This is a public draft*.

• Adolfo Gustavo Serra Seca Neto
• Federal University of Technology - Paraná
• Curitiba, Brazil
• adolfo (AT) utfpr.edu.br

• http://www.dainf.ct.utfpr.edu.br/~adolfo/dokuwiki/doku.php?do=search&id=elixir
• http://www.dainf.ct.utfpr.edu.br/~adolfo/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=2018:the_elixir_programming_language_and_its_community

http://cbsoft2019.ufba.br/#/sblp

Title: The Elixir Community of Practice - A Preliminary Characterization

Context: Elixir is a functional and concurrent programming language created in 2011 that runs on top of the Erlang virtual machine. It has recently appeared in the StackOverflow Developer Survey 2019 as one of the 25 Most Popular Technologies in the “Programming, Scripting, and Markup Languages” category. Elixir was also appointed as one of the 10 Most Loved Languages in the same survey. According to Etienne Wenger, a community of practice is a group of people “who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. Elixir has an active community of practice.

Objective: The goal of this paper is to present a preliminary characterization of the Elixir community of practice, that is, of the community of people interested in the Elixir programming language,

Method: Participant observation in online community sites and in offline events for a period of one and a half years.

Results: Our preliminary results show that there are six main concepts related to the community: Person, Role, Artifact, Organization and Event. For example, José Valim is a Person that plays the Role of Member of the Elixir Core Team. Regarding Artifacts, there are currently five active podcasts (a Podcast is an Artifact) in the Elixir Community. These podcasts have produced more than 200 episodes (a Podcast Episode is also an Artifact). Every episode is hosted by one or more people (Podcast Host is a Role) and may include one or more guests (Podcast Guest is also a Role). Code Sync Ltd. is an example of an Organization that organizes Events (for instance, Code Elixir London 2019) related to Elixir..

Conclusion: There is much more to explore in the Elixir community. Our preliminary results are the basis for further work on how developers engage in the community and how they exchange knowledge.

Keywords: Communities of practice, Concurrent functional programming, Elixir.

How to Write a Structured Abstract

What is Elixir?

Why Elixir is relevant?

What is the relationship between Elixir and Erlang?

What is a Community of Practice?

The goal of this paper is to provide a preliminary characterization of the Community of Practice for the Elixir Programming language.

Elixir/Erlang and Concurrent Functional Programming

Software developers gather in a Community of Practice to share and extend their knowledge.

Papers that are (somehow) similar:

1. The paper on software engineers on Twitter (Singer et al. 2014).
2. Many papers on Hackathons
3. Many papers on Open Source
4. Many papers on Stack Overflow
5. Two papers on Screencasts
6. Paper on the R Community (Zagalsky et al. 2016)

Concepts:

1. Person
2. Role
3. Artifact
4. Organization
5. Event

The People of Elixir

The community is composed of People.

Every Person plays one or more Roles??

One or more persons produce an Artifact.

An Organization is composed of one or more persons.

One or more persons organize an Event.

Communication Channel is an Artifact???

There is a difference here: Elixir Creator, for instance, does not seem to be a role. After creating Elixir, José Valim doesn't have to do anything else. He will always be the Elixir Creator. Joe Armstrong will remain Erlang co-creator, even now after his death. But Joe is not Elixir Forum Admin anymore. So, Elixir Forum admin is a Role, Elixir Creator is not???

José Valim has played several roles:

• Elixir Creator *
• Elixir Core Team Member *
• ElixirConf 2018 Keynote Speaker *
• Elixir Outlaws Podcast episode guest *

Anna Neyzberg:

• Elixir Outlaws podcast host *
• Code Beam SF 2018 speaker *
• Co-founder of ElixirBridge *

Charlotte Lorelei Oliveira:

• Elixir Brazil 2018 co-organizer *
• Code Beam SF 2019 speaker *

*It seems that “Smart Software with SmartLogic” is not a podcast dedicated only to Elixir. Only their “first season focuses on Elixir in production”.

