The number of Elixir developers keeps growing steadily. And while Elixir hasn’t become the world’s number one programming language just yet, there is a constant stream of new developers who join the community. Naturally, this also means an ever-increasing number of participants for the two biggest annual Elixir conferences: ElixirConf EU in spring and ElixirConf US in fall.

Developer conferences don’t always manage to keep their quality up to par with growing audiences. The ElixirConfs have been a brilliant exception so far, offering both approachable talks for newcomers and interesting presentations for veterans.

In this post I have picked five talks I found particularly rewarding — both for people new to Elixir and experienced “Alchemists”.

#1: Bryan Hunter: Elixir by the Bellyful

You’ve heard that Elixir is great for concurrent, fast and reliable applications. Maybe you’ve heard about Erlang, functional programming, cheap VM processes and powerful metaprogramming. But what on earth are OTP, Supervisors and GenServers?

“Elixir by the Bellyful” is an amazing introduction that covers just about everything you need to know about the Elixir ecosystem. The talk is packed with information. Starting with a bit of Erlang history, Bryan delivers a broad sweep across all the reasons that makes developing in Elixir so enjoyable.

Who is this talk for?

Everyone who’s interested in Elixir and willing to invest 40 minutes. You will not regret watching this.

About the speaker

Bryan is a polyglot functional programming advocate who runs his own software consultancy, LeanFP, in Nashville, TN.