Livebook 0.2 was released. The big news here was the announcement of “Kino” (meaning “cinema”). It’s a client-side focused feature that animates data changes. José Valim created a video demonstrating some of the new Livebook features. Use this link to jump to the part of the video, it’s 18:52 in, that shows Kino in action.
Another big change is the addition of inputs! Accessing an input’s data in your Elixir cell looks like this: IO.gets("input name: ") Input values come in as a string so it may need to parsed or processed for your particular use.
The other big Kino feature is called data_table. With this, you can easily show any data as a table with pagination and sorting.
Livebook is actually a big deal. It lowers the bar on a lot things for Elixir. It can be used to:
- Teach the Elixir language itself
- Document how a library works
- Play with Nerves and embedded hardware interactively
- Connect to a live production system!
I’m bullish on Livebook and what I think it can do for the entire Elixir community. Livebook is definitely something to watch!
Other Elixir News
In other Elixir news, conferences are returning! Many have been only virtual by necessity. While this has been nice because I could attend virtually without the need to travel. I have missed seeing people and meeting new people the way I did at physical conferences.
Two significant conferences were announced that are hybrid (physical and virtual) or physical for 2 days and virtual for 2 days. Some interesting experiments going on here!
In order of their dates:
ElixirConfEU - A hybrid conference being held in Warsaw, Poland and virtual as well. The dates are September 9-10.
- Sasa Juric, author of Elixir in Action, will keynote.
- José Valim, creator of Elixir, will be interviewing Chris McCord, creator of Phoenix Framework, at the conference. That could be fun!
ElixirConf US 2021 is being held physically in Austin, TX October 12-13 and online, October 14-15. This is an interesting experiment. A 4-day conference where the physical and virtual talks aren’t the same!
Livebook works awesome on Fly
Livebook supports collaborative editing. When you host your own instance you can invite people to join you!
Boot up a Livebook! →