I can appreciate the usefulness of Python, the simplicity of Go, and the mind-expanding nature of Haskell. Yet, anything that isn’t Ruby felt like a usability downgrade. It’s all highly subjective, ça va sans dire, but Ruby was always my favorite.

It’s not every day that a language comes along and genuinely excites me to the point of putting Ruby aside (within the scope of what it’s great at doing).

I <3 Elixir

That language is Elixir. I’ve been using it on and off for a few years now. I first talked about it back in 2016 and even managed to convince my team at IBM to adopt it to an extent. It’s working out well for us so far and I have a hunch we might double down on it soon.

Since I have a little more time, due to being stuck inside, I’ve been on a “study anything in sight related to Elixir and Phoenix” kick lately.

I am a big fan of Mike and Nicole Clark of The Pragmatic Studio and in the past have highly recommended their Ruby and Rails courses. So I decided to start taking their Elixir courses as well. In this post, I’ll give you a fairly detailed review of their largest course on the subject, Developing with Elixir/OTP.

Who is it for?

Developing with Elixir/OTP is aimed at programmers. It’s so well explained that beginners can give it a shot, however, they are not the target audience.

The course assumes you have zero knowledge of Elixir itself but it’s not going to explain basic programming concepts when they are not novel or unique to Elixir.

Experience with Ruby is not required nor assumed, but it’s beneficial. This isn’t so much due to the way the course is presented (though there are a couple of nods to Ruby programmers). Rather, it’s the similarity (on the surface) between the two languages.

How much time do you need to invest?

Developing with Elixir/OTP is a 6.5 hour course divided across 30 modules. There is no way for you to take this course in 6.5 hours and get anything worthwhile from it.

In fact, the secret sauce is that each module has a Notes section dedicated to expanding on the topic, providing tips and tricks, as well as exercises. 

I would estimate that it took me around 20 hours or so to finish, despite being very familiar with the subject matter. Mind you, I do like to experiment quite a bit within IEx to veer off the beaten path.

Estimate 30 hours of your time, an hour per module, if you intend to fully absorb and experiment with the material presented.

Unlike their Rails course, you won’t develop two applications (one while watching the videos and one in the Notes section). In this course, there is only one application that is mostly developed in the videos and then enhanced in the Notes through exercises.

This will save you a lot of time at the small expense of having to pause and resume the video to type along.

Another time-saver is that the code for each module in the course is provided so that you’re never lost. Particularly useful to copy and paste the more tedious parts (e.g., sample data and template code).

What will you build?

The course starts off by developing a simple web server. Think, high-level transformations of requests into responses. It builds it from the ground up and then layers a simple RESTful API for a fictitious wildlife reserve on top.

They start off with the simplest thing, a function that transforms one specific request into one specific response, and then move up all the way to actually serving the API over HTTP.

The goal, as often stated in the course, is not to replace an established and much more robust web server like Cowboy or a framework like Phoenix. At all.

Instead, it serves two pedagogical purposes. First, it teaches you how to use the language to solve a fairly complex problem. Second, it gives you a deeper understanding of how the production-ready tools you are going to adopt actually work within.

This approach is endemic to their teaching method. For example, they’ll develop a simple web server and API from scratch and then show you how similar it is to the equivalent Phoenix version. By the time you hit module 17 on Phoenix, you don’t quite know Phoenix but it should feel oddly familiar. After all, you built a naïve/simplified version of the same controllers, router, templates, etc. from scratch. This is, of course, a deliberate choice.

The same is true when they implement a simple GenServer from scratch and then are able to seamlessly replace it with the real deal (with use GenServer). Yes, you developed the Fisher-Price version of the production-ready tools, but you now understand how they work under the hood. All before Mike and Nicole proceed to teach you how to use the battle-tested ones.

I’m a fan of this didactic approach and I think it will serve most people well.

What will you learn?

It might be surprising to some but this course does not provide the typical tour of data types and data structures available in the language.

Instead, it uses the language to build something from the beginning and, in the process, it quickly exposes you to a variety of concepts, including how to use common data types.

It doesn’t cover them thoroughly, however, so reading the Elixir tutorial on the official site would be very beneficial prior to or after taking this course.

The course starts off with several modules that are heavily focused on pattern matching. This is a good choice because pattern matching is one of the most valuable and pervasive features of Elixir.

As you would expect, there is also quite a bit of emphasis on immutable data structures, the pipe operator, recursion, and the Enum module.

