Thinking Elixir Podcast 293: The BEAM as the Universal Runtime
13 snips
Feb 24, 2026 They talk about Hackney switching to a pure Erlang QUIC implementation to add HTTP/3 without C. They explore Hornbeam running Python web apps on the BEAM for huge performance gains. They demo Easel, a Canvas 2D API for LiveView and native windows. They cover Hologram's big progress porting Erlang to JavaScript and new tooling like Tidewave and OpenCode.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Hackney Adds Pure Erlang HTTP3 Client
- Hackney 3.1 replaces ~1.3M lines of C and NIFs with a pure Erlang QUIC implementation to add HTTP/3 client support.
- Benoît Chesneau ported LSQUIC/BoringSSL-based bits into Erlang, avoiding C compilation across architectures and improving portability.
Hornbeam Hosts Python Apps On The BEAM
- Hornbeam is an Erlang-powered WSGI/ASGI host that runs Flask, Django, FastAPI under the BEAM for lower latency and higher throughput.
- The project advertises using ETS for shared memory and Erlang clustering to avoid Redis/RabbitMQ and the Python GIL.
Running Python Inside Elixir With PyX
- David described PyEx/PyX approaches: PyEx runs real Python integrated with Elixir via marshalling, while PyX interprets Python directly inside the BEAM with no containers or ports.
- He imagined LLMs writing a single Python script and executing it in-process to avoid token-heavy back-and-forth calls.