Alex Koutmos on Nerves and Finance

Alex Koutmos, CTO of EagleMMS and author of Elixir Patterns, is back with two books in beta: Programming Nerves, which gets web developers building hardware from Livebook, and Elixir For Finance, written with his brother Dimitri on real market and Federal Reserve data. Then we ask whether anyone still buys technical books, and get into running on one server, what canceled trials teach you, and a laid off engineer with 1,000 applications. 00:00 - Introduction 02:41 - Programming Nerves: from Etch A Sketch to joystick 05:36 - The Patio Defender 07:40 - Why the book starts in Livebook 13:12 - Is anyone still buying technical books? 14:40 - DHH's Campfire rewrite and knowing your tools 18:00 - Shipping without a staging environment 20:42 - Cold outreach and email reputation 28:27 - Elixir For Finance: Yahoo Finance and FRED data 33:57 - Info products after AI 38:51 - Start on a single server 43:05 - Lessons from a failed two sided marketplace 47:04 - Splitting EagleMMS with his brother 51:55 - What canceled trials taught me 58:03 - Putting your work out there and ignoring trolls 1:04:45 - Laid off, 1,000 applications, and the death of software engineering 1:10:10 - Standing out in a tough job market 1:15:37 - Niche SaaS for the trades 1:20:21 - Grok Bots for clips and cold email 1:23:21 - AI pricing and platform risk 1:28:08 - Writing books without AI, and where books go next 1:30:18 - AI training and the authors' class action 1:35:24 - Where to find Alex 1:37:24 - What to buy for Programming Nerves Resources Mentioned: - Programming Nerves: https://www.programmingnerves.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Elixir For Finance: https://www.financialelixir.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Nerves Livebook: https://github.com/nerves-livebook/nerves_livebook?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor Connect with Alex: - X: https://x.com/akoutmos?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/akoutmos.bsky.social?utm_source=elixir-mentor - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-koutmos-b8b2bb93?utm_source=elixir-mentor Sponsors: - BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor - Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR - Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor #ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor