Alex Koutmos, CTO of EagleMMS and author of Elixir Patterns, is back with two books in beta: Programming Nerves, which gets web developers building hardware from Livebook, and Elixir For Finance, written with his brother Dimitri on real market and Federal Reserve data. Then we ask whether anyone still buys technical books, and get into running on one server, what canceled trials teach you, and a laid off engineer with 1,000 applications.

00:00 - Introduction

02:41 - Programming Nerves: from Etch A Sketch to joystick

05:36 - The Patio Defender

07:40 - Why the book starts in Livebook

13:12 - Is anyone still buying technical books?

14:40 - DHH's Campfire rewrite and knowing your tools

18:00 - Shipping without a staging environment

20:42 - Cold outreach and email reputation

28:27 - Elixir For Finance: Yahoo Finance and FRED data

33:57 - Info products after AI

38:51 - Start on a single server

43:05 - Lessons from a failed two sided marketplace

47:04 - Splitting EagleMMS with his brother

51:55 - What canceled trials taught me

58:03 - Putting your work out there and ignoring trolls

1:04:45 - Laid off, 1,000 applications, and the death of software engineering

1:10:10 - Standing out in a tough job market

1:15:37 - Niche SaaS for the trades

1:20:21 - Grok Bots for clips and cold email

1:23:21 - AI pricing and platform risk

1:28:08 - Writing books without AI, and where books go next

1:30:18 - AI training and the authors' class action

1:35:24 - Where to find Alex

1:37:24 - What to buy for Programming Nerves

Resources Mentioned:

- Programming Nerves: https://www.programmingnerves.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Elixir For Finance: https://www.financialelixir.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Nerves Livebook: https://github.com/nerves-livebook/nerves_livebook?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

Connect with Alex:

- X: https://x.com/akoutmos?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/akoutmos.bsky.social?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-koutmos-b8b2bb93?utm_source=elixir-mentor

Sponsors:

- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor

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