In the process you’ll also learn a lot about IEx, Mix, organizing your code in a logical and idiomatic manner, defining Structs as the safer alternatives to maps, and comprehensions. 

Testing is covered adequately but not extensively in its own module. Not in a TDD manner from the very start of the course like they did in some of their previous courses. This has, again, didactical advantages even if you choose to adopt TDD in your actual work.

In the second half of the course, things get a little more serious courtesy of OTP, delving deeper into working with sockets, the actor model, Task, GenServer, and linking and monitoring processes.

Other points worth making

In more or less random order:

• The course is up to date to Elixir 1.10.x, somewhat rare among Elixir courses. Some of the videos show Mike and Nicole using a previous version (i.e., 1.5), but the Notes use the latest version and the rare differences are noted.  For example, the video shows the old mix new project format which included a config folder. In their hands-on notes for the video, they have a comprehensive “I don’t see a config directory” section to address it. You’re basically never lost or confused due to version discrepancies.
• The overall quality is excellent. It’s a really polished product in terms of audio, video, text, and visuals used to aid in explaining the more conceptual parts.
• They answer the overwhelming majority of your “wait a second” questions and objections. Either later in the video or right in the notes for that particular module. They genuinely anticipate most questions, which is the hallmark of a great course.
• Most modules have a single 5-15 minute video, but some modules include two videos. So the modules are… well, modular.
• Although this course will equip you to start studying Phoenix, it doesn’t really cover the subject. There is a module, as I mentioned, which is just enough to whet your appetite for the framework.
• Erlang interoperability is at least in part addressed in module 20, where sample code from the documentation of gen_tcp is converted from Erlang to Elixir code.
• The course is full of small tips like enabling command history in IEx (with export ERL_AFLAGS="-kernel shell_history enabled"), speeding up unit tests by making them asynchronous (i.e., use ExUnit.Case, async: true), using flush() to clear a process’ mailbox, etc.

Is it worth the price?

At $89, Developing with Elixir/OTP is not your average Udemy course that’s routinely discounted to $12. That’s because it’s not your average course.

If I had to rate it, I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5. I highly recommend it to working programmers who are interested in picking up Elixir quickly.

I would argue that it’s a great, current resource that is well worth the price of admission if you favor learning from videos.

The post Developing with Elixir/OTP Course Review appeared first on Programming Zen.

Three caveats

Before we start, I’ll offer three caveats:

1. I’m using a loose definition of the word gadget. The more accurate term might be the less catchy, electronic devices, or even more broadly, tools.
2. This isn’t a my programming setup post. It’s about hardware gadgets. I’m not going to discuss editors, shells, et cetera. Though, I’ll go on record here as favoring Visual Studio Code, despite knowing how to exit Vim. 🙂
3. Most of these links have my affiliate ID. It’s not the reason for this post but they help offset the cost of my technology addiction. 😉

Good gadgets but not necessarily the best

The set of gadgets I currently use is the result of an evolutionary process.

The technology itself evolved over the years, but so did my ability to acquire it. Furthermore, the worst gadgets didn’t last or I replaced them with better alternatives.

So the gadgets below might not be the best in their respective categories, but they are sensible options. They offer the kind of quality that would please most readers. (Perhaps, even fellow maximizers.)

Laptops

I currently have two laptops. The first one I bought wasn’t really useful as a laptop (as I’ll explain below), so I ended up with two.

Mac laptop

I use a MacBook Pro 13″ (2018) as my upstairs, as well as on-the-go, laptop. Of the two, it’s the laptop I actually use on my lap.

If I’m on the couch, in bed, or at a coffee shop, I’m using my MacBook Pro. It shines for programming and writing, but it’s only adequate for video editing. 1080p videos are not a problem, but 4K proves to be a bit of a challenge for it.

The improved butterfly switch keyboard is actually pleasant enough to write on now that I’ve gotten used to it. I have not experienced stuck keys (though, I don’t eat on my laptop and I clean the keyboard from time to time).

I have experienced crackling speakers in the past (my video was even featured on MacRumors) but recent updates appear to have fixed the problem. Further, I experienced video card issues that also vanished with recent updates.

I find the touch bar useless and the lack of an SD card reader (or USB-A ports, for that matter) frustrating on occasion. Somehow, I always find myself out of space as well. Though I can’t blame the laptop per se. (I have the 512 GiB model.)

I like it enough, but it’s not a problem-free laptop.

