There's this feeling in the air that something has to be done about LLMs but it isn't clear what and on what grounds. Today I explore the frame that LLMs extract value from our shared past and pollute the future. And the past is a natural resource. distantprovince.substack.com/p/the-past-i...

The Past Is a Natural Resource

And I fear it might not be renewable

distantprovince.substack.com

New substack post tomorrow, yay! Writing is a horrible activity, absolute torture. I see why people happily outsource to LLMs.

There is seemingly no way to make logs look good both in dev and prod. This is especially noticeable in libraries, which often choose to simply not log. In my new post I propose a solution and explain why telemetry isn't quite it distantprovince.by/posts/what-d... #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

What do we do with logging in libraries? | Alex Martsinovich

Seriously, what do we do?

distantprovince.by

Working on (yet another one) blog post about logging and of course @hauleth.dev raised this topic on elixirforum all the way back in 2019 😆

Hello #ElixirLang Does anyone look for principal/senior level developer? Either permanent or contract. I have experience in performance optimisations and observability of Elixir and Erlang codebases. CV available at hauleth.dev/cv @sifa.id profile sifa.id/p/hauleth.dev

I should write a new post

Jim Nielsen@jim-nielsen.com · last mo.

📝 Some of my favorite blog posts from others must’ve undoubtedly felt to them like, "Is this even worth saying?" Get yourself a blog and state the obvious. blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/bloggin...

Proud Elixir Radar mention! 🫡

Elixir Radar@elixir-radar.com · last mo.

Elixir Radar issue 514 is out! 📣 You can read it here: buff.ly/p1A7wi1 #ElixirLang

It's only thankless maintenance if it's from Nebraska region of the US, otherwise it's just sparkling resume farming

if 100 chrome tabs were a song, what a treat

Jake Lazaroff@jakelazaroff.com · 2mo ago

new polyphia song and video are both absolutely WILD

It's amazing how LLM driven development is both good and bad at the same time. I don't see any extreme stance on it winning. We'll have to learn how to use this goddamn tool properly: without frying our brains or slopifying software.

I once again have some extra free time on my hands, so I'm going to dig into why DBConnectionErrors are seemingly never grouped correctly and see how many yaks require shaving. Our first stop is naive `Logger.error` calls. We need to figure out what to do with them!

Use reports for logging errors by martosaur · Pull Request #768 · elixir-ecto/postgrex

This PR proposes to log error using report format instead of simple string. The change should be transparent, except for those who potentially relied on log message structure. More Context One of t...

github.com

📡 New Blog Post LLMs looove markdown, but the best chat interfaces go beyond and let models use rich UI elements. In this post I demonstrate one possible way to achieve this: by teaching models to use custom HTML elements. distantprovince.by/posts/teachi...

Teaching LLMs new UI tricks | Alex Martsinovich

Going beyond simple Markdown with LiveView, MDEx and custom HTML elements

distantprovince.by

I never wrote to my MP before, but if @apenwarr.ca tells me to, I will

Wrote a bit about why LLM-written text is so painful, even when the content itself is fine, and the importance of using your own voice jola.dev/posts/the-so...

🎉 InstructorLite has passed 50k downloads on Hex! It started as a fork almost 2 years ago and quickly transformed into a full rewrite. I'm very happy that there are people (and companies!) out there who find it useful! #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

I dusted off my blog to explain the AI engineering policy I wrote for work. It morphed into more of a rant on the lack of leadership in tech than I intended. Yelling "MOAR AI!" is not leadership and your teams all feel it. brianmeeker.me/2026/05/14/h...

I wrote about model permanence - a very natural but false idea that models exist between conversation turns. distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-a...

Chatting Alone

We need to unlearn model permanence

distantprovince.substack.com

Anyone is looking for Senior Elixir Developer based in the EU? My CV available at hauleth.dev/cv #elixirlang #job

Spot on. I personally employ 2 tricks to ease the pain: 1. Draft PRs. As soon as you're more or less set on the path, push it and request a review. Once there is something tangible on the table, it's much easier to get feedback. This also forces you into iterative approach.

Paweł Świątkowski@katafrakt.eurosky.social · 3mo ago

#blogged katafrakt.me/2026/05/12/u...

Looking for an #ElixirLang dev? I'm officially on the market! 4+ years of Elixir in production. Natural affinity to testing, o11y and DX. My most used OS libraries are InstructorLite and PostHog SDK. Remote from 🇨🇦, PDT, links in bio. RTs appreciated 🙏 #MyElixirStatus

Shit like this made me go to therapy

Tyler A. Young ⚗️🧑🏻‍💻@tylerayoung.com · 5mo ago

Boy, thank goodness we have LLM generated tests for this code, otherwise we'd have no tests at all!

Code reviews are definitely dead and many of us, including myself, are grieving. I don't know how things will turn out, but I felt the need to write a farewell. distantprovince.by/posts/a-fare...

A Farewell to Code Reviews | Alex Martsinovich

Code reviews as I remember them are gone

distantprovince.by

Working on improving PostHog error tracking for complex OTP errors. Chained exceptions is a fairly good fit. Hopefully will ship soon!

Maybe AI has made writing code an obsolete skill, but every engineer who plays with coding agents today gained their experience by writing code. To understand the real impact of AI, we'll have to look at a world where engineers _never_ had to write code. distantprovince.by/posts/ai-fut...

AI Future Will Be Nothing Like Present | Alex Martsinovich

You and I have no idea what it's like to work with AI

distantprovince.by

Handwave 👋 New Hex package that allows you to point in the general direction of desired outcome and let LLM figure it out. Sometimes, you just need a smarter if: #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus

👀

Patch release 1.1.1 for InstructorLite * Make ChatCompletionsCompatible adapter more forgiving to Mistral's API responses * Fix rare bug when InstructorLite.ask/2 would refuse to call adapter because it wasn't loaded #MyElixirStatus #ElixirLang

I vibe coded an entirely new PostHog SDK— Actually, no. This summer I locked in, learned what needed to be learned, and built an error tracking library from first principles, that became an official PostHog SDK for Elixir Here's why I think it's good #ElixirLang distantprovince.by/posts/postho...

PostHog Elixir SDK is Good | Alex Martsinovich

PostHog Elixir SDK 2.0 is here and it's good

distantprovince.by

caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this. #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...

5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich

Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking

distantprovince.by

caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this. #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...

5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich

Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking

distantprovince.by