Elixir Wizards

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Flora Petterson, a self-taught Elixir developer, speaker, and maker, to talk about what happens when software systems forget and how developers can design for recovery.



Flora shares her unconventional path to programming, from puppetry and creative work to discovering Elixir through Nerves and hardware projects. The conversation centers on her talk, “After the Crash,” which uses forgetting as a way to think about failure in software systems. Flora and the hosts explore process crashes, lost state, GenServer lifecycle, supervision, “let it crash,” and the difference between preventing failure and building systems that know how to recover.



The episode also expands from software memory to team memory. Flora discusses documentation, institutional knowledge, mentorship, storytelling, and the challenge of preserving both what a system does and why decisions were made. Along the way, she shares how creative, low-stakes projects can help developers build deeper technical understanding and how the Elixir community can continue supporting new and self-taught engineers.

Key topics discussed in this episode:

Learning through experimentation with Nerves, hardware, and animatronics

What it means for software systems to “forget”

Failure, recovery, and lost state in the BEAM

GenServer lifecycle and process recovery

The nuance behind “let it crash”

What supervision trees can and cannot protect

Designing systems to recover from failure

Deciding when state should be recovered or abandoned

Documentation as organizational memory

Capturing the “why” behind technical decisions

Tests, docs, and examples as living knowledge

Mentorship for self-taught and junior developers

Storytelling as technical communication

Creative projects as a path to deeper learning

AI’s impact on new developers

Community, curiosity, and growth in Elixir

Join us and the broader Elixir community at ElixirConf in Chicago this September 10-11. Use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/

Links mentioned:

Embedded Elixir Nerve https://nerves-project.org/

Gig City Elixir Conference https://www.gigcityelixir.com/

Strange Loop Conference https://www.thestrangeloop.com/

Elixir Wizards S15E05 The State of Code Quality with Saša Jurić http://bit.ly/EWS15E05

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art

"Systems that run forever self-heal and scale" by Joe Armstrong (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNICGEwmXLU

Conway's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Dunning–Kruger effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Elixir Wizards S15E10 Bruce Tate http://bit.ly/EWS15E10

Designing Elixir Systems with OTP by James Gray & Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp/

GenServer Behavior https://elixir.hexdocs.pm/main/GenServer.html

IEx https://iex.hexdocs.pm/IEx.html

Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans https://www.domainlanguage.com/

GDPR General Data Protection Regulation https://gdpr-info.eu/

https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/02/23/NecessaryComments.html

Living Documentation by Cyrille Matraire https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/living-documentation-continuous/9780134689418/

Exciting ExDoc talk by Flora Petterson 2025 CodeSync https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLr9FOARwzQ

ExDoc https://ex-doc.hexdocs.pm/

The AI Coding Crisis Blog Series https://grox.io/blog/series/the-ai-coding-crisis/

Build Animatronics with Nerves talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ulurej4NTg

Sam Aaron Sonic Pi https://sonic-pi.net/

https://scratch.mit.edu/

https://www.scratchfoundation.org/learn

Nerves LiveBook https://github.com/nerves-livebook/

Hardware for Embedded Systems https://www.raspberrypi.com/

Goatmire Conference https://goatmire.com/

In this episode, Elixir Wizards Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Bruce Tate, founder of Groxio and longtime Elixir educator, to discuss career growth and mentorship in the age of AI.

Bruce reflects on Elixir’s evolution and explores how AI coding agents are changing the way developers learn, work, and advance. He explains his “anti-vibe coding” philosophy and recommends practices for maintaining code quality, arguing that many struggles attributed to junior developers are really failures of training and mentorship.

Rather than using AI productivity gains to eliminate entry-level roles, Bruce challenges teams to reinvest that time in educating juniors to support their long-term career path.

Bruce will expand on this conversation at ElixirConf 2026, September 10–11 in Chicago, and the Elixir Wizards will be there too! Join us and the broader Elixir community, and use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/

Topics discussed in this episode:

The evolution of the Elixir ecosystem from conception to now

Rethinking career growth and mentorship in the age of AI

What “anti-vibe coding” means

Functional core and imperative shell design

OTP fundamentals and architectural literacy

Managing AI-generated code and pull requests

Mentorship beyond code review

Developing engineering judgment

API design as a core skill

AI as a force multiplier for junior developers

Reinvesting AI productivity gains in people

Links mentioned:

https://grox.io/

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks/

Programming Phoenix LiveView https://pragprog.com/titles/liveview/programming-phoenix-liveview/

BASIC Programming Language https://www.purebasic.com/

C++ Programming Language https://cplusplus.com/

COBOL Programming Language https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/cobol

Fortran Programming Language https://fortran-lang.org/

Bitter Java by Bruce Tate https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Java-Bruce-Tate/dp/193011043X

