Mike Binns
DockYard
Audience: Beginner, Intermediate
Topic: Adoption

0-60 in under 3: How Cars.com and DockYard Manufactured a Productive Elixir Team in Under 3 Months

Companies are beginning to understand the benefits of Elixir's speed and performance in their web development projects. But they still see a lack of Elixir developers as a hurdle to switching technologies. When Cars.com decided to replace its 20-year-old tech stack with Elixir, they faced that very hurdle. Instead of maintaining the status quo, Cars.com decided to build its own Elixir team and embarked on a project to streamline 250+ microservices into one efficient app.

In this talk, Cars.com Engineering Manager Daniel Mackey will discuss the Cars.com decision-making that led their team to Elixir and to seek outside expertise from DockYard and others. DockYard Lead Project Engineer Mike Binns will then discuss the process of coaching a team of 20+ developers, with backgrounds in languages ranging from Java to Ruby to Javascript, into productive Elixir developers in under three months.

Bio

Mike Binns is an Elixir Engineer with DockYard where he enjoys taking on interesting and challenging projects. Mike enjoys contributing to the Elixir Open Source ecosystem and is the author of Elixir libraries, including Ets and Ironman. In his free time, he enjoys being a Call Firefighter and spending time with his wife and four boys on Boston's North Shore.