Alex Martsinovich
@distantprovince.bsky.social
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📥 109
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#ElixirLang
Developer 🇨🇦 ✨InstructorLite 🪵DiscoLog 🪵LogHog
https://distantprovince.by/
pinned post!
I wrote about model permanence - a very natural but false idea that models exist between conversation turns.
distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-a...
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Chatting Alone
We need to unlearn model permanence
https://distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-alone
about 1 month ago
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if 100 chrome tabs were a song, what a treat
add a skeleton here at some point
4 days ago
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It's amazing how LLM driven development is both good and bad at the same time. I don't see any extreme stance on it winning. We'll have to learn how to use this goddamn tool properly: without frying our brains or slopifying software.
13 days ago
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I once again have some extra free time on my hands, so I'm going to dig into why DBConnectionErrors are seemingly never grouped correctly and see how many yaks require shaving. Our first stop is naive `Logger.error` calls. We need to figure out what to do with them!
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Use reports for logging errors by martosaur · Pull Request #768 · elixir-ecto/postgrex
This PR proposes to log error using report format instead of simple string. The change should be transparent, except for those who potentially relied on log message structure. More Context One of t...
https://github.com/elixir-ecto/postgrex/pull/768
14 days ago
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📡 New Blog Post LLMs looove markdown, but the best chat interfaces go beyond and let models use rich UI elements. In this post I demonstrate one possible way to achieve this: by teaching models to use custom HTML elements.
distantprovince.by/posts/teachi...
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Teaching LLMs new UI tricks | Alex Martsinovich
Going beyond simple Markdown with LiveView, MDEx and custom HTML elements
https://distantprovince.by/posts/teaching-llms-new-ui-tricks/
18 days ago
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I never wrote to my MP before, but if
@apenwarr.ca
tells me to, I will
19 days ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
Johanna Larsson 🇸🇪🇬🇧🇲🇽🏳️🌈
21 days ago
Wrote a bit about why LLM-written text is so painful, even when the content itself is fine, and the importance of using your own voice
jola.dev/posts/the-so...
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The social contract of writing | jola.dev
About the value of genuine writing in a world being drowned in slop.
https://jola.dev/posts/the-social-contract-of-writing
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🎉 InstructorLite has passed 50k downloads on Hex! It started as a fork almost 2 years ago and quickly transformed into a full rewrite. I'm very happy that there are people (and companies!) out there who find it useful!
#ElixirLang
#MyElixirStatus
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
Brian Meeker
about 1 month ago
I dusted off my blog to explain the AI engineering policy I wrote for work. It morphed into more of a rant on the lack of leadership in tech than I intended. Yelling "MOAR AI!" is not leadership and your teams all feel it.
brianmeeker.me/2026/05/14/h...
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Have a Coherent AI Policy
Yet Another Software Engineer's Blog
https://brianmeeker.me/2026/05/14/have-a-coherent-ai-policy/
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I wrote about model permanence - a very natural but false idea that models exist between conversation turns.
distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-a...
loading . . .
Chatting Alone
We need to unlearn model permanence
https://distantprovince.substack.com/p/chatting-alone
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
λ (λ 2 (1 1)) (λ 2 (1 1))
about 1 month ago
Anyone is looking for Senior Elixir Developer based in the EU? My CV available at
hauleth.dev/cv
#elixirlang
#job
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Spot on. I personally employ 2 tricks to ease the pain: 1. Draft PRs. As soon as you're more or less set on the path, push it and request a review. Once there is something tangible on the table, it's much easier to get feedback. This also forces you into iterative approach.
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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Looking for an
#ElixirLang
dev? I'm officially on the market! 4+ years of Elixir in production. Natural affinity to testing, o11y and DX. My most used OS libraries are InstructorLite and PostHog SDK. Remote from 🇨🇦, PDT, links in bio. RTs appreciated 🙏
#MyElixirStatus
about 1 month ago
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Shit like this made me go to therapy
add a skeleton here at some point
3 months ago
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Code reviews are definitely dead and many of us, including myself, are grieving. I don't know how things will turn out, but I felt the need to write a farewell.
distantprovince.by/posts/a-fare...
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A Farewell to Code Reviews | Alex Martsinovich
Code reviews as I remember them are gone
https://distantprovince.by/posts/a-farewell-to-code-reviews/
3 months ago
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Working on improving PostHog error tracking for complex OTP errors. Chained exceptions is a fairly good fit. Hopefully will ship soon!
4 months ago
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Maybe AI has made writing code an obsolete skill, but every engineer who plays with coding agents today gained their experience by writing code. To understand the real impact of AI, we'll have to look at a world where engineers _never_ had to write code.
distantprovince.by/posts/ai-fut...
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AI Future Will Be Nothing Like Present | Alex Martsinovich
You and I have no idea what it's like to work with AI
https://distantprovince.by/posts/ai-future-will-be-nothing-like-present/
5 months ago
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Handwave 👋 New Hex package that allows you to point in the general direction of desired outcome and let LLM figure it out. Sometimes, you just need a smarter if:
#ElixirLang
#MyElixirStatus
5 months ago
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👀
7 months ago
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Patch release 1.1.1 for InstructorLite * Make ChatCompletionsCompatible adapter more forgiving to Mistral's API responses * Fix rare bug when InstructorLite.ask/2 would refuse to call adapter because it wasn't loaded
#MyElixirStatus
#ElixirLang
8 months ago
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I vibe coded an entirely new PostHog SDK— Actually, no. This summer I locked in, learned what needed to be learned, and built an error tracking library from first principles, that became an official PostHog SDK for Elixir Here's why I think it's good
#ElixirLang
distantprovince.by/posts/postho...
