An Ounce of Elixir – mob programming for youngsters

We welcome high schoolers, students and other people with little to no experience in programming. An Ounce of Elixir workshop is an opportunity to learn a different way to program, functional programming. Elixir is a programming language inspired by Ruby but based on pure functions rather than objects and classes. Because of this, it is often a better fit for the problems we want to solve on today's internet: faster development, better reliability, easier maintenance, and more scale. Functional programming has been around for a very long time, back to the days when "computer" meant "a person who computes a result". It's based on math and logic theory, but not mired in it. It's not unusual for functional programs to be a fraction the size of a similar object oriented program, and they tend to be easier to understand and maintain. Functional programming is sometimes considered "pure programming" because it is more strict about how we do things: variables are immutable, functions are pure and "composed", anything that has a side effect (either changing the real world, or changed by the real world) is isolated from the business logic. Functional programming is a means to an end: simple, demonstrably correct code. Many top universities around the world teach functional programming to students before teaching them object oriented programming. Learning functional programming tends to change our approach to all programming, almost always for the better. Elixir is an up-and-coming functional programming language created in 2012 by José Valim. It's particularly easy to learn, yet very powerful for rapid development, more reliable programs that are easy to understand and maintain, and handling lots of users. It's a great first functional programming language, and an even better first programming language. An Ounce of Elixir is taught two ways. First, we all program together and explore the language by solving an interesting problem. Then, we break out into of 4 to 7 people and do "mob programming" on a real-world internet problem. When you're done with the workshop, you should have completed two programs and quite a bit of learning. An Ounce of Elixir is intended for new developers (people who have not yet worked as a professional programmer), but more experienced developers are welcome to join with an understanding that the mob's success is dependent on bringing every one to the same level. ## About Rob Martin Rob Martin is an architect, functional programmer, trainer, writer, and engineering leader. His professional work includes a focus on building teams of functional programmers, transitioning teams to functional programming, teaching and working with juniors and interns, mob programming, and simple, demonstrably correct code. Rob lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA and travels all over to speak at conferences and lead workshops. He can be found online at Version2beta.com, or version2beta on Twitter, GitHub, and almost everywhere else. ## Requirements for participation Participants should plan to bring their own laptop. Instructions on setting set up the environment will be sent out a week or so before the workshop.