changelog.com VS opq

Another https://dagger.io fan here. Have been using it since late 2021 to continuously deploy a Phoenix app to Fly.io: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/pull/395. Every commit goes into production.

This is what the GHA workflow currently looks like: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/c7b8a57b2...

FWIW, you can see how everything fits together in this architecture diagram: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/IN...

I really like the work that you're doing Thomas, this is the right approach. FWIW, https://fly.io/blog/carving-the-scheduler-out-of-our-orchest... is one of my favourite posts on your blog.

For everyone else reading this, we have been running https://changelog.com on Fly.io since April 2022. This is what our architecture currently looks like: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/IN...

After 15 months & more than 100 million requests served by our Phoenix + PostgreSQL app running on Fly.io, I would be hard pressed to find a reason to complain.

Changelog.com

I see this criticism a lot but I don't think it has anything to do with macros specifically and more so to do with lack of familiarity with Elixir. I've felt the same way about Django being magic because I had trouble following the class hierarchy. It makes a lot more sense now because I'm more familiar with Python and Django. But even today I'll be looking deeper at something and ask WTF it's doing. In that respect, Elixir codebases are easier to me. The module depth seems "shallower" and I don't have to disambiguate between what behavior is caused by class inheritance or an imported function.

When I first tried to use Elixir several years ago Ecto.Schema [0] seemed complex and magical, but then I came to realize it's just converting module attributes to runtime code. There is not really that much complex macro logic going on.

>This also leads to cryptic errors where you get an error in non existant lines of code.

When was the last time you used Elixir? This isn't a problem I can recall having in the last 4 years or so of using Elixir.

>following the control flow in Phoenix is like a maze because of all the macro substitutions.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? A specific case as to where this happened for you would help. Phoenix's use of macros is actually pretty light [1] except for some very low level stuff. You can even see how frequently a developer will use macros in Phoenix by searching `__using__` in the codebase [2]. It's not used as much as people think. The majority is for views and controllers and only to provide a very thin layer of support on top of your regular use of code. As an example, the "macro magic" in Phoenix.Controller is just handling some basics for giving a layout and view to Plug and handling fallback actions for exceptions. You could do the plug calls manually and I think it would be safe to not use any macros in your controller code.

Another familiarity issue with the language (and any language really) is understanding what is meaningful in a stack trace and what isn't. And the likely cause of the error in the first place. Is it syntax? Is it mistyping a variable? Is a function just used improperly? (wtf is init_p_do_apply and why does it show up in every stacktrace?) You're juggling all these different issues - learning a new paradigm, a new syntax, not knowing how to extend things. It's obviously going to be a little overwhelming and, if not strictly required, we might just pick a different language that we're more familiar with.

[0]: https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/blob/master/lib/ecto/sch...

[1]: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/li... (not mine, I just go here to show the most frequent use of macros in Phoenix)

[2]: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/search?q=__using...

changelog.com used to be WordPress, then became a Phoenix app because it needed features that were hacky to implement & then manage in WP. It's more of a podcasting platform these days rather than a CMS.

The code in this repo tells the truth about what it is, and even shows how it works: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com

SEEKING WORK | Melbourne, Australia | Remote Preferred

- Technologies: Elixir, Ruby, React, JS

- Résumé/CV: https://fredwu.me/cv.pdf

- Email: ifredwu at gmail dot com

My name’s Fred Wu, I’m an experienced Elixir and Ruby developer who has worked on multiple commercial projects as well as having released multiple open source Hex packages and Rubygems.

I work at a fintech startup as CTO, leading a small team. During Covid I've been pumping out around 40 extra hours per week on freelancing work. My day job involves mostly the non-coding part of problem solving so it's a nice mix of pace for me to keep my coding skills sharp during the evenings and on weekends.

I’ve been using Elixir for half a decade, ruby for over a decade, lead and built multiple commercial B2B & B2C SaaS projects. I’ve always been very hands on, and have worked with multiple tech stacks in the past, including JS/React, PHP, Golang, and most recently Clojure at the startup I’m currently working at.

- My blog and talks: https://fredwu.me/

- My Github profile: https://github.com/fredwu

- My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wufred/

As you probably noticed I have quite a few projects on Github. Some of the more interesting ones are:

- Crawler, a high performance web crawler built in Elixir: https://github.com/fredwu/crawler

- Simple Bayes, a naive bayes machine learning implementation in Elixir: https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes

- OPQ, a simple in-memory queue with worker pooling and rate limiting in Elixir: https://github.com/fredwu/opq

- And a few years ago when I was heavily involved in the ruby/rails community, I had done an experimental project building a "layer 0" ORM on top of ActiveRecord and Sequel: https://github.com/fredwu/datamappify

If you think my skills and experience could add value to the project I’d love to chat more. You could reach me at ifredwu at gmail dot com. Thanks!

OPQ, a simple in-memory queue with worker pooling and rate limiting in Elixir: https://github.com/fredwu/opq

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OPQ