PC laptop

Speaking of imperfect things, let me tell you about my Lenovo P51. I use this laptop as a de facto desktop in my office downstairs.

It’s heavy, noisy, and the touchpad is significantly worse than my Mac’s. Conversely, it has a beautiful 4K matte display, a fantastic keyboard, and more ports than you’ll ever need. Including a handy SD card reader.

The great keyboard and the lackluster touchpad balance out for my use case. The laptop is semi-permanently attached to an external keyboard and mouse, so neither really affect me.

The external keyboard I use is a mechanical one. A Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja with Cherry MX Blue switches. It looks cool and has very satisfying feedback. However, it’s quite loud as you’d expect from blue switches. I occasionally get it in my head to go down the customization route, but it’s a rabbit hole I have not explored to date.

The mouse I use is a Logitech MX Master wireless. It’s somewhat prone to interference if I clutter my desktop, but it’s otherwise a great mouse. I experimented in the past with the Magic Trackpad 2 by Apple and I found it to bother my wrist. I don’t experience that issue with either the Logitech or laptop touchpads.

Back to the laptop itself, I love that it’s very powerful. With four Xeon cores, 16 GB of RAM (upgradable to 64 GB), and 2 TB of fast PCI Express NVMe Solid State Drives, this thing is a beast.

It runs Windows 10 beautifully. Now that I started making videos, it’s my preferred option for editing them with Adobe Premiere Pro. (My video editing skills are currently rudimentary, but I’m learning fast.)

Yet, I would not recommend this laptop to many. If you want the same power or more, buy a desktop. If you want an actual laptop, maybe get a Carbon X1 instead.

Since I’ve already bought it, and it serves a purpose in my arsenal, I’m keeping it. I’ll likely replace it with a desktop when it becomes too slow to edit 8K video or whatever video resolution we’ll have by then.

Monitor

I attach my Lenovo laptop to a BenQ 32-Inch IPS 4K monitor. It’s a good display that works well when connected to either of my two laptops via Mini DisplayPort.

I don’t love the way it looks when connected via HDMI. It’s not just a matter of refresh rate. It seems to affect colors as well. I haven’t investigated the issue much and simply use Mini DisplayPorts.

The productivity offered by so much real estate is hard to beat and, for the money, you could do a lot worse.

Headphones

I love music so I tend to like nicer headphones, without breaking the bank. My desktop headphones are the Massdrop x Sennheiser HD6XX, coupled with an admittedly weak amplifier (i.e., a FiiO E10K Olympus). They are open-back cans, so they offer no privacy but they objectively sound pretty good.

I wish I could say I love them as much as the HiFiMAN HE-500 planar magnetic headphones that I used to have. Not even close. The HiFiMAN’s sound was in a completely different category as far as I’m concerned. I miss them.

My on-the-go headphones are the Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 2. They are closed-back, noise-canceling headphones and they sound great. Their noise cancelation is not as good as the Bose Quietcomfort 35 that I used to own, and they are less comfortable. On the plus side, they sound quite a bit better.

For working out, I have a pair of Bose SoundSport Wireless headphones. They sound fantastic for gym headphones, they are fairly comfortable, and they stay paired with my phone.

I actually prefer them over the more expensive Bose SoundSport Free Truly Wireless headphones that I previously owned. If one of the earphones was to dislodge from your ear mid-exercise, the cord on your neck would prevent them from falling off entirely.

Perhaps more importantly, they are not affected by audio lag while watching videos like the Free Truly Wireless are.

In the past, I even gave the Apple Airpod 2 a shot and the audio quality was appalling in comparison. The difference was night and day. I returned mine and I’m glad I did.

I love the Bose SoundSport Wireless and have no reservations in recommending them for sports.

For video calls, I have a pair of, now discontinued, Jabra UC Voice 550 Duo headphones. Great bang for the buck. I actually received compliments on their audio quality during conference calls. After several years of heavy use, their cable is now fraying.

Soon enough, I’ll likely replace them with a newer model by the same company.

I also have a desktop microphone, a Blue Yeti. Very good as well. (You can hear it in this video I made for my outdoor YouTube channel.)

Other Apple devices

Over the years, I flip-flopped a lot between Apple and Android when it came to phones. I like them both, for different reasons, but I can’t justify having two phones. So I currently have an iPhone XS Max and don’t expect to switch to Android again going forward.

I pair my iPhone with an Apple Watch 4. I used to have the first-generation and I was not impressed at all. This fourth iteration gets a lot of things right and I love it.

