:59] AN: Yes. I'm not sure how much my course was responsible, or if they came to my course, because we're already interested in functional programming. 

[00:23:12] AH: But here we are. 

[00:23:13] EO: Yes. 

[00:23:14] AH: Adolfo, you also podcast as you mentioned earlier. What do you like about podcasting?

[00:23:20] AN: I really started, because I loved listening to podcasts. There are many podcasts as you know, there are many kinds of podcasts. So it started like that. I'm part of this project called [inaudible 00:23:40], which is impossible to translate. Emilia is, let's say Emilia is mini. Okay, Minnie Mouse but Emilia's that, it's a small girl. Although Minnie Mouse is not a girl, right? It's, it's, but okay, Emelia is a girl and she's part of traditional literature in Brazil. But okay, this project is, the goal is to bring more women, more girls, more women to computer science, because in the course we have here, personally only 15% of our students are women, and then think that's too low. It could be easily 40%, 50%, why 15? So at some time, I said, Oh, the students as I told you before, the students they have to choose their course before entering college. 

I said “No, I have to do something.” That those students in, how do you say high school? They listen, “Whoa, that's what a woman does in computer science.” Because there is this, this idea that computer science is mostly for men. Yes, it is because there is lots of men, but we have to change that, there are already a lot of great women in computer science. I can cite, for instance, Laurie Williams, she's a professor at North Carolina State University. There are so many. I said, “No, let's interview some of these women so they can tell their story. How did they get to computer science? What fascinating things they are doing?” That's it. What they can say to girls and women that want to come to computer science. That's how I created my first podcast, which is called Emilia’s podcast. After some time, I said, “Oh, I really like this. I really interviewing people.” I created a parallel project, a podcast called Professor Adolfonet, which is my name with Professor in Portuguese in the beginning, where I interview only for this podcast, I only interviewed one women, but I don't remember why I wanted to go to go deeper than Emilias Podcast. 

But okay, this is my side project. After that, some colleagues from the software engineering research community, in Brazil, they said, “Let's create a podcast for software engineering research in Brazil, in various frontiers, things related software. After some time, I really would to have a podcast about Elixir in Portuguese. I know there are great podcasts about Elixir in English, like Elixir Wizards, but wouldn't it be great to have a podcast about Elixir in Portuguese? I tweeted, “Oh, what do you think? Do you want to join me in that?” Three people volunteered. Now we have a podcast called Elixir em Foco, that's the name in Portuguese, which will be Elixir in focus, where we interview many people from the Brazilian community, it's in Portuguese. 

We can also interview people from Portugal, but we haven't yet invited anyone from Portugal. But we have interviewed many very interesting people from the Brazilian community. It has been a great pleasure to do that.

[00:27:45] AH: I would agree that just talking with people in general is really fascinating. I just wanted to say I love that you have a podcast dedicated to getting more women and girls into computer science. I never had that. 

[00:27:59] AN: Yes. 

[00:28:00] AH: I love that. I think that's great. Have you tried to interact? I guess it's harder because there's a pandemic, but have you had any interactions with younger, younger girls and help trying to give them resources and information so that that way there's a more direct line of communication, I guess? 

[00:28:19] AN: Yes. As I said, this podcast, the Emilia’s Podcast is part of a larger program called the Emilia Amazon Beats. In that program, use it to go before the pandemic, used to go to schools, and present “Oh, this is computer science you can go to computer science too.” But after the pandemic and in here in Brazil, the University where I teach, we haven't still – we didn't go back to the physical classes yet. We haven't been able yet to go to school because one of my plans was oh, we are going to that school. We are going to say computer science is that. After that, we say, “Oh, if you want to know more, here is the podcast.” But we haven't been able. We tried some online activities. I believe we have been there has been only one activity with schools up to now. It's tough.

[00:29:17] AH: It's harder, virtually. Yeah, it's just harder. You mentioned that you are daughter's started college, is she studying computer science?

[00:29:26] AN: No, she is doesn’t, she’s doing graphic design. 

[00:29:31] AH: Cool. That's awesome. I'm guessing she is also virtually attending college.

[00:29:37] AN: Yes. She doesn't like that.