Last update: 2019-04-26

“Screencasts are used to capture a developer’s screen while they narrate how a piece of software works or how the software can be extended. They have recently become a popular alternative to traditional text-based documentation.” Laura MacLeod, Andreas Bergen and Margaret-Anne Storey in bibtex

Last update: 2019/03/28 16:05

Sources:

• Podcasts and Screencasts
• Latest Screencast Topics on Elixir Forum

• Elixir Casts
  • https://elixircasts.io/
  • 86 episodes - Latest one published March 25, 2019
  • Paid subscription needed. US$15 monthly membership.
  • Some episodes are free, such as https://elixircasts.io/intro-to-elixir-functions
• Alchemist Camp
  • https://alchemist.camp/
  • All episodes https://alchemist.camp/episodes
  • Paid subscription needed.
    • “Monthly memberships are discounted from $21.00 to $8.61.”
    • “Yearly memberships are discounted from $189.00 to $77.49.”
  • Some (most) episodes are free.
• Elixir Foundation
  • https://www.codemy.net/sets/elixir-foundation
  • 26 episodes
  • Paid subscription to Codemy.net need for some videos. $9/month.
  • Screencaster: Zack Siri https://github.com/zacksiri https://twitter.com/zacksiri
• LearnElixir.tv
  • Discontinued? https://www.learnelixir.tv/upcoming
  • https://www.learnelixir.tv/
  • 29 episodes https://www.learnelixir.tv/episodes
  • “A one-time purchase of $18 is required to watch.” “Future episodes on special topics, such as how to build a web app with Elixir, are not included and may require an additional payment or subscription.”
  • Screencaster: Daniel Berkompas https://github.com/danielberkompas http://www.danielberkompas.com/
  • Related: LearnPhoenix.tv https://www.learnphoenix.tv/
• Elixir Sips
  • Discontinued???
  • http://elixirsips.com/
  • 286 episodes http://elixirsips.com/episodes.html
  • $9/month as part of DailyDrip https://www.dailydrip.com/pages/pricing
    • “New content will continue to be posted for legacy subscribers, but if you want to sign up you should go to dailydrip.com.”
  • Screencaster: Josh Adams https://github.com/knewter
• ExCasts
  • Discontinued
  • Last version on Wayback Machine (2018/05/26) https://web.archive.org/web/20180526085120/https://excasts.com/
  • Screencasters:
    • Jason Harrelson (https://github.com/midas and https://medium.com/@jasonharrelson_18039/my-ecto-changeset-best-practices-3b3b444f2aef)
    • Josh Rieken (https://github.com/facto and http://blog.joshuarieken.com/)

• Elixir Radar - Weekly newsletter by Plataformatec
• Elixir Digest - “One email per week, 5 links.” by Bonobo Press
• Elixir Weekly - Weekly newsletter by @elixirstatus
• Vitamin E - Vitamin E - the latest Erlang & Elixir news 😃 - “Your monthly dose of all things Erlang & Elixir from Erlang Solutions”.
  • Go to “Get our Newsletter” and type your email.
• Awesome Elixir
  • Awesome Elixir newsletter archives

Email course: https://elixirforum.com/t/new-email-course-erlang-and-elixir-types/21270

SmartLogic Elixir live streams: https://www.twitch.tv/smartlogictv

Elixir Brasil 2019

• Erlang & Elixir Fest 2019 (Japan) https://elixir-fest.jp/
  • See also https://twitter.com/TAKASEhideki/status/1122096475247243264

Is this a screencast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnu5XnJUY22OMqvbOK27Ynw

Should I post here? https://elixirforum.com/c/learning-resources/screencasts

(done) Tweet https://twitter.com/adolfont/status/1111357299120107522

https://twitter.com/JamesKLavin/status/1121909568622276608

https://twitter.com/bcardarella/status/1121883706942263296

Why I’m Co-organizing The Big Elixir https://medium.com/the-big-elixir/why-im-co-organizing-the-big-elixir-5700e63e1b06