296: OpenAI Chose Elixir and A VM Inside a VMV
From Thinking Elixir Podcast by ThinkingElixir.com
March 24, 2026 · 47 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the latest updates in Elixir, including new features and community innovations, as well as OpenAI's use of Elixir in their Symphony project.
Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2 and rc.3 arrive with a faster compiler, better type inference, and improved incremental compilation; José Valim drops a low-key bombshell with Distributed Python running on top of the Erlang distribution with full Livebook integration; Chris McCord wows the community with fly_deploy, enabling zero-downtime hot code upgrades on Fly.io using the BEAM's ability to boot a peer VM inside a running VM; Discord shares a deep dive into how they added distributed tracing to their Elixir systems without melting everything; Popcorn v0.2 brings Elixir to the browser as a proper npm package; OpenAI's Symphony project — built in Elixir — sparks conversation about vibe-coded BEAM code and whether TypeScript tools can truly replicate what the BEAM offers, and more! Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/296 Elixir Community News https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer. https://x.com/josevalim/status/2029221739285057565 – José Valim announced Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2 and rc.3 on X. The compiler finds more bugs, is ~10% faster…
People in this episode
Host: José Valim
Topics covered
- Elixir updates
- Distributed systems
- Zero-downtime deployments
- Type inference
- Livebook integration
- Distributed tracing
Keywords
- Elixir
- OpenAI
- Distributed Python
- fly_deploy
- Popcorn
- Livebook
- zero-downtime
- Erlang
- BEAM
- type inference
Sponsors
Paraxial.io
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: OpenAI, Discord, Fly.io
Products: Elixir v1.20.0-rc.2, Elixir v1.20.0-rc.3, Popcorn v0.2
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