Jorge Bejar
WyeWorks
Audience: Beginner
Topic: Phoenix

Your Guide to Understand the Initial Commit of a Phoenix Project

Everyone knows that the Phoenix framework makes web development a breeze, and for this reason, it is tempting to start adding code and more code right after running `mix phx.new`, building upon the original files and structure brought by the initial setup.

This talk proposes to thoroughly inspect the pieces that compose the backbone of a recently created application, which is no more than the result of running `mix phx.new` . It is a journey that will make us more conscious of what is being added to our “Initial Commit”. Even better, we will be able to make changes right after creating our project if it makes sense. We will be obsessed to understand each line of the critical code, being able to explain how it is working, what is the responsibility of each part and what could be removed or change depending on our specific need.

Nothing stops you from blindly accepting what Phoenix gives you as a starting point, but I believe that understanding what is going on from the beginning provides us fundamental insights that are useful during all the life of the project. It is crucial to know what your framework does behind the scenes, to fully take advantage of it.

Bio

Graduated with a computer science degree and with more than ten years of experience in the software development field, Jorge Bejar started as web developer writing PHP applications. He has later spent a few years hacking games for different platforms with C++. Around 2010, he finally returned to web development and fell in love with Ruby on Rails and the community around it. Since a few years, he was increasingly interested in Elixir and Phoenix and was being involved in projects using these technologies.He lives with his wife and 3-year old son in Montevideo and enjoys having fun with his family and friends, reading and watching soccer on TV.