It’s good enough for notifications (not perfect, mind you). Useful enough for some key apps I use (e.g., Things). Pretty decent as a fitness tracker. Great at tracking sleep with a third-party app like SleepWatch.

It’s disappointing that AFib detection and the ECG feature are not available in Canada. Otherwise, I have no other complaints. It genuinely enhances the experience of having an iPhone. They are a match made in Cupertino. 😛

I have owned almost every fitness tracker and gadgets under the Sun. If you just want a fitness tracker, get a Fitbit with the heart rate monitor. If you are very serious about training, get a high-end Garmin (like the Fenix line). Want both a fitness tracker and a tiny computer on your wrist? The Apple Watch is the way to go. (Provided you have an iPhone to pair it with, of course.)

Speaking of Apple devices, I gave my iPad to my wife as I didn’t use it enough to justify keeping it for myself.

I’m not saying never again to owning an iPad. The newer, fancy models with the pencil cast a certain spell on me.

Still, I reached a point where gadgets are only added to my collection if they get used. So I’ll only get an iPad if I can find a workflow that makes it a necessity.

E-reader

I’m an avid reader and over the years I discovered that I read less when I’m limiting myself to physical books. I do most of my reading when I have an e-ink device (coupled with audiobooks when driving or exercising).

So I recently bought a Kobo Forma. I explained my reasoning for going with a Kobo instead of Kindle and why it’s a smart move for Canadians, in this post/video.

I still stand by my statements about the ecosystems, but I ended up returning my Kobo. The screen had a distracting light band near the border. The issue was systemic and not limited to my specific device. It was also the first e-ink device that caused me headaches.

So I returned it and replaced it with an Onyx Boox Nova Pro, which allows me to take notes as well. I just received it so I can’t offer a reasonable assessment of its merits and downfalls yet. I will share my review either as a post or as a video. (Subscribe here or on YouTube to be notified when it goes live.)

Networking devices

I have a NAS connected to my network. It’s only 3 TB and it turns out video takes a ton of space. 😉 So I’m quickly running out of storage and might have to invest in a larger NAS system.

At the moment, I’m using an inexpensive WD My Cloud device, backed up to the cloud via Backblaze. I’ll likely opt for a better, more expandable solution when I run out of space.

My internet connection is excellent (1 Gbps via fiber optic) but I have impenetrable walls in my house. The WiFi signal from the router downstairs struggled to reach the rooms upstairs.

I tried various methods to extend its range (including so-called range extenders). Nothing worked until I bought a mesh network.

The setup includes 3 Linksys Velop nodes. One downstairs near the WiFi router and the other two, strategically located to propagate the signal everywhere else in the house.

I cannot recommend this setup enough if you are struggling with the WiFi signal in your house or office. I now get up to 600 Mbps upstairs, which is impressive. It used to be 3 Mbps.

Video recording equipment

As I announced in a recent post, I started making videos on YouTube. I, perhaps too ambitiously, launched three channels: one on tech, one on self-improvement, and one about my outdoor hobbies.

I don’t have the best video setup in the world, especially after my full-frame camera died, and I ended up borrowing my wife’s Canon Rebel for the time being. Nevertheless, it’s a workable setup, so I’m sharing it here.

The camera sits on top of a Manfrotto 290 Tripod. I got a pair of Neewer Dimmable Bi-Color 660 LED Video Lights with Barndoors. They produce a serious amount of light and can be powered by either AC or batteries. The stands are not award-winning, but for the price, I’m impressed with the lights themselves.

I also got a super cheap background stand support system (a Neewer 8.5ft X 10ft one). It’s fine for the $100 range. The fabric backdrops that came with it are thin, wrinkly, and a bit transparent. I tend to use the black one, putting the other two behind it to prevent light from passing through. It’s not fantastic but it’s workable.

The audio I was getting, even with a RODE shotgun microphone mounted on top of the camera, was fairly bad. It would pick up a ton of environmental sounds. With such a high noise floor, removing noise in postproduction led to serious distortion.

So then I invested in a Zoom H4N Pro audio recorder and a Countryman B3 lavalier microphone and my audio drastically improved overnight. Two fantastic audio gadgets, in my opinion.

Compare a clip I made with my old setup, and one with the new setup. I think it’s a dramatic difference.

I picked that lavalier microphone because it offers great sound for the money. It also connects to my Zoom recorder via its balanced XLR input.