[00:29:41] AH: But we've got a virtual student in the house and a virtual professor in the house just fighting over zoom time. I imagine.

[00:29:51] AN: Zoom and Google meet and things, you've heard college usually most things are you mostly Use Google meet, but sometimes I have to use Zoom.

[00:30:04] AH: There's just so many options nowadays. It's pretty crazy, honestly.

[00:30:08] AN: Yes. 

[00:30:08] EO: Even if it was in person, since she goes to a different one, sounds like you don't get to have that, like you as a student meeting your parent as a professor walked by.

[00:30:19] AN: Well, she tried to better something happened and she went to a different college. Yes. But it was one of her options to attend my university, but it would be a different course. So it wouldn't be a problem. Yes. But we've had in my department, we've had cases where – I taught the son of one of my colleagues. He was a great student, by the way, but –

[00:30:52] AH: I was going to say, was he good? 

[00:30:54] AN: Yes. 

[00:30:55] AH: I'd also you mentioned, is it. Laurie Whelan at the University of North Carolina, is that right? 

[00:31:03] AN: Laurie Williams. 

[00:31:05] AH: Williams, got it. 

[00:31:07] AN: But it's not the University of North Carolina. It’s North Carolina State University. Which is in Raleigh.

[00:31:15] AH: Yes, I was going to ask. I think I saw that – Did you have a year in Raleigh? Is that where you were, when you came to the US?

[00:31:22] AN: Yes, it was. 

[00:31:23] AH: How did you enjoy the South?

[00:31:25] AN: Yes, when I arrived in the US, I didn’t know that there was this difference South, North for me, it was all USA, United States or, as we say in Brazil, Estados Unidos. I didn't know, then I arrived that they're – Oh, there's North and South and it's curious because North Carolina is part of the South. How does that happen? But as I stayed in Raleigh, and I lived in the University, one of the University Housing condominiums, I don't remember the name but what I lived with other students and so for me, it was not – there has been no problem, because people say that when you go to North Carolina to the country, it's tougher. 

But in Raleigh everything's okay. There were a lot of Muslims and Mexicans and people from the guy – one guy I really liked there. It was from Colombia. So it was very good, very diverse population. But one thing that happened while I was there that shocked me, that there was a kind, it was not exactly a mass shooting, because only between coats, only three people died. It was terrible and that's the thing that we have here in Brazil. Somehow it's more shocking for a Brazilian, Brazil is a very violent country and you go to the US, you really think, “Oh, it's going to be less violent than in, something like that happens. It was one of the people that died was a student who are former students from NC State. They were from a Muslim family, and there was a Muslim – how do you say that, a Muslim place of prayer? 

[00:33:37] AH: A Mosque.

[00:33:38] AN: Yes, a mosque close to the place where I lived in, so people from all over the city came there to mourn their  death. That was shocking, but I know that it's not an easy problem to solve.

[00:33:54] AH: Not an easy problem to solve and also, I would say, unfortunately, not a very rare problem, either. 

[00:34:02] AN: Yes. 

[00:34:03] AH: I am quite delighted that you had a nice time in North Carolina. I'm from South Carolina, which I won't say is the better of the two, because both have their positives. But I'm also from a University town. The benefits of diversity and a wide array of cultural differences and a university town is something you don't get every everywhere. 

[00:34:28] AN: Yes, yes. 

[00:34:29] AH: I'm glad you had a nice time.

[00:34:31] AN: It was a great. No, my wife sometimes say, “Oh, no, let's go back there live for two or three more years.” Because it was a great time, not only because it was – I was there on a sabbatical, which is easier in kind in as in terms of working conditions and I was not really working as a professor at NC State. Nope. I was on a sabbatical. I could do whatever I wanted. But other than that I really like the main things that you can do in Raleigh. It's a city – I don't know if you have ever been to Raleigh, but there is one thing that I – there is not here where I live, which they call their the greenways. Some baths in the woods. 

[00:35:25] AH: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:35:26] AN: It's a great place to walk in Raleigh. 

