Who is Mike Zornek?
Hello! My name is Mike Zornek. I describe myself as both a developer and teacher, and I've been building digital products for over 25 years.
From the suburbs of Philadelphia, I code in Elixir. When I am not coding, I enjoy watching Phillies baseball and playing video games (mostly laid-back simulations and RPGs).
Recent Blog Posts
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ElixirConf US 2026 Recap
· Notes from watching ElixirConf US 2026 on a virtual ticket, and some talks I'd point you to first.
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Finding Your Broken Glass: A Flaky Test Prompt for GitHub Actions
· Your CI history already knows which tests flake. This prompt pulls the evidence, names the tests, and works out what the re-runs cost.
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One Pipe, One User Story: The Case for phoenix_test
· Why phoenix_test makes Phoenix feature tests read better and fail more usefully.
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Building LocalCents: A Local-first Expense Tracker with Automerge CRDTs
· An educational side project: a local-first expense tracker built with Automerge CRDTs in Elixir, Phoenix, and Tauri, plus how I surface sync …
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Who Fills the Sprint? My 45/45/10 Split
· Every sprint is a tug-of-war between the roadmap and the work that keeps the lights on. Here is the 45/45/10 split I plan against, and why.
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Celebrating New Journaling Habits
· A couple of new habits have stuck: weekly planning, and a signal log to track where my consulting outreach lands.
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An Agent Skill for Updating Elixir Dependencies
· What agent skills are, and a walkthrough of the one I lean on to update Elixir dependencies and open a documented pull request.
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Shimming Your Way Off a Dead Elixir Dependency
· An abandoned dependency was blocking a major upgrade I needed. Here are the two ways I retire one, and when a shim beats a big-bang rewrite.
Some of My Favorites
- My Notes on Three Years of Coding with AI
- Personal Elixir Code Aesthetics
- Phoenix LiveView: Presenting DateTime in User's Time Zone
- What is Local-first Software?
- My Standup Format
Monthly(ish) Emails
A few links worth your time, whatever I've published lately, and a personal update. Mostly Elixir and software craft. No spam, unsubscribe any time.