Slashdot Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect

Slashdot https://slashdot.org/

Java Programming Language https://www.java.com/en/

Ruby Programming Language https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

Lisp Programming Language https://lisp-lang.org/

Haskell Programming Language https://www.haskell.org/

Erlang Programming Language https://www.erlang.org/

Eric Meadows-Jönsson https://github.com/ericmj

Machine Learning in Elixir by Sean Moriarity https://pragprog.com/titles/smelixir/machine-learning-in-elixir/

The AI Collective https://www.aicollective.com/

Elixir Pipe Operator https://operator.hexdocs.pm/readme.html

Phoenix Framework https://www.phoenixframework.org/

Phoenix LiveView https://phoenix-live-view.hexdocs.pm/Phoenix.LiveView.html

Broadway https://hex.pm/packages/broadway

Designing Elixir Systems with OTP by James Edward Gray & Bruce Tate https://pragprog.com/titles/jgotp/designing-elixir-systems-with-otp/

The AI Coding Crisis Blog Series https://grox.io/blog/series/the-ai-coding-crisis/

Groxio Live https://grox.io/live
Special Guest: Bruce Tate.

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Mallory Knodel, executive director and founder of the Social Web Foundation, to talk about internet governance, open standards, and the future of the social web. Mallory shares how her work as an activist, systems administrator, and public interest technologist led her into the organizations and working groups that shape how the internet functions, including the IETF, W3C, ICANN, and ITU.

The conversation explores how the internet shifted from a collection of open protocols toward a small number of dominant platforms, and what that centralization means for users, developers, and independent service providers. Mallory explains how decisions made at the protocol level can affect everything from email deliverability to identity, data portability, trust and safety, and the ability to move between platforms. We also discuss the Social Web Foundation, ActivityPub, the Fediverse, and the idea of building a more multipolar social web.

Mallory also looks at what happens when AI agents, automated accounts, and algorithmic feeds enter open social ecosystems. She shares her perspective on privacy, usability, encrypted messaging, and designing technology around user needs rather than engagement alone.

Key Topics Discussed

What it means to be a public interest technologist

How internet governance affects everyday software development

The role of global internet standards organizations

How the IETF and W3C develop technical standards

Corporate influence inside internet governance and standards bodies

The internet’s shift from protocols to centralized platforms

Email deliverability and the hidden costs of centralization

How platform control affects identity and user autonomy

Why data portability remains difficult across social platforms

The mission behind the Social Web Foundation

How the Fediverse connects independent social platforms

ActivityPub and Activity Streams as open web protocols

AT Protocol, an alternative to ActivityPub

How federated servers exchange content and user activity

Why a multipolar web differs from decentralization

What Meta’s ActivityPub adoption means for federation

The embrace, extend, extinguish risk for open protocols

Discoverability challenges across federated social networks

Trust and safety for smaller platform operators

How protocol decisions can affect human rights

AI agents entering open social web ecosystems

Whether federated platforms should block automated crawlers

Designing algorithmic feeds around values and user choice

Privacy-first principles for developers building social software

Encrypted direct messaging for the open social web

Elixir projects building across the Fediverse ecosystem

Links Mentioned:

Mallory’s Website https://malloryknodel.net/

Internet Protocol (IP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) https://www.ietf.org/

International Communication Union https://www.itu.int/en/

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) https://www.icann.org/

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) https://www.w3.org/

Huawei https://www.huawei.com/en/

Cisco https://www.cisco.com/

Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG) https://www.m3aawg.org/

Social Web Foundation https://socialwebfoundation.org/

ActivityPub https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

AT Protocol https://atproto.com/

MeWe Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DNSP) https://dsnp.org/about/MeWe-use-case.html

BlueSky https://bsky.app/

Mastodon https://joinmastodon.org/

Internet Society https://www.internetsociety.org/

Fediverse https://fediverse.party/

NCSA Mosaic Browser https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/research/project-highlights/ncsa-mosaic/

Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring

https://tags.pub/

Elixir projects:

Pleroma https://pleroma.social/

Akkoma https://akkoma.social/

Bonfire Networks https://bonfirenetworks.org/

Mobilizon https://mobilizon.org/

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Mike Ratliff, co-founder and CTO of GridVar, to talk about the role software plays in the changing energy infrastructure. With over 30 years of experience in technology, Mike shares the path that took him from the early internet and cloud computing into energy and utility software, along with what he has learned about staying adaptable as the industry continues to shift.

Mike explains why building software for the power grid comes with a very different set of constraints than building a typical web application and breaks down some of the challenges utilities are facing, including grid interconnection delays, power quality, increasing energy demand, and the growth of distributed energy resources. We also discuss demand response, microgrids, virtual power plants, battery storage, and how software can help utilities better understand and manage a grid that is becoming more complex.

