Thank You

Posted on 18 Sep 2021, 00:45.

I first came upon Elixir in 2013 (wow, it's been 8 years?). I was looking at Erlang and a friend of mine said that there's this new language being built on the same VM, you should look at it. I gave it a whirl and the rest is history, as they say. I've written it on and off, sadly never professionally, resulting in lots of stuff, some even in production. Elixir gave me a new joy in programming.

None of this would be possible without the hard work of people I've never seen. People who have received nothing from me but have decided to give me the tools to work with anyway. To help me avoid mistakes. To ease my experience. To expand my view of programming beyond what I could have thought of myself.

For this I want to thank you, as it's the least I can do.

This unordered list is not exhaustive, you can help by expanding it in your own blog post.

Thank you, josevalim, for starting the movement. What you created has shaped the lives of so many people. Not just the language, but the community around it, worldwide. It wasn't all you, but you took the first steps and inspired others to join. I admire your work ethic and the amount of wise decisions you've made when steering the language and various libraries. As a programmer but also as a person you are a personal inspiration.

Thank you, chrismccord, for building the Phoenix ecosystem and for your focus on making Elixir web development a frictionless experience for a newcomer. Your work makes my work possible, and I'm impressed at how well thought out the framework's features are. LiveView is a game changer and it has been a pleasure to replace my frontend JavaScript with backend Elixir code.

Thank you, ericmj, for the Ecto tooling. I used to think Django's ORM was the best database interfacing library there was, but Ecto showed me a new perspective and the folly of my ways. Hex on the other hand is now the underpinning of the whole package ecosystem. Also, Ex2ms keeps me sane.

Thank you, CrowdHailer, for showing me an alternative way of doing HTTP in Elixir. I found your OTP-ish code structuring eye opening. Also, this blog runs on Raxx.

Thank you, kip, for making sure that Elixir has the best damn CLDR and Unicode support available.

Thank you, laut, for teaching me about when UTC is not enough and providing me the calendar and TZ tools I could not do without.

Thank you, rawtaz, for keeping #elixir free of joins and quits.

Thank you, sasajuric, for sharing your wisdom in the ways of the BEAM with others. Your presentations are inspiring and informative, and I truly believe you are one of the great minds in the community.

Thank you, Hauleth, for teaching me about OTP, applications, and configuration. Your thoughts on things have widened my perspective.

Thank you, JakeBecker, axelson, KronicDeth, Big Hat Dorgan, and others, for creating and improving the tools to mold and shape our projects right in our favourite editors.

Thank you, supervisors and moderators of community spaces, for maintaining friendly, high quality help resources day after day. The amount of good you have done for new and old users is uncountable.

Thank you, AstonJ, for your tireless work in producing one of the best programming language related resources I have seen. It's searchable, it's accessible, it's free, and it's friendly. The Elixir Forum is a blessing for the community.

Thank you, OvermindDL1, for your insightful forum posts and many different small libraries. I have learned many things from them and they have helped me greatly on my path.

Thank you, Khionu, for being an active force for improvement on the Elixir Discord.

Thank you, Volcyy, for managing Bolt for us.

Thank you, asummers and immutable, whom I always mix up for some reason so I'm giving you a combined thanks for being all around helpful people.

Thank you, Natsu, for being so hyped.

Thank you, Adam and CronoKirby, for being our glorious admins.

Thank you, nikolauska, for your contributions to my project. Having another person working on the project for such amounts really gave me motivation.

Thank you, Rick Van Camp, for inviting me to hold my first meetup presentation. It taught me that after years of self doubt, I could actually do it and even enjoy it. You reached out and gave me the push I needed.

Thank you, Jasu, for saving me from speaking alone at our first meetup, and for reminding me that I'm not the only Elixir dev in this neck of the woods.

Thank you, juhatl, for the undeserved kind words you had for me. You don't know what they have meant.

Thank you, fhunleth, mobileoverlord, ConnorRigby, jjcarstens, and ferggo, for bringing Elixir to the world of embedded software and giving me totally new areas of research on what I could do with Elixir and my RPi boards. Click click.

Thank you, nox, for all the shitposts.

Thank you, tomjoro, for pushing Elixir's cause in Finland. Your presentation in Helsinki was inspiring and I'd love to hear more from you in the future.

Thank you, paulcsmith and princemaple, for allowing me to send email without losing the rest of my hair.

Thank you, lpil, rvirding, leostera, gfngfn, and michallepicki, for pushing the envelope on what BEAM can do and what new features alternative approaches can provide. Especially the static typing initiatives are extremely exciting to me.

Thank you, riverrun, for letting my users come on in to my website by inputting their password. Honestly, your library is invaluable.

Thank you, AppSignal, for sponsoring my project with a free account.

Thank you, all the other companies supporting various Elixir projects, conferences, websites, communities, etc with money or employee time. You make it possible to do many of the things we take for granted.

This wasn't even half of the people I should thank, but at this hour of the night I'm unable to think clearly enough to add more. And I just don't know enough of you! As a rule, if you believe you have made some sort of a positive effect on the Elixir community or you have been part of something mentioned above, you should consider yourself a part of these good people.

I know my thanks won't pay anyone's bills or bring food to the table, but I hope it can bring you some small amount of motivation or positive feeling to your day. My wish is to be able to give back to the community in a similar way as you have done and be worthy of someone else's thanks.