Thinking Elixir 296 - OpenAI Chose Elixir and A VM Inside a VM

Episode 296 of Thinking Elixir. Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2 and rc.3 arrive with a faster compiler, better type inference, and improved incremental compilation; José Valim drops a low-key bombshell with Distributed Python running on top of the Erlang distribution with full Livebook integration; Chris McCord wows the community with fly_deploy, enabling zero-downtime hot code upgrades on Fly.io using the BEAM’s ability to boot a peer VM inside a running VM; Discord shares a deep dive into how they added distributed tracing to their Elixir systems without melting everything; Popcorn v0.2 brings Elixir to the browser as a proper npm package; OpenAI’s Symphony project — built in Elixir — sparks conversation about vibe-coded BEAM code and whether TypeScript tools can truly replicate what the BEAM offers, and more!