Mike also explains why Elixir and the BEAM are a strong fit for always-on energy systems, how an Erlang MQTT server first led him into the ecosystem, and what it takes to introduce Elixir inside an established organization. The episode closes with a broader look at AI-assisted development, the value of domain expertise, and why technical leaders still need communication, judgment, and a compelling story to move important ideas forward.

Key topics discussed in this episode:

Mike Ratliff’s path from software to energy technology

Lessons from three decades of technology industry change

The value of generalists in modern software engineering

Why good technical judgment remains difficult to replace

Building software that interacts with physical infrastructure

Why utility technology adoption can move slowly

Understanding today’s grid interconnection backlog

Power quality challenges affecting new grid connections

Using simulation to accelerate utility engineering studies

Centralized and distributed approaches to grid management

How solar energy creates the duck curve

Using demand response to balance electricity consumption

Edge devices supporting real-time grid coordination

Microgrids and resilience in distributed energy systems

Cybersecurity considerations for increasingly connected power grids

Preparing utility infrastructure for extreme weather events

Battery storage and the growth of renewable energy

How virtual power plants coordinate distributed resources

Why Elixir works well for energy software

BEAM reliability for always-on utility infrastructure

Discovering Elixir through Erlang and MQTT

Building an early virtual power plant with Elixir

Making the business case for an Elixir migration

Why technical leadership also requires effective storytelling

Links Mentioned:

GridVAR https://www.gridvar.com/

GridPoint https://www.gridpoint.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout

Demand Response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response

Virtual Power Plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_power_plant

Microgrid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid

Volts podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Ellyse Cedeno, founder of Heuristic Salvo and a software engineer and product leader with more than 25 years of experience across early internet platforms, gaming, health tech, and distributed systems.



Ellyse shares the winding path that took her from early search engines and Netscape to game development, medical research at Mount Sinai, and eventually to Elixir. Along the way, she talks about staying curious over a long technical career, rediscovering joy through side projects, and why being willing to feel like a beginner again can be one of the most useful skills a developer can build.



The conversation explores what it means to grow as an engineer in a world where AI tooling is becoming part of the everyday workflow. Ellyse makes the case that technical skill still matters, but the human parts of software development (like judgment, curiosity, communication, trust, and influence) are becoming increasingly important.



We also talk about soft influence and how developers can create change inside organizations without relying on hard authority.

Key Topics Discussed in this Episode:

Ellyse’s career path through early internet platforms, gaming, health tech, and distributed systems

Moving from Netscape and search engines to medical research and software consulting

Discovering Elixir through an interest in concurrent and distributed systems

Why beginner’s mindset still matters after decades in tech

How neurodivergence, curiosity, and deep focus shape Ellyse’s approach to programming

Rediscovering joy in programming through side projects and experimentation

Building an MMORPG game server in Elixir

Exploring hardware, Nerves, and live theremin demos

The role of passion projects in professional growth

Protecting time for learning in productivity-focused environments

Work-life balance differences between the U.S. and Europe

How AI tools are changing expectations for modern developers

Why AI does not replace judgment, taste, or technical understanding

Understanding business needs instead of only focusing on technical preferences

Introducing Elixir into a TypeScript-heavy organization

Using Elixir microservices to solve specific technical problems

What “soft influence” looks like in engineering teams

Building trust through one-on-one conversations

Knowing when influence is working and when it is not

Negotiating technical decisions without turning them into power struggles

The relationship between technical competence and interpersonal skill

Managing imposter syndrome during pair programming and collaborative work

Documentation as a visibility and ownership tool

Community involvement, conference speaking, and finding your people

Staying curious without burning out

Why the human side of software development still matters

Links Mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai https://icahn.mssm.edu/

Evernote https://evernote.com/

Joplin https://joplinapp.org/

Book: Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić https://www.manning.com/books/elixir-in-action-third-edition

Book: The Little LISPer https://www.scribd.com/doc/263131641/The-Little-Lisper

Ellyse’s Goatmire Talk https://goatmire.com/speaker/ellyse-cedeno

Nerves https://nerves-project.org/

xHain Hack & Makespace in Berlin https://x-hain.de/en/

https://cursor.com/

Haskell Programming Language https://www.haskell.org/

Java Programming Language https://www.java.com/en/

Clojure Programming Language https://clojure.org/

Scheme Programming Language https://www.scheme.org/

TypeScript Programming Language https://www.typescriptlang.org/

Nostrum Library https://hexdocs.pm/nostrum/intro.html

Gleam Programming Language https://gleam.run/

Book: Getting Past No by William Ury https://www.williamury.com/getting-past-no/

“The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo

Ted Talk: Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY

Ellyse’s Codeberg https://codeberg.org/ellyxir

Ellyse’s Game Server Repo https://codeberg.org/ellyxir/gameserver

Goatmire Elixir & NervesConf 2026 https://www.goatmire.com/