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PostHog Elixir SDK is Good | Alex Martsinovich
PostHog Elixir SDK 2.0 is here and it's good
https://distantprovince.by/posts/posthog-elixir-sdk-is-good/
9 months ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this.
#ElixirLang
#MyElixirStatus
distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...
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5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich
Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking
https://distantprovince.by/posts/5-minute-guide-to-elixir-caller-tracking/
10 months ago
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caller tracking has been part of Elixir for quite some time now, but is still a relatively obscure mechanism. we need to fix this.
#ElixirLang
#MyElixirStatus
distantprovince.by/posts/5-minu...
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5-minute guide to Elixir caller tracking | Alex Martsinovich
Now is the second best time to talk about caller tracking
https://distantprovince.by/posts/5-minute-guide-to-elixir-caller-tracking/
10 months ago
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If you're a junior engineer, don't ask cheap models for advice. Ask the most senior engineer on the team. The latency is garbage, the personality is questionable, but your employer pays for subscription 💅
10 months ago
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Last week InstructorLite hit 100 stars and 10k downloads on Hex 🎉 Almost a year after its initial release! InstructorLite is the best way to get comfortable with structured outputs before you inevitably transition to raw Req.
#ElixirLang
#MyElixirStatus
10 months ago
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If food can only be soup, salad or sandwich, then functions can only be pure functions, side-effects or call sites
10 months ago
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That was unexpected
11 months ago
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Registry is such a versatile tool. How did we live without it? How do I stop using it for everything?
11 months ago
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I finally updated one of my side projects to Phoenix 1.8 and DaisyUI. Looks much better now. Under the hood it runs ~100k Oban jobs per day and costs less than $5 per month to host.
#ElixirLang
is truly a miracle tech.
11 months ago
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I think the question is, does the world need DiscoHog?
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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Hmm, so with all my work on LogHog and DiscoLog, I have all building blocks in place to create a bot that will forward Discord gateway events to PostHog 🤔
11 months ago
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What have I done my silly AI essay is "on HN front page". I don't even know how hacker news work. Should I open comment section?
11 months ago
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A tech lead who I highly respect once told me that in order to get something _really_ right, you need to rewrite the code ~5 times. I think about this often.
11 months ago
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InstructorLite is slowly catching up with Instructor, huh
11 months ago
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AI etiquette, I'm telling you
distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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I distinctly remember that I discovered this blog somewhere in late 2010s, although I don't remember how exactly. Time has passed, I myself became Canadian, and the man continues to drop gems like this 😭😭
add a skeleton here at some point
11 months ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
I am an AI optimist, but sometimes I feel like I am at war with AI. Or maybe with other people. Ugh, listen, you just need to imagine you are a scrambler.
distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...
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It's rude to show AI output to people | Alex Martsinovich
Feeding slop is an act of war
https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/
12 months ago
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Posthog is such a branding powerhouse. I know they have stories now. I wrote an error tracking library for them. And I don't even use the product that much! I barely know what they do!
11 months ago
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I am an AI optimist, but sometimes I feel like I am at war with AI. Or maybe with other people. Ugh, listen, you just need to imagine you are a scrambler.
distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...
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It's rude to show AI output to people | Alex Martsinovich
Feeding slop is an act of war
https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/
12 months ago
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reposted by
Alex Martsinovich
Dorgan
12 months ago
`check_possible_steal_victim` is probably the best function in the otp codebase
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I'm a big fan of playful naming in code and I really love the concepts of "task stealing", "task immigration", and "scheduler evacuation" in Erlang schedulers.
12 months ago
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Ever wondered what `Sentry.PlugCapture` does? How come we need a plug to log Plug errors? Aren't they... just logged like any other error? The answer is for 🏛️ historical reasons 🏛️. These days, it's not necessary.
#ElixirLang
12 months ago
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In the meantime, fully human-made, hand-crafted banger libs InstructorLite 1.0.0 and DiscoLog 2.0.0 are coming next week, I think
about 1 year ago
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Basically, LogHog hogs your logs and posts them to PostHog
about 1 year ago
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🚀 Time to announce LogHog - PostHog 🦔 Error Tracking for Elixir
#ElixirLang
elixirforum.com/t/loghog-pos...
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LogHog - PostHog Error Tracking for Elixir
PostHog introduced their Error Tracking solution a couple of months ago. Right now they only support Python and JS, but the team was kind enough to add support for language-agnostic errors, which LogH...
https://elixirforum.com/t/loghog-posthog-error-tracking-for-elixir/71265
about 1 year ago
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My logging era is in full motion and my poor pet app is running Sentry, DiscoLog and LogHog handlers 💀
about 1 year ago
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Just spilled my diet coke
about 1 year ago
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PostHog Error Tracking might not support Elixir, but that won't stop Elixir from supporting it!
#ElixirLang
about 1 year ago
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Did a deep dive into logging metadata and what it means to have an "unhandled" error in Elixir. Hence the two new pages in LoggerHandlerKit docs!
hexdocs.pm/logger_handl...
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Metadata — Logger Handler Kit v0.2.0
https://hexdocs.pm/logger_handler_kit/metadata.html
about 1 year ago
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Took me a while to realize but this isn't a proper highlighting, Github!
about 1 year ago
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Every once in a while I open Bandit repo just to check what weird corner case was discovered this week
github.com/mtrudel/band...
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More info on (Bandit.HTTPError) Body read timeout · Issue #490 · mtrudel/bandit
👋 I'm using Bandit v1.6.11 and I started noticing more [error] ** (Bandit.HTTPError) Body read timeout in my logs today, like a couple every hour. And I wonder if there is a way to get more informa...
https://github.com/mtrudel/bandit/issues/490
about 1 year ago
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