John Mertens's guest appearances

John Mertens

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José Valim

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Many organizations take an incremental approach when adopting Elixir, preferring to pick up its nuances by using it to work on non-essential projects. But not Change.org. Today we speak with Change.org Director of Engineering John Mertens about how his company adopted Elixir to create a business-critical app that handles over a billion emails per month. From building webpages on GeoCities to working as an IT intern at an Iowan prison, we open our conversation by exploring John’s coding background. After chatting about his first Elixir project, we dive into Change.org’s process in adopting Elixir. As John shares his insights into successfully integrating Elixir into your tech stack, he highlights the benefits provided by the language. Later, John discusses the advantages of event-driven architecture and how this structure makes it easier for teams to access and analyze data, while also making it easier to add product features. We wrap up this episode with John highlighting his user-centered approach to coding. Join us to hear John’s lessons on making the leap and adopting Elixir in large organizations. Key Points From This Episode:  John shares details about his role at Change.org. The story behind John and Change’s Elixir adoption.  Hear about John’s coding journey. How John made an Elixir app based on spotting San Francisco tram carriages.  Insights into the massive project that Change built using Elixir. Why Elixir is taking over Change’s back-end tech stack. Using Elixir to build reliable event-based architecture. Exploring event-driven architecture from the perspective of Change’s system. John makes a compelling case for event-driven architecture.  How Change hires for Elixir roles. Change’s process in training their staff to code in Elixir. John talks about his user-centred approach to design.  Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Elixir Wizards Discord — https://smr.tl/wizards-discord Elixir Wizards Email — podcast@smartlogic.io John Mertens — https://www.mertonium.com/about John Mertens on Twitter — https://twitter.com/mertonium John Mertens on GitHub — https://github.com/mertonium Change.org — https://www.change.org/ Change.org Careers — https://careers.change.org/ José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim GenStage and Flow - José Valim (Lambda Days 2017) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlXNUXmcgE Dashbit — https://dashbit.co/ Hacker News — https://thehackernews.com/ Paul Graham — https://twitter.com/paulg/ Nim — https://nim-lang.org/ Pony — https://www.ponylang.io/ Grax.io — https://www.grax.com/ Logo — https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html Nerves — https://www.nerves-project.org/ Flow — https://hexdocs.pm/flow/Flow.html ElixirConf EU — https://www.elixirconf.eu/ Martin Fowler — https://martinfowler.com/ ‘The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction’ — https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying Salesforce Marketing Cloud — https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/marketing-cloud/overview/ ‘Delivering social change with Elixir at Change.org’  — https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/27/delivering-social-change-with-elixir-at-change.org/ Code for America — https://www.codeforamerica.org/Special Guest: John Mertens.

Many organizations take an incremental approach when adopting Elixir, preferring to pick up its nuances by using it to work on non-essential projects. But not <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a>. Today we speak with <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a> Director of Engineering John Mertens about how his company adopted Elixir to create a business-critical app that handles over a billion emails per month. From building webpages on GeoCities to working as an IT intern at an Iowan prison, we open our conversation by exploring John’s coding background. After chatting about his first Elixir project, we dive into <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a>’s process in adopting Elixir. As John shares his insights into successfully integrating Elixir into your tech stack, he highlights the benefits provided by the language. Later, John discusses the advantages of event-driven architecture and how this structure makes it easier for teams to access and analyze data, while also making it easier to add product features. We wrap up this episode with John highlighting his user-centered approach to coding. Join us to hear John’s lessons on making the leap and adopting Elixir in large organizations. Key Points From This Episode: <ul> <li>John shares details about his role at <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a>.</li> <li>The story behind John and Change’s Elixir adoption. </li> <li>Hear about John’s coding journey.</li> <li>How John made an Elixir app based on spotting San Francisco tram carriages. </li> <li>Insights into the massive project that Change built using Elixir.</li> <li>Why Elixir is taking over Change’s back-end tech stack.</li> <li>Using Elixir to build reliable event-based architecture.</li> <li>Exploring event-driven architecture from the perspective of Change’s system.</li> <li>John makes a compelling case for event-driven architecture. </li> <li>How Change hires for Elixir roles.</li> <li>Change’s process in training their staff to code in Elixir.</li> <li>John talks about his user-centred approach to design.</li> </ul> Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — <a href="https://smartlogic.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://smartlogic.io/</a> Elixir Wizards Discord — <a href="https://smr.tl/wizards-discord" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://smr.tl/wizards-discord</a> Elixir Wizards Email — <a href="mailto:podcast@smartlogic.io" rel="nofollow">podcast@smartlogic.io</a> John Mertens — <a href="https://www.mertonium.com/about" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.mertonium.com/about</a> John Mertens on Twitter — <a href="https://twitter.com/mertonium" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/mertonium</a> John Mertens on GitHub — <a href="https://github.com/mertonium" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/mertonium</a> <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a> — <a href="https://www.change.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.change.org/</a> <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a> Careers — <a href="https://careers.change.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://careers.change.org/</a> José Valim — <a href="https://twitter.com/josevalim" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/josevalim</a> GenStage and Flow - José Valim (Lambda Days 2017) — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlXNUXmcgE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlXNUXmcgE</a> Dashbit — <a href="https://dashbit.co/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://dashbit.co/</a> Hacker News — <a href="https://thehackernews.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://thehackernews.com/</a> Paul Graham — <a href="https://twitter.com/paulg/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/paulg/</a> Nim — <a href="https://nim-lang.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://nim-lang.org/</a> Pony — <a href="https://www.ponylang.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.ponylang.io/</a> <a href="http://Grax.io" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Grax.io</a> — <a href="https://www.grax.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.grax.com/</a> Logo — <a href="https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/logo_programming.html</a> Nerves — <a href="https://www.nerves-project.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.nerves-project.org/</a> Flow — <a href="https://hexdocs.pm/flow/Flow.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://hexdocs.pm/flow/Flow.html</a> ElixirConf EU — <a href="https://www.elixirconf.eu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.elixirconf.eu/</a> Martin Fowler — <a href="https://martinfowler.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://martinfowler.com/</a> ‘The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction’ — <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying</a> Salesforce Marketing Cloud — <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/marketing-cloud/overview/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/marketing-cloud/overview/</a> ‘Delivering social change with Elixir at <a href="http://Change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Change.org</a>’ — <a href="https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/27/delivering-social-change-with-elixir-at-change.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2020/10/27/delivering-social-change-with-elixir-at-change.org/</a> Code for America — <a href="https://www.codeforamerica.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.codeforamerica.org/</a>Special Guest: John Mertens.