[00:35:30] AH: It is very lovely. I've been to Raleigh, two or three times now. It's a nice little city. It's nice. They're lucky they have a red hat, which really revamped the whole downtown area. They are apparently getting an Apple campus now. Raleigh is going to be the new hip happening hot place to be. If you want to move back, you better do it soon.

[00:35:59] AN: Yes, who knows, maybe.

[00:36:01] AH: Back to teaching, as somebody that teaches functional programming to students and as somebody that has learned Elixir, what do you think is the one of the better resources for learning Elixir?

[00:36:15] AN: When I think about resources for learning, I know that many people, different people like different things. I really liked a good book. I liked Dave Thomas' book. I haven't read Saša Juric book, but many people love that book. I also like only sizzle Mater's book this one I have read, I have read the Dave Thomas book and [inaudible] book. They are great because they teach you how from the beginning and then the basic. I don't like, I know that some people like that a personal, let's build a project. 

Okay, I see many people love it, but that's not my thing. I prefer to start from the base. There are these two books and also Elixir school, of course, because it's free in several languages. When I teach, when I give talks, presenting a lecture to new audience, which I do two or three times every year, they say, “Oh, you don't have to expend one cents, you can go to Elixir school, it's free, then you can go to exorcism and practice what you have learned.” These are my favorite resources, these two books, Elixir school and Exorcism.

[00:37:44] AH: I do like Exorcism. They have some great, great problems on there. I had this conversation earlier today with one of the SmartLogic apprentices that it's always good to work on your skills in whatever way you can find. Sometimes that just means going to find a practice problem.

[00:38:04] AN: About Exercism – I would like to help people go to the Erlang Track too, it's great in they have great mentors. My favorite mentor there is Brujo Benavides, because every solution, I submit, almost all the time goes to him and he gives great feedback. That's also – I believe it can be useful for Elixir developers to learn Erlang, too.

[00:38:36] AH: Yeah, I absolutely agree, which is something that's been on my mind a lot recently. I know the last season we talked about the Beam. It's pretty easy to learn a language but a little bit harder to maybe take the time to learn the basis of the language. Learning Erlang is something that's been on the top of my mind, as well. I appreciate the plug. What I'm trying to say. Adolfo, what are your biggest hopes for Elixir as a language?

[00:39:06] AN: I hope it continues growing. It doesn't for me, for my tastes — it doesn't have to be more popular than Python or Java or – no, the popularity it has right now and a little bit more, it's okay for me. I don't know what other people in the community think, but for me, it's okay. Mostly I want that the community keeps being that safe and funny and it's a great place to be of at least most of the time. Of course, there’s some small problem. Most of the time I go to, to the telegram group. There is a Elixir Brazil telegram group, and people are nice there. I went to conferences before the pandemics and people were very, very nice there. 

The Elixir Brazil conference is great. I haven't been to other conferences. I can say it's better than Elixir call for code being. But Elixir, the Elixir Brazil, I went to the 2018, 2019 edition at fiscally into it was great 2020 was weird to have it was great too. That's what I hope, the community keep on being what it is very nice place to be.

[00:40:34] AH: That's a lovely. I would agree with you also, I feel this is the first time I've ever really been involved in the community. Maybe similar to you. The Elixir conference that I went to, for the first time was the first tech conference I've ever been too. But everybody was very warm and welcoming, and just excited to have other people there to learn. Which is a good feeling to feel welcomed, I should say. As somebody that did your dissertation in Java. What do you prefer? Object oriented, functional programming, not saying either one is necessarily better than the other but what do you prefer?

[00:41:20] AN: Definitely, Functional Programming, because at the time, I didn't know that there were maybe I should have done my dissertation in Functional Programming limbs. As I remember that, when I was in a conference and I was presenting my work at a conference and oh, I have implemented analytic Tableau because it was Tableau, one of the logical procedures I implements. There was a woman there, and he told me, “Oh, this is much easier in lisp”. Yes, it's true. It's much easier, but at the time I wanted to do in Java, and I did in Java it was a great experience, but for the kind of thing that I like to do, Functional Programming is much better.

[00:42:10] AH: Yeah, I would agree.

[00:42:12] EO: We had a, took a course called it was something like survey of programming languages and in five different languages. We did the N-Queens problem. I just remember as part of that, we did prologue last, which I don't remember the solution to it, but it was supposed to be you did it in Java, then you did it in Scheme, and then you did it in all these different things. It's like the prologue ones, three lines or something.

[00:42:42] AN: Yes, but suppose you had to do something like Phoenix Live viewing Prologue. Maybe to it and be that easier. 

[00:42:52] EO: Well, Erlang is Prologue-y, right? I guess we did it.

[00:42:57] AH: We're there. We've made it. Adolfo, I want to end on a fun note before I ask you for any plugs. But our other hosts, Sundi, asked me to ask you about something and it's nothing tech related, but she saw on your Twitter that you were climbing a tree, and she just wanted to know why? I think.

[00:43:25] AN: Why, because I liked it. 

[00:43:26] AH: It's fun. 

[00:43:27] AN: Yes, because it’s fun, but there is a guy, I don’t remember his name, but he has a technique called Move nets, and he climbs tree. You were only order some videos on YouTube and he's great. He does everything. I believe climbing a tree is part of natural movements. That's something that, we can do it. It's easy. It's not strenuous. It's not something that after that you're you can move a finger. But it's fun. Sometimes when the tree allows it, you can have a nice view up there. That's why I like to climb trees.

[00:44:12] AH: I'm going to take a leaf out of yearbook not to make a tree but I often see trees and I think that's a good climb entry. I don't blame them. But maybe the next time I see one, I will.

[00:44:25] AN: Yes. My daughter also likes it. She's sometimes, “Oh, that's a good three. Let's let me claim it.”

[00:44:32] AH: It's a bonding experience. Well, Adolfo, do you have any final plugs, asks, where people can find you on social media, where people can find the things that you're involved in?

[00:44:47] AN: Yes, I'm addicted to Twitter and my Twitter account is — how do you say that symbol @adolfont, because my name Adolfo Neto, but when there – I believe that there are lots of Adolfo Netos in Spanish speaking countries. They always got there first. So I use adolfont, it’s Neto without the E and the O, adolfont. That's where I usually put the links there for the my YouTube channel when my third site, if you go to my profile on Twitter, there's a link there that takes you to my YouTube channel when my podcast is and everything I do.

[00:45:37] AH: Awesome. Thank you. We will also have all those links at the notes. Eric, you were going to say something.

[00:45:44] EO: Yeah, just since you pointed out that there's a lot of Adolfo Neto’s while looking for your YouTube. I found one that does CrossFit. CrossFit videos.

[00:45:56] AN: That's great. I didn't know that.

[00:45:59] AH: You could start like a tree climbing course, set of videos on YouTube to compete with the cross fitter. 

[00:46:09] EO: Or on TikTok. 

[00:46:10] AH: Or on TikTok.

[00:46:12] AN:  Oh, maybe, maybe, who knows. 

[00:46:14] AH: We’ll never know. Maybe the next time we talk to you, you'll be a full on TikTok influencer. The dream, not really.

[00:46:22] AN: Yes, if it helps to – because something that I believe that people need is more movement in their lives, including me. 

[00:46:36] AH: True. I had to make sure, I stood up today use my standing desk. Everybody, if you're listening to this, this is your reminder to stand up and take a few steps. Move your body around everybody. It's good for you. Well, Adolfo, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a real treat to get to talk to you.

[00:46:55] AN: Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Eric.

[OUTRO] 

[00:46:57] AH: Of course. That's it for this episode of Elixir Wizards. Thank you again to our guest, Adolfo Neto for joining us today. Elixir Wizards is a smart logic production. Today's hosts include myself, Alex Housand and my co-host Eric Oestrich. Our producer is Bonnie Lander and our executive producer is Rose Burt. We get production and promotion assistance from Michelle McFadden. 

Here at SmartLogic, we build custom web and mobile software. We're always looking to take on new projects. We work in Elixir, Rails and React, Kubernetes and more. If you need a piece of custom software built, hit us up. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. Follow @SmartLogic on Twitter for news and episode announcements. You can also join us on the Elixir Wizards on Discord. Just head over to the podcast page to find the link. Don't forget to join us again next week for more on the impact of Elixir.

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