92: Derrick Reimer - Building an SPA with Elm, Phoenix and GraphQL

In this episode, Adam talks to Derrick Reimer about building his new app Level as an SPA using Elm, Phoenix, and GraphQL.

Show Notes

Topics include:

• Why Derrick chose to build Level as an SPA
• Choosing Elm over React or Vue
• How Elm is sort of like a language and framework combined
• Moving to Phoenix from Rails
• Why getting abstractions right feels easier in a functional language
• How "contexts" help you organize your Phoenix code
• The benefits of GraphQL over REST
• What it looks like to implement GraphQL on the server
• Avoiding n+1 queries with GraphQL

Sponsors:

• Rollbar, sign up at https://rollbar.com/fullstackradio to try their Bootstrap Plan free for 90 days
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Links:

• Level
• Level live-coding screencasts on YouTube
• Elm, the functional programming language Derrick is using on the frontend
• An Introduction to Elm, the official tutorial
• The Elm Architecture
• Elixir, the functional programming language Derrick is using on the backend
• Phoenix, the Elixir framework
• Contexts in Phoenix
• GraphQL
• Absinthe, GraphQL implementation for Elixir

What is Full Stack Radio?

A podcast for developers interested in building great software products. Every episode, Adam Wathan is joined by a guest to talk about everything from product design and user experience to unit testing and system administration.