13 ms·

Elixir v1.1.0 Released

266 points by sadiqmmm 11y ago

chrismccord 11y ago
The changelog details all the good stuff in this release https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.1.0 https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.1.0 For anyone wanting to jump into Elixir, the getting started guides are excellent: http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html From there, José Valim wrote a How I Start article: https://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1 https://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1 There's also a really helpful community on #elixir-lang irc. Someone is usually around to answer questions.
- dwc 11y ago
  > getting started guides are excellent This is very true. I had just started playing with Elixir and had pre-ordered Dave Thomas' Programming Elixir and was going through the draft ebook, and I actually set that aside and worked through the Getting Started. It's normal the see such guides, but the material there is really, really good.
vvanders 11y ago
Nice to see the new code of conduct, that's not something you see in every community. I have to say it's incredible to see how quickly Elixir has developed and what the language is capable of. Between Elixir on the server side and Rust on the native space I feel like we're seeing a real growth of practical functional languages. (I know Rust isn't as pure functional as many other languages but it's ML roots are still refreshing for writing native code)
- 15155 11y ago
  I have the same feelings about Rust. It's the light at the end of the tunnel for a native language with a great type system and decent primitives. Something as low-level as Rust can't deviate as far as, say, Haskell, from the procedural, register-machine reality in which we operate, and that's fine.
- rozap 11y ago
  Elixir/Erlang aren't purely functional either (eg: ets), but they're enough functional to eliminate many common bugs and they still allow you to get stuff done. :)
tedunangst 11y ago
And the link goes to a page with zero information about what's changed. One of the reasons editorializing titles is frowned upon.
- rossj 11y ago
  Try CHANGELOG.md, it's pretty thorough.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Note that on mobile, it's not quite trivial to get there, especially if you don't know that's what you're supposed to be looking for.
weatherlight 11y ago
For anyone who wants practise Elixir exercises akin to ruby koans. Check out. They are free :) Études for Elixir http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001642/index.html http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001642/index.ht...
- alxndr 11y ago
  Exercism.io also has a ton of little Elixir exercises (complete with failing test suite) to get your feet wet. (Lots of other languages too!)
eatonphil 11y ago
I took a look at Erlang/Elixir a while ago and didn't get too far into it after realizing there was no compile-time type-checking. My main question coming out of it: if you are going to go with a dynamic language, why go with Elixir over Python or Ruby (or Clojure or Racket or ...)? These have a larger mind-share and a more broadly recognized syntax. Granted, Erlang (BEAM?) processes are appealing. If you are using Erlang or Elixir, why?
- todd3834 11y ago
  I haven't done much with it yet but I was under the impression that speed and performance were a big advantage.
- weatherlight 11y ago
  Elixir helps manage complexity by encouraging the structuring of code in terms of series of transformations on data. This makes code simpler, more readable, easier to read, reason about and maintain. It also helps avoid whole classes of complex bugs and problems that inevitable creep into large codebases of Java, Python or Ruby code.
  - eatonphil 11y ago
    So what differentiates it from Clojure or Racket then (which are ostensibly more interested in transformations on data)?
    - adrusi 11y ago
      The concurrency model. I recommend Rich Hickey's talk "the language of the system" (ironic, I know). In erlang/elixir you use the same kinds of abstractions to design your fine-grained logic and you coarse services. This makes for a very unique approach to scaling.
      - eatonphil 11y ago
        I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the reference
arxpoetica 11y ago
n00b question: can someone give me a small summary of the main difference between Elixir and Node at a very general level, without getting into a spat about the merits of JavaScript or true functional languages. Looking more for pros/cons like, "Elixir works _X_ way, where Node lacks _Y_," or, "Elixir is great for _Y_, but if you really want to do _X_, stick with Node."
- rubiquity 11y ago
