Using Elixir to fight Covid-19

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I had the opportunity in 2020 to power Covid-19 contact tracing. Tools built in Elixir provided a data backbone that worked faster, was changed easier, and was more resilient than the systems we replaced.

In this story we’ll meet a cast of characters including Phoenix, Broadway, Oban, as well as Lambda, NodeJS, Ruby on Rails. Some worked well. Some were confusing. Some were both.

Some I would use again.

OBJECTIVE:

The big takeaway that I would like people to take away is that Elixir and other BEAM languages provide a solid basis for resilient, critical infrastructure, perhaps more so than tools which might have better traction in enterprise companies.

AUDIENCE:

Software engineers, engineering managers, software architects. This would be better suited for intermediate to advanced practitioners.