Engineering Elixir Applications (PragProg)

Develop, deploy, and debug BEAM applications using BEAMOps: a new paradigm that focuses on scalability, fault tolerance, and owning each software delivery step.

beamops-500

Ellie Fairholm @elliefairholm and Josep Giralt D’Lacoste @Gilacost

edited by Nicole Tache @ntache

The days of separate dev and ops teams are over—knowledge silos and the “throw it over the fence” culture they create are the enemy of progress. As an engineer or developer, you need to confidently own each stage of the software delivery process. This book introduces a new paradigm, BEAMOps, that helps you build, test, deploy, and debug BEAM applications. Create effective development and deployment strategies; leverage continuous improvement pipelines; and ensure environment integrity. Combine operational orchestrators such as Docker Swarm with the distribution, fault tolerance, and scalability of the BEAM, to create robust and reliable applications.

BEAMOps starts by building a solid foundation for your project. On the infrastructure side, see how to use Terraform before you even start coding to automate your deployment and operations. On the project management side, we show you how to use issues and milestones to simplify tracking; you’ll use this foundation as you go through the book, implementing each of the steps required to deploy a scalable Elixir application.

Now that you have a foundation, you can start building. Create a Phoenix LiveView application and explore mix releases. Make your deployments reliable with Docker. Continuously improve your codebase by implementing an efficient continuous deployment/integration pipeline with GitHub Actions. Scale the Phoenix LiveView application and operate a distributed BEAM
system in production using AWS EC2 nodes, AWS load balancers, and a remote Docker swarm. Recognize which application metrics should be collected and monitored, and set alerts when certain thresholds are met to ensure that your application auto-scales. Ship less code more often, and ensure it works!

The pragmatic BEAMOps approach that we teach in this book–an extension of the well-known DevOps paradigm—will help you become a multidisciplinary developer who is empowered to own each stage of the software delivery process. After reading this book, you’ll understand how to apply the BEAMOps principles in your daily work, creating reliable, scalable, and easy to understand applications in a cooperative team environment.


Ellie Fairholm is a full stack developer on the path to becoming a solutions architect. She excels at communication and believes that no topic is too difficult to learn. She is deeply passionate about making technology available to all, especially to those often underrepresented in the industry. She currently lives in the UK and is committed to working on projects that will one day change the world.

Pep G. D’Lacoste is the founder of BeamOps Software Consultancy, a company that takes a hands-on approach to simplifying BEAM projects and ensuring lasting sustainability by involving the whole team. He has been working with Elixir for 10 years and helped set up the Elixir Meetup in his home town of Barcelona. He now lives in the UK and is on a mission to empower developers and revolutionize the way technical teams operate.


Don’t forget you can get 35% off with your Devtalk discount! Just use the coupon code “devtalk.com" at checkout :+1:

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When will this be available for purchase?

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The beta version is already available, the final version is expected around sept/2024 according to the site

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So many great books to read, so little time… :slight_smile:

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Ah now I see it. When I tried purchasing it yesterday it was showing “(Not available for purchase)” in place of Add to Cart :slight_smile:

Thank you.

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Congrats to Ellie and Josep @Gilacost and Nicole @ntache on the beta release. I’ve been waiting to see this book come out. Beautiful cover!!

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@mafinar that’s because one of the first things we do when adding a new beta book is to set up the DevTalk page, before it even goes on sale. Typically, it will be available to purchase within 24 hrs of it showing up on DevTalk. You folks are special and get the first glimpse of what PragProg is doing.

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Good thing I check this site once a day every day then :slight_smile:

But this is the one of the two kinds of Elixir books I wanted to read so really, thank you for this!

The other one is on functional algorithms. Just saying :innocent:

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@mafinar, thanks, I really have to give credit to our Elixir Series Editor and advisor, Sophie DeBenadetto @SophieDeBenedetto. She’s amazing! I’ll pass along your suggestion for a “Functional Algorithms in Elixir” book.

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Thank you Margaret and thank you to all the folks in PragProg, we are really excited to share this journey with the world! We hope the readers enjoy the book as much as we did writing it!

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It would be great to see a book like this that wasn’t AWS-focused.

Simple VPS setups like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Hetzner, etc often make more sense for smaller teams or those focused on products with slimmer margins. Big cloud providers bring both cost and complexity that make them a poor option for those who aren’t in high-margin SaaS-type businesses.

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The more books from PragProg, the better :slight_smile:

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This is a good idea, I hope the author might see it and add a chapter about this.

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That would be amazing!

I’d love to say it would make the sale for me but I’ll probably end up buying the book either way :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for your interest in our book! We won’t include other providers in this book, but we’re hoping to create a series and so will keep this in mind for the next one.

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Any chance for a book on Gleam soon? :slight_smile:

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I agree. I am interested in Gleam too.

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@jkdiaz and @jmagnani we are looking for a Gleam book. Stay tuned.

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Thank you :slight_smile:

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I totally agree, and for that matter I love the Rails deployment tool called Kamal by Basecamp.

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