  If you search HN or Google for Erlang vs Node there's a long history of this debate. Here's a brief summary: - Erlang/Elixir (from now on I will just say Elixir) have parallelism out of the box. Node.js is a single threaded event loop so you only get CPU parallelism by forking. - Elixir is also massively concurrent and has non blocking IO but instead of using callbacks/promises you just write your code sequentially and the BEAM (Elixir's VM) takes care of scheduling for you. - In benchmarks, Elixir maintains a very consistent 99th percentile whereas Node's 99th percentile latency drastically gets worse as the active number of connections increase.
  - 15155 11y ago
    > CPU parallelism by forking. Which, minus the IPC, code/dependency sharing, has similar practical consequences as Erlang/Elixir: no shared heap. > but instead of using callbacks/promises At a level as high as JavaScript this doesn't matter, but, green threads are not as performant as this model would be in a lower-level language. Edge-triggered, multi-threaded event loops + callbacks are a force to be reckoned with on the concurrency front. > 99th percentile latency Single-core tests? For both Erlang (BEAM) and Node.js? I'd like to see this testing and the reasoning behind it, though if true, I suspect it's probably related to GC latency (and the high cost of JS execution contexts).
    - rubiquity 11y ago
      > Which, minus the IPC, code/dependency sharing, has similar practical consequences as Erlang/Elixir: no shared heap. In Elixir/Erlang every Erlang process has its own heap. In the case of Node.js and forking, each forked process has its own heap. You can't fork 100,000 times but you can have 100,000+ Erlang processes all with separate heaps and all in the same process.
ryeguy 11y ago
Honest question, and not meant to be inflammatory at all. I'm asking because I'm starting a project where an actor model may be a good fit. Why would one choose erlang/elixir over akka[0]? Akka seems to implement a lot of common patterns for you. It has actor persistance, cross-node failover, advanced mailbox and routing logic, and is basically a superset of OTP. The JVM is generally more efficient, has better tooling (ide support), has better libraries, and so on. The only point I can give to erlang is the pre-emptive scheduling, which is useful for consistently low latency. [0] http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.4.0-RC3/java.html http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.4.0-RC3/java.html
- m0th87 11y ago
  Per-actor GC is pretty important, as it allows Erlang to guarantee soft real-time / low latencies. This is simply impossible in the JVM unless you go with Azul's GC, which then sacrifices throughput.
  - go1979 11y ago
    Thanks. Another point is that in Erlang/Elixir, if you have many actors, you will have less garbage per actor. Which means faster GC overall. The best known example for Erlang/Beam "http throughput" is WhatsApp's 3 million+ concurrent connections per host. I don't think you get anywhere close in Akka. Maybe max out at 50K per server? Is even that possible? Also, I'm not aware of good examples that use Akka with Java. Everyone I know using Akka seems to also be using Scala (not sure if it is just some kind of self-selection). I really can't stand Scala's syntax. I tried two or three times but I find it too easy to encounter Perl like unreadable code. Just my opinion though.
    - rattray 11y ago
      There's also Quasar for Java, Clojure, or Kotlin code
      - MCRed 11y ago
        The problem is the JVM. There's a reason erlang has its own virtual machine. Without virtual machine support, doing concurrency is really just faking it, and will result in significant bugs later on that are essentially impossible to debug.
Raphmedia 11y ago
Direct link to changelog: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG....
go1979 11y ago
Very much a personal opinion from someone coding for 15 years+. I'm new to Elixir but I found it to be a joyful language to work with so far. Java is a language you code in to pay the bills. Go is not bad at all but while I've heard people remark Go is fun, it hasn't been that fun for me. A bit of ugly syntax here and there. Python is awesome but I'm tired of the v2/v3 crap and frankly don't think it is the right tool for large, multi-person code bases (e.g. Openstack). Elixir has been truly enjoyable for me. If you are a jaded dev who used to love languages, give Elixir a try. I hope you get the same joy that I am getting from it because it has an ineffable quality about it. [edited]
- smt88 11y ago
  > frankly don't think it is the right tool for large, multi-person code bases I'm very curious what aspects of Python (especially unique to Python) made you feel this way.
  - lectrick 11y ago
    Mutability and OO, I'd guess. :P
- hackerboos 11y ago
  > while I've heard people remark Go is fun, it hasn't been that fun for me Fun compared to C and C++.
yumraj 11y ago
