Getting to know - Adolfo Neto

Welcome to another edition in our Getting to Know Us series. Getting to know us consists of articles and interviews about a wide variety of people in our ecosystem, with the main goal of making their work with BEAM technologies visible. Some have been around a long time, while others may seem new to you, but they all share a love for this ecosystem. If you know of interesting work that deserves more visibility, let us know at marcom@erlef.org!

Adolfo Neto is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Technology, Paraná, and the creator and co-host of the Elixir em Foco podcast, a podcast about Elixir and the BEAM in Portuguese. He is one of the chairs of the Education, Training, & Adoption Working Group of the Foundation, and a prominent mentor in the growing Elixir community in Brazil. Today we get to know him.

How did you decide to learn programming, and what were your first steps?

I started learning programming as a teenager in the 80s. It all began when I visited a friend’s house and saw their computer. After that, I told my father that I wanted a computer too. My computer came with the BASIC programming language, so I started learning that. Later, I learned some assembly language for that computer and when I entered college, I studied Pascal, C, and Lisp.

When did you encounter the BEAM ecosystem, and how did you decide to learn Erlang and Elixir?

The first time I heard about Erlang was in 2011 when I was reading Bruce Tate’s book, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages. One of the languages he describes is Erlang. Interestingly, José Valim also read that book and was inspired to create Elixir.

I spent a year in the USA, where people would often mention, “Oh, there is this new language, Elixir.” However, I didn’t decide to study Elixir until 2018. My main motivation was that it was created by a Brazilian, and as a fellow Brazilian, I felt a connection.

What are some of your favorite technical highlights in Erlang/OTP, Elixir, etc. that have occurred over the past few years?

I really like Elixir’s syntax, which is not something you can easily say about many programming languages. The coding in Elixir is beautiful. Initially, I wouldn’t have said the same about Erlang, but after some time, you get used to it and start to appreciate that Erlang code can also be beautiful.

One of the great advantages of Elixir, and Erlang, is that it is so easy to create distributed systems thanks to the BEAM. You can open a terminal, create a process, and then open another terminal, create another process, and make those processes communicate. This is something you don’t find in most languages.

You are the creator and co-host of Elixir em Foco Podcast , could you tell us more about it?

The Elixir community, in particular, has a lot of podcasts, I believe Elixir Fountain was the first podcast followed by Elixir Talk as the second one. Nowadays, we have some very active podcasts, like Thinking Elixir or Elixir Mentor. However, back then, there were no podcasts in Portuguese or in any language other than English.

Since Elixir was created in Brazil and I had some free time during the pandemic, I decided to start a podcast. When I tweeted about it, I received offers from three volunteers: Cristine Guadelupe, Herminio Torres, and Zoey Pessanha. And that’s our team now. We are the four co-hosts of “Elixir em Foco”.

We interviewed José Valim in our 12th episode and also many people from the Brazilian Elixir and Erlang community that work with Elixir either in their own companies or in Brazilian companies, or in companies from other countries. We also have a series called “Elixir in Production,” and sometimes we open the podcast to other programming languages. For example, we had an episode on Clojure and an episode on Lean, another programming language created by a Brazilian, Leonardo de Moura.

Our Podcast is very simple. It features the four hosts and one or two interviewees. We discuss how Elixir is used in their company, why they like the BEAM, how the BEAM is important for their company, and which learning materials are best for those who want to learn Elixir or Erlang.

Recently, I was part of the organizing team for the Elixir Days event in São Paulo, Brazil. São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, and we had about 100 attendees. Many people recognized me because of the podcast, which was great. A lot of the people we had interviewed, and previously only knew through a monitor, were there, and we could talk to them in person.

We have a modest audience for Brazil, around 200 people download our episodes every month. We publish one episode each month, we meet new people, and we learn a lot by doing it. I see only advantages in doing that podcast.

How has the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation supported you in this project?

The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation supports Elixir em Foco Podcast. Thanks to their support we can use a great software for recording our interviews. It makes the editing process a lot easier.