The Zoom records great audio on its own, but without spending significantly more money, you’d be hard-pressed to top it when combined with the Countryman B3.

Conclusion

Truth be told, I’m not exactly sure who this post is for.

If you were curious about which gadgets I use, now you know.

If you came here through Google, searching for an opinion between two different devices, I hope you found my comments useful.

I absolutely did not make this list to brag. Yet, looking at the length of this article, listing all these gadgets in one place, it feels rather indulgent.

Let’s all agree that, maybe, I have a tech gadget problem. I can quit whenever I want. 😉

The post 19 Gadgets I Use and Love appeared first on Programming Zen.

Here’s why: ever since I discovered the BrydgeAir keyboard, I wanted to get ahold of one. The gold keyboard would match perfectly with my iPad, almost transforming it into a tiny touchscreen laptop designed by Apple. Unfortunately it’s not available yet and — particularly for Canadians — it looks like it might take a month or more before it will ship. [1]

So I got a little impatient, did my research, and bought a Logitech Type+. I hoped it would suck so that I could tell myself, “OK, you tried it, but it sucks. Let’s just return it and wait until the BrydgeAir becomes available”. Fortunately or unfortunately, such wasn’t the case.

The Logitech Type+ acts as both a protective case for the iPad and as a bluetooth keyboard.

As a case it’s fantastic. The materials are sturdy and well made. Fit and finish are perfect. You can tell that this cover would allow the iPad to take quite a beating before any damage would be likely to occur.

The case, which also embeds a keyboard, is fairly lightweight considering the materials employed, but it definitely adds some weight to your iPad.

The cover is “smart” in the sense that closing it will put the tablet to sleep, and opening it will wake the tablet up.

The design allows the case to fold in on itself in a way that covers the keyboard when using the iPad in tablet mode (A in figure). The keyboard is automatically disabled in such a mode, so there is no need to turn the keyboard on or off.

Turn the cover in landscape mode and you’ll be able to magnetically snap the iPad in place (B in figure, of course). The iPad is securely in place and lays on a rigid base which can be used on your lap if needed. The magnetic connection is strong enough to carry the iPad around with just one hand on the base of the keyboard, but I wouldn’t tempt my luck too much.

The keys are nicely spaced and are very easy to type on. I had absolutely zero fatigue writing entire posts on it. The somewhat concave key shape and slightly rough surface make it very nice to type on. Your fingers never slide by accident. The extra iPad buttons are genuinely useful and often save you from reaching out to touch the screen.

Pairing the keyboard to the tablet via Settings -> Bluetooth was quick and surprisingly painless. Moreover that setup process was required only once. After that the keyboard automatically connects to the iPad. There is no visible latency between a keypress and the character appearing on the screen either, which is really nice.

I can’t speak firsthand about battery life because these keyboards last for months and I’ve only owned mine for a few days now. However, Logitech tend to be pretty good at delivering on their declared specs, which would be three months per charge, assuming a daily average of 2 hours of typing, so I’m optimistic.

If I’m willing to split hairs, for the sake of giving it to you straight, I’ll admit that having a backlight, like Zagg has, would have been useful. Likewise there is only one viewing angle when used as a keyboard, unlike some of the other keyboard cases out there, but it’s a very sensible angle I found, so no complaints there.

In summary, the Logitech Type+ just works. It works as a case, and it works as a keyboard. It’s an all-around joy to use. It performs well on hard surface and can also be used on your lap, in a pinch. Thanks to the Type+, I don’t think I’m ever taking my laptop out to a coffee shop again.

In case you are wondering about the whole Logitech Type+ VS Logitech Ultrathin, let me tell you my opinion. Obviously while researching iPad Air 2 keyboards, I came across the Ultrathin which is another popular keyboard case by Logitech. I considered and wondered about which one was better.

I tried them both in the store and was very underwhelmed by the Ultrathin. [2] It felt cheap and plasticky, and typing on it was not nearly as comfortable. It has multiple viewing angles, but somehow manages to make you iPad not feel very secure when in place. I also disliked that it’s more akin to a smart cover, than an actual case, so your iPad back can still get scratched, and receives very little protection in general.

In summary, the Type+ for iPad Air 2 rocks. It makes me question whether I even want the BrydgeAir when it becomes available here in Canada next year. At this point I’m leaning towards no. I genuinely like this keyboard case as it transformed my iPad in the ideal computing device on the go. [3]

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