Some random thoughts and impressions: I had not even heard of Elixir till the Phoenix framework hit 1.0 about a month ago, and right now I'm very seriously considering Elixir/Phoenix for my next startup and have been slowly learning/hacking in it. I come from C/C++ background, so the syntax was different as it is more Ruby-ish, but still very easy to grok. I've been looking at golang as my next language, but I think Elixir is even more simpler that it. Of all the functional languages that I've tried to get into in the past, this has the most approachable syntax, and I can see things like pattern matching helping a lot with code maintainability. The performance, from whatever I've seen and the limited benchmarks that are out there, it compares extremely well with JVM, Node and Go. Erlang/OTP brings fault tolerance, Phoenix/Ecto etc. have been very productive, community is awesome and helpful. Erlang tooling, such as observer, is awesome and I don't think we have anything similar in golang, though I could be wrong. Dializer helps with type checking. The one thing missing is lack of a enterprise sponsor, and also number of potential hires which can be risky for startups, but on the other hand people interested in working in elixir could be an interesting hiring filter ;)
- smt88 11y ago
  To be honest with you, "for my next startup" strikes me as the absolute worst time to use a language/platform that is both new to you and new to the industry. Delays kill startups, and that just begs for delays. You have to learn the language. All your new engineers have to learn it. You'll inevitably be (re)inventing the wheel because Elixir isn't in production at thousands of companies already. Picking a shitty, slow language, as long as it's a popular one (JavaScript, Java, C#, PHP, Python), is going to have a much better cost/benefit profile.
  - pgz 11y ago
    It really depends on the startup. For some form of chat application or distributed system he will find himself reinventing less compared to the competition. Would be a great way to beat the averages :)
  - yumraj 11y ago
    Yes, you're absolutely right. Which is why I'm extremely conflicted right now. I definitely like what I'm seeing with Elixir/Phoenix, but should I take the risk or not is a really tough question. It is performant and fault tolerant, so for a startup if that means it can reduce our operational, and support, cost that itself would be a huge win. Deployment seems straight forward, much much simpler than what I had to do with a Rails app that I was experimenting with. Go deployment would be easier, but Elixir seems at worst to be inline with Play/Java (running under Play and not tomcat). There is a huge set of libraries should I need to venture outside Elixir and into Erlang, and moreover I think (not 100% sure) that Erlang can easily call into other language libraries which might come in handy. The way I'm looking at it is implementing small examples in a couple of other options, such as Nodejs/Loopback and Java/Play and then comparing them. So far Elixir/Phoenix seems straightforward and productive, but still evaluating. However, even if Elixir/Phoenix is the best thing since sliced bread, hiring and training is indeed going to be an issue so I've been trying to figure out how to solve than conundrum.
dv_says 11y ago
I'm really glad to have recently picked up Elixir. For anyone just starting, a few tips from someone similarly new: a. After launching the "iex" shell, press Tab. You'll get the list of all built-in commands. b. The help feature is also very handy for when you're wondering what an operator does. Type "h <command>" for a definition. h !/1 c. Try the pipe operator. Your code will closely follow the transformations of your data. Instead of this: m1 = "moo" m2 = String.replace(m1, "m", "z") m3 = String.upcase(m2) Or this: String.upcase(String.replace("moo", "m", "z")) Try this: "moo" |> String.replace("m", "z") |> String.upcase() The result of each command will be passed as the first argument to the subsequent command. d. You get seamless interoperability with Erlang libraries. :crypto.hash(:md5, "bob") |> Base.encode64 e. Try the Observer tool in iex to visualize various aspects of your running application, including the supervision tree, details on each running OTP process, and much more. Seriously very handy stuff. :observer.start() f. If you're using EC2 like I am, Amazon images have a too-old version of Erlang, but it's trivial to compile things yourself: sudo yum install gcc glibc-devel make ncurses-devel openssl-devel autoconf wget https://www2.erlang.org/download/otp_src_18.0.tar.gz tar xvzf otp_src_18.0.tar.gz cd otp_src_18.0 ./configure && make && sudo make install sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/escript /usr/bin/escript sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/erl /usr/bin/erl
- derefr 11y ago
  I want to rave a little bit about this: "moo" |> String.replace("m", "z") |> String.upcase() This is always what I thought OOP should be, but could never put my finger on. Effectively, you're calling a chain of "methods" of "objects", but each method lives in its own namespaced module, rather than automatically being assumed to live in the class associated with the data. No "this object implements two interfaces that both define add()" confusion; no objects extended to infinity with extra mix-ins and interfaces just so that more methods could be called on the object rather than having the object passed to utility functions; etc. And when you do use classes (Structs), there's line-local context-free crystal-clarity between code that expects a generic object expressing one of the class's interfaces (where calls are made on the interface's Protocol module) vs. code that expects that particular class (where calls are made on the class's module, which contains the implementations of the Protocol functions.)
sadiqmmm 11y ago
Changelog for Elixir v1.1: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG....
arca_vorago 11y ago
Very excited about this, I am one of those people who theorycrafts about stuff quite a bit, and while I have been looking for an appropriate language for some of my next projects, elixir is at the top of the list consistently, mostly because I like not having to deal with concurrency myself, so I think it will be easier to rapid prototype and then scale as needed.
eddd 11y ago
Release notes are not that important, the fact that this post remains on the top of HM is the best sign that elixir is finally hitting of.
gjkood 11y ago
Here is my highly opinionated 2 cents. Don't choose Elixir/Erlang just for the language. There are plenty of functional languages to choose from. Choose them for what OTP provides. I doubt there is any language framework with as mature an operational framework as what Erlang/OTP provides. For a startup it might feel like an extreme case of premature optimization but if you can make the technical investment you might reduce technical debt down the line. I think Elixir in particular allows you to still get an MVP out the door with all the bells and whistles of OTP waiting silently in the background if your startup ever reaches the volumes to justify it. BTW, I just attended a FANTASTIC 2 day (FREE) workshop conducted by Norberto Ortigoza (twitter: @hiphoox) at the HackerDojo that gave an overview of Elixir/Erlang/Phoenix and OTP. Thanks Hackers/Founders, Norberto and HackderDojo for arranging the training.
- vvanders 11y ago
  I feel like there's some room for building a nice scripting DSL given how strong of a macro support there is. However that does mean you're bringing in a pretty heavy VM for something that could be relatively simple.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/escript.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/escript.html The above is for erlang. It brings up the same VM so I imagine, if it doesn't exist, it would work as well for elixir if someone were to set it up. Perhaps we need an elixir shell project like scsh.
troyk 11y ago
I have been watching Elixir/Phoenix for over a year with a lot of interest, one thing that I really appreciate is how dedicated they are to their CHANGELOG files. https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/CHAN... https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/blob/v1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/blob/v1.0/CHANGELOG.md
josep2 11y ago
I tried Elixir about 2 months ago for a project and found the standard library was lacking and the quality of community contributed modules wasn't up to par with other languages. I've worked with Python and Node my career and I prefer the Multi-paradigm approach of a Language like Go or Rust than the functional approach. I'll probably give it a try again in a year when it's more mature.
- namelezz 11y ago
  I love Bitstring Syntax in Elixir and Erlang. Similar feature is coming for Rust[1]. [1] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/346 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/346
- lectrick 11y ago
  This may be a perennial issue with functional langs, but using a functional lang only made sense to me after working with OO problems for YEARS. You'll see quite a few people commenting in this thread (including me) who have spent something like 10-15+ years working with OO languages, we've seen the ugly sides of mutability, dependency spaghetti, holding onto state too tightly, too much coupling between classes, and the like; not to mention the difficulty with concurrency in a world where anything can mutate global state (such as class definitions).
- rubiquity 11y ago
  What do you think the standard library is lacking? I mostly wrote Ruby before picking up Elixir and Ruby's standard library is loaded with mostly garbage. I've found Elixir's std lib to be focused to the core purposes of the language but I would love to hear what you think it needs.
- RobertKerans 11y ago
  I'm curious what you found lacking; I've been using Elixir for personal stuff for a year now, and every time I've thought what you said, I've gone to Erlang and found an OTP module that either covers, or goes far beyond my use case. José's said that they deliberately kept the stdlib small for this reason, that unless there was a pressing need to wrap the underlying Erlang libs, they would be excluded from the Elixir stdlib For a minor example, recently I was building a representation of a rectangular tiled game board, and after fighting with the stdlib and lists for a while, found I could just, out-of-the-box and with a bare minimum of effort, build a directed graph, with built in pathfinding and access. What you get for free is phenomenal
aalhour 11y ago
Sorry if this sounds like a noob question. Since everyone is asking why going with Elixir and not {X}, I am going to ask why would someone go with Elixir/Erlang and not Scala? I am asking this because we are evaluating new languages at the work place.
- vvanders 11y ago
  It's answered in detail a bit farther down but the tldr is Erlang VM > Java VM for high concurrency.
  - aalhour 11y ago
    Thanks! Will check out the other comments.
scardine 11y ago
Elixir and Lua are among the few relevant contributions to the computer science field originating from my country (Brazil).
deleted 11y ago
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cpitman 11y ago
I was pretty excited about Elixir: great scalability and performance? Awesome! I had an idea for a type of reverse proxy, so I wrote in on elixir + cowboy. Go to performance test it, and the results are nothing to write home about. Thought I was doing something wrong, but looking around I didn't find any performance test results that were all that different. What is the point of "lightweight threads" if the "heavier" solutions are way faster? Here's TechEmpower's latest benchmark results. Keey scrolling till you get to an Erlang/Elixir based solution: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=peak&test=query&l=2i1e8&a=1 https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=...
- unvs 11y ago
  There are multiple pull requests pending to tune those benchmarks, and reports that the numbers are off by a factor of 10x.
  - perishabledave 11y ago
    For reference: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pull/1730 https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pull/1730
rubyn00bie 11y ago
For anyone trying to install from Homebrew, the new formula hasn't been merged, you can brew edit it, if you need it now... Simply replace the existing formula, with the new one: https://github.com/josevalim/homebrew/blob/patch-30/Library/Formula/elixir.rb https://github.com/josevalim/homebrew/blob/patch-30/Library/... > brew edit elixir Then just paste the new file in. You'll have to reset this eventually... which you can do for all your formulas using: cd `brew --cellar` git reset --hard HEAD Installs like a charm on El Capitan.
vishaldpatel 11y ago
I just started learning Erlang. Should I bother, or should I just go ahead and learn Elixir instead?
- illicium 11y ago
  Elixir is a different syntax and standard library on top of the Erlang VM (BEAM) and OTP, the distributed/HA magic written in Erlang, that Erlang (ecosystem) gets a lot of its praise for. Ultimately you'll need to know Erlang (language) anyway if you want to use some external libraries that aren't in Elixir natively. IMO, Elixir as a language is not too different from Erlang, other than syntax.
- yumraj 11y ago
  IMO, it depends on your background. If you have a lot of functional programming experience in languages similar to Erlang, I'll say just go ahead with Erlang. If you come from a more traditional language background, such as C, C++, c#, java, scala, ruby, python, js and others, especially ruby since elixir is very ruby-ish, Elixir is more approachable and I'll suggest that you go with it.
  - eggy 11y ago
    LFE - Lisp Flavoried Erlang - is also an option. Created by Robert Virding, one of the creators of Erlang, it is a Lisp-2 with full access to Erlang and the OTP. Elixir is cool though too, and certainly is similar to Ruby.
- quaunaut 11y ago
  Like most things in programming, 'it depends'! What's your background? If it's in a more interpreted language like Ruby or Python, learning Elixir instead might be a good idea. If you want something that's going to be more approachable, it also might be a better idea. Are you going to do web development, and want to use a more conventions-over-configuration type of framework? Do Elixir with the Phoenix framework. If you already enjoy Erlang though? Don't get discouraged just because something is built on top of it- keep going! Elixir will be there regardless, and might even be easier to learn when you understand what it's built on.
shadykiller 11y ago
We created our microservice router in Elixir. It is rock solid and even the deployment is a breeze with exrm. Even though I am the only one in the team who picked up Elixir, but soon we will have more. Elixir and its tooling is a welcoming change.

266 points by sadiqmmm 11y ago

The changelog details all the good stuff in this release https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.1.0 https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.1.0 For anyone wanting to jump into Elixir, the getting started guides are excellent: http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html From there, José Valim wrote a How I Start article: https://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1 https://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1 There's also a really helpful community on #elixir-lang irc. Someone is usually around to answer questions.

dwc 11y ago
> getting started guides are excellent This is very true. I had just started playing with Elixir and had pre-ordered Dave Thomas' Programming Elixir and was going through the draft ebook, and I actually set that aside and worked through the Getting Started. It's normal the see such guides, but the material there is really, really good.

vvanders 11y ago

Nice to see the new code of conduct, that's not something you see in every community. I have to say it's incredible to see how quickly Elixir has developed and what the language is capable of. Between Elixir on the server side and Rust on the native space I feel like we're seeing a real growth of practical functional languages. (I know Rust isn't as pure functional as many other languages but it's ML roots are still refreshing for writing native code)

15155 11y ago
I have the same feelings about Rust. It's the light at the end of the tunnel for a native language with a great type system and decent primitives. Something as low-level as Rust can't deviate as far as, say, Haskell, from the procedural, register-machine reality in which we operate, and that's fine.
rozap 11y ago
Elixir/Erlang aren't purely functional either (eg: ets), but they're enough functional to eliminate many common bugs and they still allow you to get stuff done. :)

tedunangst 11y ago

And the link goes to a page with zero information about what's changed. One of the reasons editorializing titles is frowned upon.

rossj 11y ago
Try CHANGELOG.md, it's pretty thorough.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Note that on mobile, it's not quite trivial to get there, especially if you don't know that's what you're supposed to be looking for.

weatherlight 11y ago

For anyone who wants practise Elixir exercises akin to ruby koans. Check out. They are free :) Études for Elixir http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001642/index.html http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001642/index.ht...

alxndr 11y ago
Exercism.io also has a ton of little Elixir exercises (complete with failing test suite) to get your feet wet. (Lots of other languages too!)

eatonphil 11y ago

I took a look at Erlang/Elixir a while ago and didn't get too far into it after realizing there was no compile-time type-checking. My main question coming out of it: if you are going to go with a dynamic language, why go with Elixir over Python or Ruby (or Clojure or Racket or ...)? These have a larger mind-share and a more broadly recognized syntax. Granted, Erlang (BEAM?) processes are appealing. If you are using Erlang or Elixir, why?

todd3834 11y ago
I haven't done much with it yet but I was under the impression that speed and performance were a big advantage.
weatherlight 11y ago
Elixir helps manage complexity by encouraging the structuring of code in terms of series of transformations on data. This makes code simpler, more readable, easier to read, reason about and maintain. It also helps avoid whole classes of complex bugs and problems that inevitable creep into large codebases of Java, Python or Ruby code.
- eatonphil 11y ago
  So what differentiates it from Clojure or Racket then (which are ostensibly more interested in transformations on data)?
  - adrusi 11y ago
    The concurrency model. I recommend Rich Hickey's talk "the language of the system" (ironic, I know). In erlang/elixir you use the same kinds of abstractions to design your fine-grained logic and you coarse services. This makes for a very unique approach to scaling.
    - eatonphil 11y ago
      I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the reference

arxpoetica 11y ago

n00b question: can someone give me a small summary of the main difference between Elixir and Node at a very general level, without getting into a spat about the merits of JavaScript or true functional languages. Looking more for pros/cons like, "Elixir works _X_ way, where Node lacks _Y_," or, "Elixir is great for _Y_, but if you really want to do _X_, stick with Node."

rubiquity 11y ago
If you search HN or Google for Erlang vs Node there's a long history of this debate. Here's a brief summary: - Erlang/Elixir (from now on I will just say Elixir) have parallelism out of the box. Node.js is a single threaded event loop so you only get CPU parallelism by forking. - Elixir is also massively concurrent and has non blocking IO but instead of using callbacks/promises you just write your code sequentially and the BEAM (Elixir's VM) takes care of scheduling for you. - In benchmarks, Elixir maintains a very consistent 99th percentile whereas Node's 99th percentile latency drastically gets worse as the active number of connections increase.
- 15155 11y ago
  > CPU parallelism by forking. Which, minus the IPC, code/dependency sharing, has similar practical consequences as Erlang/Elixir: no shared heap. > but instead of using callbacks/promises At a level as high as JavaScript this doesn't matter, but, green threads are not as performant as this model would be in a lower-level language. Edge-triggered, multi-threaded event loops + callbacks are a force to be reckoned with on the concurrency front. > 99th percentile latency Single-core tests? For both Erlang (BEAM) and Node.js? I'd like to see this testing and the reasoning behind it, though if true, I suspect it's probably related to GC latency (and the high cost of JS execution contexts).
  - rubiquity 11y ago
    > Which, minus the IPC, code/dependency sharing, has similar practical consequences as Erlang/Elixir: no shared heap. In Elixir/Erlang every Erlang process has its own heap. In the case of Node.js and forking, each forked process has its own heap. You can't fork 100,000 times but you can have 100,000+ Erlang processes all with separate heaps and all in the same process.

ryeguy 11y ago

Honest question, and not meant to be inflammatory at all. I'm asking because I'm starting a project where an actor model may be a good fit. Why would one choose erlang/elixir over akka[0]? Akka seems to implement a lot of common patterns for you. It has actor persistance, cross-node failover, advanced mailbox and routing logic, and is basically a superset of OTP. The JVM is generally more efficient, has better tooling (ide support), has better libraries, and so on. The only point I can give to erlang is the pre-emptive scheduling, which is useful for consistently low latency. [0] http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.4.0-RC3/java.html http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.4.0-RC3/java.html

m0th87 11y ago
Per-actor GC is pretty important, as it allows Erlang to guarantee soft real-time / low latencies. This is simply impossible in the JVM unless you go with Azul's GC, which then sacrifices throughput.
- go1979 11y ago
  Thanks. Another point is that in Erlang/Elixir, if you have many actors, you will have less garbage per actor. Which means faster GC overall. The best known example for Erlang/Beam "http throughput" is WhatsApp's 3 million+ concurrent connections per host. I don't think you get anywhere close in Akka. Maybe max out at 50K per server? Is even that possible? Also, I'm not aware of good examples that use Akka with Java. Everyone I know using Akka seems to also be using Scala (not sure if it is just some kind of self-selection). I really can't stand Scala's syntax. I tried two or three times but I find it too easy to encounter Perl like unreadable code. Just my opinion though.
  - rattray 11y ago
    There's also Quasar for Java, Clojure, or Kotlin code
    - MCRed 11y ago
      The problem is the JVM. There's a reason erlang has its own virtual machine. Without virtual machine support, doing concurrency is really just faking it, and will result in significant bugs later on that are essentially impossible to debug.

Raphmedia 11y ago

Direct link to changelog: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG....

go1979 11y ago

Very much a personal opinion from someone coding for 15 years+. I'm new to Elixir but I found it to be a joyful language to work with so far. Java is a language you code in to pay the bills. Go is not bad at all but while I've heard people remark Go is fun, it hasn't been that fun for me. A bit of ugly syntax here and there. Python is awesome but I'm tired of the v2/v3 crap and frankly don't think it is the right tool for large, multi-person code bases (e.g. Openstack). Elixir has been truly enjoyable for me. If you are a jaded dev who used to love languages, give Elixir a try. I hope you get the same joy that I am getting from it because it has an ineffable quality about it. [edited]

smt88 11y ago
> frankly don't think it is the right tool for large, multi-person code bases I'm very curious what aspects of Python (especially unique to Python) made you feel this way.
- lectrick 11y ago
  Mutability and OO, I'd guess. :P
hackerboos 11y ago
> while I've heard people remark Go is fun, it hasn't been that fun for me Fun compared to C and C++.

yumraj 11y ago

Some random thoughts and impressions: I had not even heard of Elixir till the Phoenix framework hit 1.0 about a month ago, and right now I'm very seriously considering Elixir/Phoenix for my next startup and have been slowly learning/hacking in it. I come from C/C++ background, so the syntax was different as it is more Ruby-ish, but still very easy to grok. I've been looking at golang as my next language, but I think Elixir is even more simpler that it. Of all the functional languages that I've tried to get into in the past, this has the most approachable syntax, and I can see things like pattern matching helping a lot with code maintainability. The performance, from whatever I've seen and the limited benchmarks that are out there, it compares extremely well with JVM, Node and Go. Erlang/OTP brings fault tolerance, Phoenix/Ecto etc. have been very productive, community is awesome and helpful. Erlang tooling, such as observer, is awesome and I don't think we have anything similar in golang, though I could be wrong. Dializer helps with type checking. The one thing missing is lack of a enterprise sponsor, and also number of potential hires which can be risky for startups, but on the other hand people interested in working in elixir could be an interesting hiring filter ;)

