Phoenix is productive, reliable, fast, sure. But is it secure? The reassuring answer is: Mostly, yes.

Out of the box, Phoenix offers good security but there are some common pitfalls you ought to be aware of. This talk gives an enlightening overview of potential security issues in Phoenix projects. Learn how to keep security in mind when writing code and configuration.

Who is this talk for?

Everyone who wants to deploy a Phoenix application should be aware of the potential issues that come with careless coding.

About the speaker

Griffin is a security consultant and developer, currently working for NCC Group. He has developed a static analysis tool for Phoenix applications that can detect most of the potential issues highlighted in his talk.

#4 Jesse Anderson: Don’t Write Macros But Do Learn How They Work

Metaprogramming is big in Elixir. It’s an incredibly powerful tool and lets you do things that are impossible in most other languages.

Why should you not use it then? Or should you? How do Macros even work? This talk answers these questions and more. It’s a great introduction and a good primer to start learning Metaprogramming Elixir.

Who is this talk for?

Intermediate Elixirists who want to get a better understanding of Macros and the AST.

About the speaker

Jesse has been active in the Elixir community for some time now and while this is his first ElixirConf talk, he has previously spoken about OTP at Erlang & Elixir Factory SF.

#5 Andrew Bennett: Well Behaved Native Implemented Functions

The Erlang virtual machine BEAM is great. And it’s fast. But not quite as fast as native code! This is where Native Implemented Functions (NIFs) come in: They allow integrating native code, written in languages like C, C++ or Rust, into Elixir and Erlang projects.

This talk isn’t quite a how-to for writing your own NIFs but it answers some interesting questions:

What is the role of the different schedulers in BEAM?

How do you prevent native functions from blocking your application?

What are the different types of NIFs and their advantages?

Even if you’re not planning to write your own NIFs anytime soon, this talk still provides great insight into some of the inner workings of the Erlang virtual machine.

Who is this talk for?

Experienced Elixir/Erlang developers who want to leverage the full performance of native code or get a better understanding of the BEAM platform.

About the speaker

Andrew has been interested in NIFs for a while now. While researching them, he even came up with a PR for one of Erlang/OTP’s own built-in native functions.

Bonus round!

As promised in my not-at-all clickbaity title, I wanted to share some more videos from this year’s ElixirConf US. They aren’t quite as educational as the other videos I’ve shown so far but I really enjoyed them: