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, 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.