Episode notes
José Valim, creator of Elixir and founder of Dashbit, shares how he built one of the most loved programming languages by following curiosity over market trends.
Key insights for devtool founders:
- Build for yourself first - José's "selfish" approach of creating tools he actually wants to use led to authentic adoption and marketing. When you can explain genuine technical trade-offs instead of chasing trends, developers listen.
- Decentralize early - Without Google/Apple-level resources, Elixir succeeded by empowering the community to own different domains (web, ML, embedded) rather than centralizing control.
- Make pivotal technical bets - Targeting the battle-tested Erlang VM and enabling the Phoenix framework were key architectural decisions that paid off long-term.
- Marketing = explaining trade-offs - Skip the sa ...
Keywords
open sourcesoftwarefounderentrepreneurshipdeveloper toolsai