John Mertens on Adopting Elixir at Change.org

Sponsors   Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan   GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT   My Ruby Story   CacheFly   Panel   Mark Ericksen   Michael Ries   Joined by Special Guest: John Mertens Summary John Mertens, from change.org, joins the panel to discuss a recent talk he gave at ElixirConf EU. The panel starts off by discussing change.org’s adoption of Elixir and how John helped to bring that about. John discusses the value of Flow even though it is not part of the standard library. The panel discusses what the pieces of data look in John’s pipeline. After giving some context for his project, John gives details about his work in Flow and why they chose Flow for that project. The panel discusses tuning the numbers in Flow to make it faster.    John shares his experience using Broadway and shares his favorite features. The panel asks him to compare Flow and Broadway in terms of configuration and understanding what is going on. John shares factors to consider when deciding to use Flow or Broadway for a project. The panel discusses supervision trees, using graceful shutdown, and the difficulty of messing up a flow.   Links   John Mertens - Lessons From Our First Trillion Messages with Flow - ElixirConf EU 2019    https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir    GenStage and Flow - José Valim | ElixirLive 2016   https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer    https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry    https://github.com/change    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel    https://github.com/mertonium   https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en   https://www.mertonium.com   https://thoughtfulcoder.club   https://www.change.org   https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix   https://twitter.com/elixir_mix   Picks Mark Ericksen:   http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/    John Mertens:   Solid Ground    Money Heist   Michael Ries:   https://nerves-project.org/  

<h2>Sponsors</h2> <ul> <li> <a href="http://sentry.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sentry</a>– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan </li> <li> <a href="https://devchat.tv/gitlabcommit" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GitLab</a> | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT </li> <li> <a href="https://devchat.tv/my-ruby-story/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">My Ruby Story</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.cachefly.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CacheFly</a> </li> </ul> <h3>Panel</h3> <ul> <li> Mark Ericksen </li> <li> Michael Ries </li> </ul> Joined by Special Guest: John Mertens <h3>Summary</h3> John Mertens, from <a href="http://change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">change.org</a>, joins the panel to discuss a recent talk he gave at ElixirConf EU. The panel starts off by discussing <a href="http://change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">change.org</a>’s adoption of Elixir and how John helped to bring that about. John discusses the value of Flow even though it is not part of the standard library. The panel discusses what the pieces of data look in John’s pipeline. After giving some context for his project, John gives details about his work in Flow and why they chose Flow for that project. The panel discusses tuning the numbers in Flow to make it faster.  John shares his experience using Broadway and shares his favorite features. The panel asks him to compare Flow and Broadway in terms of configuration and understanding what is going on. John shares factors to consider when deciding to use Flow or Broadway for a project. The panel discusses supervision trees, using graceful shutdown, and the difficulty of messing up a flow.   <h3>Links</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t46L9RKmlNo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Mertens - Lessons From Our First Trillion Messages with Flow - ElixirConf EU 2019</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K5yIPx-JFE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GenStage and Flow - José Valim | ElixirLive 2016</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/change" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/change</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/mertonium" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/mertonium</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.mertonium.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.mertonium.com</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://thoughtfulcoder.club/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://thoughtfulcoder.club</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.change.org</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/elixir_mix" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/elixir_mix</a> </li> </ul> <h3>Picks</h3> Mark Ericksen: <ul> <li> <a href="http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/</a> </li> </ul> John Mertens: <ul> <li> <a href="https://youtu.be/pO4_Wlq8JeI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Solid Ground</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80192098" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money Heist</a> </li> </ul> Michael Ries: <ul> <li> <a href="https://nerves-project.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://nerves-project.org/</a> </li></ul>

EMx 066: Going with the Flow with John Mertens

Sponsors  Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan   GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT   My Ruby Story   CacheFly  Panel  Mark Ericksen   Michael Ries  Joined by Special Guest: John MertensSummaryJohn Mertens, from change.org, joins the panel to discuss a recent talk he gave at ElixirConf EU. The panel starts off by discussing change.org’s adoption of Elixir and how John helped to bring that about. John discusses the value of Flow even though it is not part of the standard library. The panel discusses what the pieces of data look in John’s pipeline. After giving some context for his project, John gives details about his work in Flow and why they chose Flow for that project. The panel discusses tuning the numbers in Flow to make it faster.  John shares his experience using Broadway and shares his favorite features. The panel asks him to compare Flow and Broadway in terms of configuration and understanding what is going on. John shares factors to consider when deciding to use Flow or Broadway for a project. The panel discusses supervision trees, using graceful shutdown, and the difficulty of messing up a flow.  Links  John Mertens - Lessons From Our First Trillion Messages with Flow - ElixirConf EU 2019    https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir    GenStage and Flow - José Valim | ElixirLive 2016   https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer    https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry    https://github.com/change    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel    https://github.com/mertonium   https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en   https://www.mertonium.com   https://thoughtfulcoder.club   https://www.change.org   https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix   https://twitter.com/elixir_mix  PicksMark Ericksen:  http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/   John Mertens:  Solid Ground    Money Heist  Michael Ries:  https://nerves-project.org/   Special Guest: John Mertens. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy &amp; Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

<h2>Sponsors</h2><ul> <li> <a href="http://sentry.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sentry</a>– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan </li> <li> <a href="https://devchat.tv/gitlabcommit" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GitLab</a> | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT </li> <li> <a href="https://devchat.tv/my-ruby-story/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">My Ruby Story</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.cachefly.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">CacheFly</a> </li> </ul><h3>Panel</h3><ul> <li> Mark Ericksen </li> <li> Michael Ries </li> </ul>Joined by Special Guest: John Mertens<h3>Summary</h3>John Mertens, from <a href="http://change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">change.org</a>, joins the panel to discuss a recent talk he gave at ElixirConf EU. The panel starts off by discussing <a href="http://change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">change.org</a>’s adoption of Elixir and how John helped to bring that about. John discusses the value of Flow even though it is not part of the standard library. The panel discusses what the pieces of data look in John’s pipeline. After giving some context for his project, John gives details about his work in Flow and why they chose Flow for that project. The panel discusses tuning the numbers in Flow to make it faster.  John shares his experience using Broadway and shares his favorite features. The panel asks him to compare Flow and Broadway in terms of configuration and understanding what is going on. John shares factors to consider when deciding to use Flow or Broadway for a project. The panel discusses supervision trees, using graceful shutdown, and the difficulty of messing up a flow.  <h3>Links</h3><ul> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t46L9RKmlNo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Mertens - Lessons From Our First Trillion Messages with Flow - ElixirConf EU 2019</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://pragprog.com/book/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K5yIPx-JFE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GenStage and Flow - José Valim | ElixirLive 2016</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/debugging.html#observer</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/beam-telemetry/telemetry</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/change" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/change</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassingly_parallel</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://github.com/mertonium" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/mertonium</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/mertonium?lang=en</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.mertonium.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.mertonium.com</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://thoughtfulcoder.club/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://thoughtfulcoder.club</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.change.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.change.org</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/Elixir-Mix</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/elixir_mix" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/elixir_mix</a> </li> </ul><h3>Picks</h3>Mark Ericksen:<ul> <li> <a href="http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/</a> </li> </ul>John Mertens:<ul> <li> <a href="https://youtu.be/pO4_Wlq8JeI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Solid Ground</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80192098" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Money Heist</a> </li> </ul>Michael Ries:<ul> <li> <a href="https://nerves-project.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://nerves-project.org/</a> </li> </ul>Special Guest: John Mertens. Advertising Inquiries: <a href="https://redcircle.com/brands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy &amp; Opt-Out: <a href="https://redcircle.com/privacy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>