BEAM There, Done That

Why Multiplayer Games Are Just Distributed Systems | Ellyse Cedeno on BEAM & the Actor Model

Every player is a process. Every monster is a process. Every zone is a process. Sound familiar? In this episode, Allen Wyma and Francesco Cesarini sit down with Ellyse Cedeno - technology and product leader with 25+ years across online games, distributed systems, and real-time platforms - to explore why the BEAM and the actor model are a natural fit for multiplayer game servers, and why the games industry keeps learning this the hard way. Topics include: * why MMORPGs and telecom systems have more in common than most people realize * the N-squared problem: why high player density is so expensive and how classic games solved it * why Java threads and deadlocks were the original game server nightmare * how the actor model eliminates lock management - and what that means for mob AI * event-sourced vs tick-based architecture and when each makes sense * zones, sharding, and the air traffic control analogy for seamless server handoffs * building a NetHack-style multiplayer game in LiveView - and what the DOM diffing taught her about game state * why the games industry is dominated by C++ and Unreal, and what it would take to change that * using player behavior analytics to catch bugs before ops teams or server logs do * the production horror story of someone pulling the live database drive mid-operation Plus: why Ellyse wants to publish a 100% Elixir game on Steam, and what the open source game_server project on Codeberg is trying to do. Recorded May 25, 2026.

Who Builds the Next Generation of Senior Devs? Bruce Tate on AI, Juniors, and the Career Path Crisis

The dashboards are green. PRs are shipping faster than ever. So why are seniors quietly burning out — and juniors not actually learning? In this episode, Allen Wyma and Francesco Cesarini sit down in person with Bruce Tate — author of Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, co-author of 10+ books on Elixir, and founder of Groxio — who just shut down a 10-year mentoring organization because the junior developer career path had become too unclear to sustain. Topics include: * why AI has broken the traditional apprenticeship model without replacing it * three scenes from a Tuesday afternoon: Freddie the junior, Martin the senior, and the manager watching the green dashboard — what each is missing about the other two * the five modes of AI-assisted coding (completion, mini tasks, debugging, collaboration, vibing) and which ones a junior should actually live in * why the pull request is no longer a learning moment — and what to do instead * the four things a junior must develop to become a senior in 2026 * what leadership owes the next generation, and the one pledge every team should make * where BEAM languages fit in all of this — and why Elixir may be the best language for AI-assisted development The productivity dividend is real. The question is whether we invest it or eat it. Resources mentioned: * Groxio: grox.io * Tidewave * Ash Framework * "Tell Me a Story" talk by Sasha (referenced in episode) Recorded May 18, 2026.

AI Found 5 CVEs in One Afternoon — The BEAM Security Wake-Up Call | Peter Ullrich & Jonathan Machen

The BEAM ecosystem spent decades flying under the radar - too niche to attract serious attackers. That era is over. In this episode, we sit down with Peter Ullrich, the developer who ran a $10 experiment at ElixirConf EU in Málaga and discovered a vulnerability that could crash the BEAM with a 13-character string - with zero prior security experience. Then we hear from Jonathan Machen, CISO of the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation, whose job is to catch and coordinate everything Peter finds. We cover: * How Peter built a simple bash script that scanned the most-downloaded Hex packages - and what he found * Why LLMs have changed the cost and skill floor for vulnerability research forever * The CVE disclosure process: what happens from the moment a bug is found to the moment it's published * How the EEF's CNA went from 9 CVEs in a year to more in a single week * What library maintainers should do right now (spoiler: it's three clicks on GitHub) * The AGES initiative, supply chain security, and the gap between what's been built and what the moment demands * Why paying a vendor like Trivy isn't enough - and what actually needs to happen If you run Phoenix in production, this episode is required listening. Resources mentioned: * Peter's blog post and prompts: github.com/pultrich (linked in post) * Linux Foundation's Scrutineer project * Report vulnerabilities: cna@erlef.org * Support the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation: erlef.org

Inside the BEAM: Björn Gustavsson on Maps, Records, and Runtime Design

For the first time in over a decade, the Erlang runtime is gaining a new native data type — and on this episode of BEAM There, Done That, hosts Francesco Cesarini and Allan Wyma sit down with Björn Gustavsson, known by many as the “B” in BEAM. Björn takes listeners deep into the history of records, maps, tag bits, and the architectural trade-offs that shaped the Erlang runtime from the 1990s to today. The discussion explores why records were originally implemented as a hack, why maps never fully replaced them, and what finally made native records possible after nearly 30 years. Along the way, the episode becomes a rare tour through BEAM internals, compiler design, runtime tagging, and the practical realities of evolving a production VM used at massive scale. If you care about language design, runtime systems, or the history and future of Erlang/OTP, this is one of the deepest technical conversations the podcast has released.

Inside Phoenix: A Plug, a Macro, and What You Need to Know To Build Your Own Framework

Three and a half years, one book, and a clearer answer to what Phoenix is actually doing under the hood. Phoenix makes building web apps in Elixir feel effortless, but how much of that is genuine elegance and how much is metaprogramming hiding the complexity? Adi Iyengar spent three and a half years writing Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir to find out, and in this episode he sits down with Francesco and Allen to share what he learned by rebuilding Phoenix from the ground up. We dig into Plug as the real heart of the framework, when metaprogramming is the right tool and when it quietly becomes a liability, and why understanding the layers underneath Phoenix is what separates a productive developer from a senior one. Along the way Francesco brings out the BEAM web-server history most listeners have never heard — Yaws, Bluetail, Mochiweb, Inets — and the conversation lands on what coding agents get wrong about Phoenix in 2026.