Thinking Elixir Podcast

News includes Quickbeam, an exciting new research project that brings a full JavaScript runtime inside the BEAM with OTP supervision, native DOM access, and a built-in TypeScript toolchain, plus a companion Volt asset pipeline for Elixir; José Valim highlights how Elixir’s type system work is already inspiring optimizations in Python’s Ruff project, and shares a new blog post on the latest BDD performance improvements coming in Elixir v1.20; LiveView Debugger v0.7 arrives with source code links, nested live view tree structure, and a closer path to v1.0; a new browser-based Elixir Language Tour expands its Processes chapter with hands-on GenServers, Supervisors, and more; Oban v2.21 lands with workflow tracking, rate limiting, and massive index improvements; and more! Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/297 Elixir Community News https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer. https://github.com/elixir-volt/volt – Volt - a new asset pipeline for Elixir that replaces esbuild wrapper, Tailwind CLI, and node_modules. https://x.com/dan_note/status/2033975642057019499 – Announcement post for the Volt asset pipeline for Elixir. https://x.com/dan_note/status/2032139121850728939 – Announcement post for Quickbeam, a JavaScript runtime for the BEAM. https://github.com/elixir-volt/quickbeam – Quickbeam - a JavaScript runtime for the BEAM with Web APIs backed by OTP, native DOM, and a built-in TypeScript toolchain. Still an early beta research project. https://github.com/cocoa-xu/exclosured – ExClosured - a new framework for compiling Rust to WebAssembly, running it in the browser, and hooking into Phoenix LiveView. https://exclosured.app/ – Demo site for ExClosured, showing image manipulation and SQLite-in-the-browser examples. https://x.com/josevalim/status/2034623221807370570 – José Valim highlights how Elixir's type system work has inspired optimizations in Python's Ruff/ty project. https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/pull/23881 – Pull request on the Python Ruff project applying BDD optimization techniques inspired by Elixir's type system work. https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff – Ruff - an extremely fast Python linter and code formatter, written in Rust. https://x.com/josevalim/status/2034624137981739153 – José Valim shares his latest blog post on type system optimizations for differences. https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2026/03/19/lazy-bdds-with-eager-literal-differences/ – Elixir blog post - "Lazy BDDs with eager literal differences" - covering the latest round of type system performance optimizations, available in Elixir v1.20.0-rc4. https://x.com/swmansionelixir/status/2034295512862490655 – Announcement of LiveView Debugger v0.7 with new features including source code links, better filtering, and tree structure for nested live views. https://docs.swmansion.com/live-debugger/ – LiveView Debugger documentation site. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvKGXRNo-_E – YouTube video showing the new features in LiveView Debugger v0.7. https://x.com/swmansionelixir/status/2034650679986327924 – Announcement of a new version of the fully browser-based Elixir Language Tour, with an expanded Processes chapter covering Links, Agents, GenServers, and Supervisors. https://elixir-language-tour.swmansion.com/introduction – The Elixir Language Tour - a browser-based interactive tour running Elixir in WebAssembly via Popcorn. https://elixirforum.com/t/gettext-sigils-a-sigil-for-using-gettext-with-less-boilerplate-and-better-readability/74645 – Elixir Forum post introducing gettext_sigils, a library that wraps gettext helpers into a sigil for less boilerplate. https://github.com/zebbra/gettext_sigils – gettext_sigils - a library that simplifies gettext usage with a ~t sigil, e.g. ~t"Hello, #{user.name}" instead of gettext("Hello, %{name}", name: user.name). https://peterullrich.com/a-devcontainer-for-elixir – Blog post by Peter Ullrich - "A Devcontainer for Elixir" - on running Elixir in a dev container for safer LLM-assisted coding. https://containers.dev/ – The open specification for enriching containers with development-specific content and settings. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/tree/main/.devcontainer – Anthropic's dev container used as the starting point for Peter Ullrich's Elixir dev container. https://github.com/PJUllrich/devcontainer – Peter Ullrich's Claude-based Devcontainer for Elixir development with Phoenix, Claude Code, and optionally Tidewave. https://x.com/josevalim/status/2034952526039056700 – José Valim responds to a "What Would José Valim Do?" Claude memory prompt shared by an Elixir developer, offering his actual advice which differed from the LLM's take on behaviours and abstractions. https://x.com/sorentwo/status/2036839452102840414 – Announcement of Oban v2.21, Pro v1.7, Web v2.12, and Met v1.1 with workflow tracking, rate limiting, chunk performance improvements, and more. https://oban.pro/docs/pro/changelog.html#v1-7-0-rc-0-2026-03-23 – Oban Pro v1.7 changelog. https://hexdocs.pm/oban_web/overview.html – Oban Web documentation. https://github.com/oban-bg/oban/releases/tag/v2.21.0 – Oban v2.21.0 release notes on GitHub. https://x.com/akoutmos/status/2036556722584670292 – Announcement of Litestream v0.5, a complete overhaul of the Elixir wrapper for Litestream SQLite backups. https://litestream.io/ – Litestream - continuously streams SQLite changes to cloud storage like S3 for no-worry backups. https://github.com/akoutmos/litestream – Litestream - an Elixir library wrapping Litestream for easy SQLite database backups, now at v0.5 with individual backup strategies under the Litestream.Strategy namespace. https://github.com/akoutmos/litestream/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md – Litestream changelog detailing the v0.5.0 overhaul. https://marketing.erlef.org/events/malaga-unconf.html – EEF Málaga Unconference - a community-driven one-day pre-ElixirConf EU event on April 22, 2026, featuring Elixir talks, a Nerves workshop, and a GRiSP hardware workshop. Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir or email at show@thinkingelixir.com Find us online Message the show - Bluesky Message the show - X Message the show on Fediverse - @ThinkingElixir@genserver.social Email the show - show@thinkingelixir.com Mark Ericksen on X - @brainlid Mark Ericksen on Bluesky - @brainlid.bsky.social Mark Ericksen on Fediverse - @brainlid@genserver.social David Bernheisel on Bluesky - @david.bernheisel.com David Bernheisel on Fediverse - @dbern@genserver.social Sponsored By:Paraxial.io: Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.

