The second post of Low Internal Software Quality series. Doing a big software refactor1 is not a simple thing. There are lots of points that you should think about, from planning and prioritizing to team motivation and execution. Understanding these points in a structured and clear way is part of the job. The good news … »

Note: Elixir v1.4 has been released and improves on many points touched by this article. From v1.4, Elixir will automatically infer the list of applications based on your dependencies. For more information, read the official announcement. In my journey as a curious Elixir developer, I’ve come across this seemingly simple question a few times: which … »

We’ve been talking about deploy and releases with Elixir lately, like how to run migrations on top of a release or how to deal with environment variables. Now it’s time to discover another tool that can help us release our Elixir application. After practicing deploy and tracing through nodes with Exrm, we got more comfortable … »

I would like to add a slightly different perspective to functional programming in the Erlang VM: functional programming is not a goal in the Erlang VM. It is a means to an end. When designing the Erlang language and the Erlang VM, Joe, Mike and Robert did not aim to implement a functional programming language, … »

It’s very common (and highly recommended) that application keeps its configuration values separated from its version control. A way of doing this is by using ENV vars (environment variables). They’re being used for improvements mostly on maintainability. The 12-factor app manifesto explains it on its Configuration section: The twelve-factor app stores config in environment variables … »

The Rails 5 release candidate is out, bringing new improvements that will make your life as a developer easier. Probably you are excited to update your application to the new major Rails release, but you may have some concerns. It is normal, updating your application to fit the new version may bring an unknown number … »