How is the community helping you?

I wanted to create a little thread for people to share how the community has helped (or is helping) them and also provide another space to express our gratitude and share positive support.

This is inspired by my own reliance and deep appreciation on the community and the latest Thinking Elixir podcast episode.


To kick things off, I’d like to say that my life’s work with Metamorphic would not be possible without the community, which includes the Elixir team, Erlang team, Phoenix team, Hex team, forum members who’ve answered my questions (or the questions of others that also aided my own work), and the maintainers of, and contributors to, the various packages that I use directly and indirectly.

The incredible work being done by everyone makes me a better developer, seriously super powers, and Metamorphic a better service.

I’ve honestly encountered very few issues that weren’t due to my own code and misunderstanding of how to use/do something.

And those issues that weren’t my own are fixed so fast it seems overnight and are usually never a problem impeding my work or causing any kind of “damage”.

That honestly reflects such an incredible quality of both scope and scale that is being done by the community — it is mind blowing.

Honestly, I feel more akin to a puzzler than a creator, assembling pieces that are beautifully crafted and painstakingly made by someone else into an image that, in my case, is Metamorphic.

I know I’m going to leave someone out, and I’m so sorry (I’ll do my best to edit in the future when I remember), but, without further ado, incredible thanks to:

  • Elixir, the team and contributors
  • Ecto, the team and contributors
  • Erlang, the team and contributors
  • Phoenix, the team and contributors
  • Hex, the team and contributors (I don’t think it gets mentioned enough how amazing you are)
  • enacl, maintainer(s) and contributors — who would’ve thought I could make Metamorphic enable people to connect and share with others in a zero knowledge design?
  • ex_aws, maintainer(s) and contributors — you’ve made handling Metamorphic’s object storage possible for me
  • pwned, the maintainer(s) and contributors — from your wonderful package I was able to make our version for Metamorphic
  • oban, maintainer(s) and contributors — you make jobs a breeze
  • Documentation, Elixir/Phoenix, Erlang/ETS and many others — I wanted to single out because few are the days not spent solving problems and finding great ideas from the docs
  • stun, the maintainer(s) and contributors — I couldn’t imagine having to implement a stun/turn server without you
  • stripity_stripe, the maintainer(s) and contributors — moving mountains for working with the Stripe API
  • bamboo, the maintainer(s) and contributors — making email easy, approachable, and powerful
  • credo and sobelow, the maintainer(s) and contributors — helping me quickly and easily check the general security and quality of my code base
  • libcluster, the maintainer(s) and contributors — making clustering possible for me
  • cors_plug, the maintainer(s) and contributors — you made working with CORS a breeze
  • plug_content_security_policy, the maintainer(s) and contributors — I don’t ever want to go back to doing a CSP without you
  • zxcvbn, the maintainer(s) and contributors — for sensible, strong, and human friendly passwords
  • number, the maintainer(s) and contributors — for making number-to-currency conversions a breeze
  • nimble_totp, the maintainer(s) and contributors — I wouldn’t have 2FA without you
  • cloak (and cloak_ecto), the maintainer(s) and contributors — for an incredibly great experience implementing symmetric, at-rest encryption (couldn’t do it without you)
  • blog posts — oh so many: Elixir is Safe, Optimizing UX with LiveView, Optimizing…with ETS, Per-User Encryption with Elixir, Phoenix LiveView Uploads Deep Dive, and Build a Video Chat App… to name a few
  • podcasts — so many will edit later
  • books — Adopting Elixir, Elixir in Action, Programming Phoenix, Real-Time Phoenix, Programming WebRTC (waiting for a print copy, but I know I’m going to be so thankful for this one), and Practical Security
  • Dashbit and co (like livebook team, contributors and maintainer(s)) — from your blog posts to your packages (from the nimble family to bytepack and livebook), I don’t know what’d I’d do without them (you are often the first source I turn to for guidance and example)

I will have to return to this post later to add links and more shoutouts, but I wanted to kick the thread off and say thank you.

My plan with the success of Metamorphic (early access launch is coming soon) is to be committing financial support in addition to just verbal. But until I am able to afford that, all I can do is say thank you so much and I and Metamorphic wouldn’t be here without you. :pray:t2::heart:

21 Likes

Thanks for sharing some of the projects that make a difference for you! I saw several I wasn’t aware of in your list. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I mean, what can I say…! I owe my current career trajectory to the Elixir community’s attitude toward open source and enabling success. There’s a deep relationship between that attitude in a social, emotional, moral sense to how it comes out in the technology. Even from the level of the design of the language (simple, stable, powerful macros) – just a lot of [genius + collective attitude]. It’s very cool.

3 Likes