56: Fly-ing Elixir Close to Users with Kurt Mackey

We talk with Kurt Mackey, founder at Fly.io, about what makes the Fly platform unique and why hosting Elixir applications there makes a lot of sense. They started out looking to make a better CDN for developers and this pushed them to try deploying Full Stack applications closer to users, not just the static assets! We learn about the tech behind the networking, how databases can be moved closer to users, and how LiveView is even more awesome when it is close to users. Kurt also shares what he sees as the future for databases as the industry continues to move into globally distributed applications.

Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/56

Elixir Community News

• https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/pull/11101 – Task.completed/1 function added


• https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.12.2 – Elixir 1.12.2 minor release


• https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/pull/1511 – LV Lifecycle Hooks


• https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/pull/1515 – Add on_mount option to live_session


• https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/pull/1513 – New form_for/4


• https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/pull/4355 – Add mailer generator for swoosh


• https://github.com/akoutmos/prom_ex/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md – prom_ex library has 1.3.0 release adding Absinthe GraphQL plugin and dashboard


• https://fly.io/blog/monitoring-your-fly-io-apps-with-prometheus/ – Using prom_ex on an Elixir project


• https://github.com/wojtekmach/elixir-run – Wojtek Mach released a new project called "elixir-run"


• https://github.com/nurturenature/elixir_actions#elixir-actions-for-github – Elixir Github Actions CI example repo


• https://twitter.com/evadne/status/1412083538988613636 – Etso 0.1.6 was released adding "is_nil" query support

Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir or email at [email protected]

Discussion Resources

• https://fly.io/


• https://fly.io/docs/introduction/


• https://fly.io/blog/building-a-distributed-turn-based-game-system-in-elixir/


• https://www.compose.com/


• https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig – Corey Quinn on Twitter


• https://nats.io/


• https://jamstack.org/


• https://liveview-counter.fly.dev/


• https://github.com/fly-apps/phoenix-liveview-cluster


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network


• https://www.wireguard.com/


• https://tailscale.com/


• https://fly.io/blog/globally-distributed-postgres/


• https://www.cockroachlabs.com/


• https://www.yugabyte.com/


• https://www.citusdata.com/


• https://fly.io/blog/


• https://twitter.com/flydotio


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Armstrong_(programmer)

Guest Information

• https://twitter.com/mrkurt – on Twitter


• https://github.com/mrkurt – on Github


• https://fly.io/blog/ – Blog

Find us online

• Message the show - @ThinkingElixir


• Email the show - [email protected]


• Mark Ericksen - @brainlid


• David Bernheisel - @bernheisel


• Cade Ward - @cadebward