Additionally, I am part of the Hello Erlang podcast, created by Slava (Viacheslav Katsuba), a Ukrainian Erlanger. The podcast is currently on pause due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but we hope to return recording interviews soon. The Foundation is also going to support this podcast.

Can you share details about the expanding Elixir community in Brazil?

It’s a growing community. I believe many people try to learn Elixir for the same reason that I did, because it was created by a Brazilian. José Valim is a great guy, he is always helping. I’ve had students who had questions and reached out to Valim; he always responds.

And also, there are some companies in Brazil that use Elixir in production. But one problem is that the community has grown so much that there are not enough jobs in Brazil for the people that want to work with Elixir. We need more companies adopting Elixir, we need more citizens learning what you can do with Elixir in Erlang, in the BEAM.

As a professor, I make an effort to introduce my students to Elixir and Erlang languages because there isn’t a dedicated course only focused on learning Elixir. Without this effort, some students may graduate without ever discovering Elixir, a programming language created by a Brazilian that’s widely adopted by both Brazilian and international companies.

What excites you about the future of Erlang/OTP, Elixir, etc.? Is there anything you are particularly looking forward to?

I’m excited about exploring the new machine learning features available in Livebook, Nx, and Scholar. At the Elixir Days event, Paulo Valente from the Nx core team gave an insightful talk. He talked about many interesting things that you can do with machine learning in Elixir using Livebook, which is another great project. One area I haven’t had the chance to delve into yet is Nerves, mainly because I’m not much of a hardware guy. To experiment with Nerves, I’d need some embedded hardware like Arduino or similar devices.

And also we want to create resources such as a website for people who don’t know how to program, so they can learn Elixir using a resource, Lee Barney is working on that. That’s what I want to see in the future, it would be great. Of course, we have Elixir school which is great, but its focus is more on people that already know a programming language.

Why did you decide to join the Erlang Ecosystems Foundation? You are currently part of the Education Working Group of the Foundation, what can you tell us about this WG?

When I started, people in the community encouraged me by saying, “oh, now there’s the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation, you can join”. So I joined, and after a short while, they mentioned, “Oh, we need volunteers for the Education Working Group.” I joined that as well, and now I am the co-chair of the Education Working Group.

My goal in the Education Working Group is to make it easier for people -at least for programmers- to learn languages such as Elixir, Erlang, and Gleam. Of course, communities around these languages already do a lot to facilitate learning, and we want to contribute to that.

And why would you recommend others join the Erlang Ecosystems Foundation?

In every episode of the Elixir em Foco, I recommend people joining the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation. I was on the Elixir Days event, and I also told everyone there to join. There is a free membership option, and if you want to support financially, you can do that as well. And if your company uses Elixir or Erlang or any BEAM language, you can also become a sponsor.

As a member, you can join the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation in Slack and be part of any Working Group. For instance, the most popular right now is the Machine Learning Working Group, people are always discussing there. And you can also, if you really love the BEAM, Erlang, Elixir, join the Education Working group and help us. You can also ask the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation for support.

There are many opportunities for helping the community. For instance, Brian Cardarela, created a GitHub repo asking “What do you miss in Elixir?” and many people contributed with solutions. So there are many ways where you can share knowledge.

There are also great events all over the world, such as Elixir Days, here in Brazil. Last year I organized, with support from the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation the Elixir Fortaleza event. I have never been able to attend an ElixirConf yet, but I’ve heard great things about it. I have attended Code Beam America also with help from the Foundation, and it was an amazing experience. Additionally, there are Code Beam Europe, Code Beam Lite Stockholm, and Code Beam Lite A Coruña.

For some people in certain countries, attending these conferences might be difficult, but there are always other ways to stay connected. You can listen to podcasts, follow the community on X, where many people share nice things, or join the Elixir Forum. There are many options to join this community and see how great it is.

Watch the interview on our YouTube Channel

We’re eager to hear your stories, please share them at marcom@erlef.org!