They cover Elixir 1.20 release candidates with a faster compiler and new interpreted mode. A clever trick to boot a peer VM inside a VM enables zero-downtime hot upgrades on Fly.io. Discord’s approach to adding distributed tracing without chaos is explored. Elixir running in the browser via WebAssembly and OpenAI choosing Elixir for Symphony spark lively discussion.

A deep dive into Elixir's type system rewrite that slashes worst-case checks from seconds to milliseconds. A conversation about type systems as leaky abstractions and refactoring tradeoffs. New tools and releases: versioned AI skill packaging, Oban Pro workflow UI improvements, a native Spark Connect client, Livebook Desktop on Linux, and several ecosystem updates.

They cover the Expert LSP release candidate and its monorepo support with early adopter praise. They talk about José Valim’s Elixir 1.20 compile-time boosts and a new interpreted mode. They describe erlang-python enabling true parallel Python from the BEAM. They note Livebook Desktop’s move to Tauri and Nx v0.11 updates like sharding and backend improvements.

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.

They unveil Sagents, an Elixir library for building LLM agents with human-in-the-loop oversight and real-time debugging. They demo a Live Debugger and discuss tracing, virtual filesystems, and safe tool authorization. Conversation covers why Elixir may suit AI, recent tooling like LiveDebugger v0.6, a minimal MCP server, a Lua revamp, job market salary analysis, and impressions of Opus 4.6.

News about a 2x compile-time speedup in Elixir and an added type checker. A new alternative Erlang syntax called Telelang and experiments with syntax parsers. Membrane’s YOLO plugin brings AI object detection to video pipelines. Tools for building containers directly from Erlang/Elixir code and conversational AI for managing dependency upgrades. Discussion of PR quizzes that turn code reviews into interactive learning.

News roundup on Elixir tooling and language fixes, including improved type handling. Two Elixir-native Bash interpreters and their use for distributed orchestration are explored. LiveCapture brings zero-boilerplate storybooks to LiveView components. A DurableObject library adds persistent actor patterns. Postgres gains BM25 text search rivaling Elasticsearch. A new RAG approach removes the need for vector databases.

A proof-of-concept brings Erlang/OTP to QNX, hinting at BEAM-powered in-car apps and HUD ideas. ExDoc gains LLM-friendly doc features and new tools like Tribunal and Beamlens apply AI to testing and runtime introspection. Oban Pro adds Python interop while Permit.Phoenix smooths LiveView authorization. Ecto_libsql, CKEditor5 integration, TideWave growth, and advances in typing Elixir round out the news.

They celebrate 15 years of Elixir and a v1.20 release candidate adding full type inference. Chris McCord’s Sprites.dev brings hardware-isolated VMs for safer cloud execution. MDEx adds HEEx/Phoenix component support and a refreshed site. New tools include Gust for workflow orchestration and LiveDebugger for inspecting dead LiveViews. LiveVue 1.0 integrates Vue with Phoenix LiveView for reactive UIs.