Explore the advantages of Elixir for building fast, scalable backends in this 50-minute conference talk from GOTO Chicago 2017. Discover why Elixir stands out as a sane choice in an increasingly complex development landscape. Learn about Erlang's foundations, Elixir's enhancements, and key features like pattern matching and the Erlang VM. Delve into practical applications, including WebSockets, push notifications, and supervisors. Compare Elixir's functional programming approach to Ruby's object-oriented paradigm, and understand how Elixir addresses modern development challenges. Gain insights into deploying Elixir applications and leveraging its strengths in frameworks like Phoenix.