Training Developers

Training developers for a new language is more than simply sending a few of them at a time to classes and conferences. A holistic approach is better. Early adopters are learning and deploying new technology at the same time, and we want to minimize where things can go wrong.

Once we decide to make a commitment to Elixir, our main goal should be to solve a single, focused problem. That may be a small web service, a prototype, or the sketch of a system we plan to rewrite.

It’s also worth shaping our first team of Elixir developers with the future in mind. Experienced developers will be more comfortable with leading the project and working as mentors. Some may have been exposed to functional programming, which will ease the migration to Elixir, and others may have deep domain knowledge.

Remember: We don’t have to immediately train everyone to write Elixir.

At Bleacher Report, they had only two to four full-time Elixir developers in the first year. This strategy gave developers time to learn the language and get the prototype apps into production. ...