Structured Program Design in Elixir with Bruce Tate

Bruce Tate's talk revolves around the best practices for designing self-healing, performant Elixir programs using OTP (Open Telecom Platform). His mnemonic 'Do Fun Things with Big, Loud Worker Bees' simplifies the key elements of designing systems with Elixir and OTP into beneficial layers. The 'Do Fun Things' stands for Data, Functions, and Tests, which together make the 'happy place' or functional core of an Elixir program. 'Big, Loud Worker Bees' stands for Boundaries, Lifecycles, and Workers, the layers that involve more complexity, such as process management and uncertainty. Tate highlights the need for harmony with functional data structures, the importance of pure functions and reducers, and predictable tests in the functional core. In contrast, he delves into the boundary layer, where uncertainty reigns and 'maybe' becomes the 'dirtiest' word, productive strategies include keeping OTP handlers slim and translating errors into data to retain composability. The lifecycle component of OTP focuses on clean startups, shutdowns, and supervision, while the workers (or balance) involve considering when and where to persist data within the architecture. Tate wraps up by sharing his work at Groxio to educate and advance programmers in new languages and by promoting his book 'Designing Elixir Systems with OTP'.