Hi, I’m José Valim 👋

I'm the creator of the Elixir programming language, a speaker, writer, and open-source contributor. I enjoy both teaching and learning, which has led me to work on areas such as language design, web development, concurrent and distributed systems, domain specific languages, machine learning, and type systems.

Today I lead a small team at Dashbit, where we focus on sustainable open-source development and help companies adopt and run Elixir in production. Previously, I co-founded Plataformatec, a Brazilian consultancy acquired by Nubank. I'm also a technical advisor to a few companies, from early-stage startups to unicorns.

Most of my technical writing appears on the Dashbit and Elixir blogs. I have also written a few books.

I have given several talks at conferences over the years. Here are some of my favorites.

• Precision in type system design — ElixirConf EU 2026
  Trade-offs in type system design, and why there is no silver bullet between simplicity and expressiveness.

• Gang of None: design patterns in Elixir — ElixirConf EU 2024
  A look at design patterns through the lens of Elixir and functional programming.

• The foundations of the Elixir type system — ElixirConf EU 2023
  An introduction to set-theoretic types and how they are being introduced into Elixir.

• Livebook & Elixir: Where AI, Web & Concurrency Meet — YOW! 2023
  A live-coded presentation showing how Elixir brings together AI, web development, concurrency, and distributed systems.

• Celebrating 10 Years of Elixir — ElixirConf EU 2022
  A retrospective on Elixir’s first decade and the motivation for bringing a type system to the language.

• Introducing GenStage and Flow — ElixirConf US 2016
  How Elixir collections can be extended with laziness, concurrency, and distribution.

• Idioms for Building Distributed Fault-tolerant Applications with Elixir — GOTO 2014
  My go-to introduction to building distributed and fault-tolerant systems with Elixir for many years. This is one of its earliest recordings.

• The Design Principles of the Elixir Type System, by Giuseppe Castagna, Guillaume Duboc, and José Valim. Selected as a Reviewers’ Choice Awardee in the Programming Journal. 2024.

• Programming Phoenix: Productive |> Reliable |> Fast, by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate, and José Valim. 2019.

• Adopting Elixir: From Concept to Production, by Ben Marx, José Valim, and Bruce Tate. 2018.

• Erlang User of the Year, for contributions to Erlang/OTP and creating Elixir. 2015.

• Crafting Rails Applications: Expert Practices for Everyday Rails Development, by José Valim. 2013.

• Ruby Hero Award, for contributions to Ruby open-source projects and Rails. 2010.