smt88 11y ago
To be honest with you, "for my next startup" strikes me as the absolute worst time to use a language/platform that is both new to you and new to the industry. Delays kill startups, and that just begs for delays. You have to learn the language. All your new engineers have to learn it. You'll inevitably be (re)inventing the wheel because Elixir isn't in production at thousands of companies already. Picking a shitty, slow language, as long as it's a popular one (JavaScript, Java, C#, PHP, Python), is going to have a much better cost/benefit profile.
- pgz 11y ago
  It really depends on the startup. For some form of chat application or distributed system he will find himself reinventing less compared to the competition. Would be a great way to beat the averages :)
- yumraj 11y ago
  Yes, you're absolutely right. Which is why I'm extremely conflicted right now. I definitely like what I'm seeing with Elixir/Phoenix, but should I take the risk or not is a really tough question. It is performant and fault tolerant, so for a startup if that means it can reduce our operational, and support, cost that itself would be a huge win. Deployment seems straight forward, much much simpler than what I had to do with a Rails app that I was experimenting with. Go deployment would be easier, but Elixir seems at worst to be inline with Play/Java (running under Play and not tomcat). There is a huge set of libraries should I need to venture outside Elixir and into Erlang, and moreover I think (not 100% sure) that Erlang can easily call into other language libraries which might come in handy. The way I'm looking at it is implementing small examples in a couple of other options, such as Nodejs/Loopback and Java/Play and then comparing them. So far Elixir/Phoenix seems straightforward and productive, but still evaluating. However, even if Elixir/Phoenix is the best thing since sliced bread, hiring and training is indeed going to be an issue so I've been trying to figure out how to solve than conundrum.

dv_says 11y ago

I'm really glad to have recently picked up Elixir. For anyone just starting, a few tips from someone similarly new: a. After launching the "iex" shell, press Tab. You'll get the list of all built-in commands. b. The help feature is also very handy for when you're wondering what an operator does. Type "h <command>" for a definition. h !/1 c. Try the pipe operator. Your code will closely follow the transformations of your data. Instead of this: m1 = "moo" m2 = String.replace(m1, "m", "z") m3 = String.upcase(m2) Or this: String.upcase(String.replace("moo", "m", "z")) Try this: "moo" |> String.replace("m", "z") |> String.upcase() The result of each command will be passed as the first argument to the subsequent command. d. You get seamless interoperability with Erlang libraries. :crypto.hash(:md5, "bob") |> Base.encode64 e. Try the Observer tool in iex to visualize various aspects of your running application, including the supervision tree, details on each running OTP process, and much more. Seriously very handy stuff. :observer.start() f. If you're using EC2 like I am, Amazon images have a too-old version of Erlang, but it's trivial to compile things yourself: sudo yum install gcc glibc-devel make ncurses-devel openssl-devel autoconf wget https://www2.erlang.org/download/otp_src_18.0.tar.gz tar xvzf otp_src_18.0.tar.gz cd otp_src_18.0 ./configure && make && sudo make install sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/escript /usr/bin/escript sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/erl /usr/bin/erl

derefr 11y ago
I want to rave a little bit about this: "moo" |> String.replace("m", "z") |> String.upcase() This is always what I thought OOP should be, but could never put my finger on. Effectively, you're calling a chain of "methods" of "objects", but each method lives in its own namespaced module, rather than automatically being assumed to live in the class associated with the data. No "this object implements two interfaces that both define add()" confusion; no objects extended to infinity with extra mix-ins and interfaces just so that more methods could be called on the object rather than having the object passed to utility functions; etc. And when you do use classes (Structs), there's line-local context-free crystal-clarity between code that expects a generic object expressing one of the class's interfaces (where calls are made on the interface's Protocol module) vs. code that expects that particular class (where calls are made on the class's module, which contains the implementations of the Protocol functions.)

sadiqmmm 11y ago

Changelog for Elixir v1.1: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1.0/CHANGELOG....

arca_vorago 11y ago

Very excited about this, I am one of those people who theorycrafts about stuff quite a bit, and while I have been looking for an appropriate language for some of my next projects, elixir is at the top of the list consistently, mostly because I like not having to deal with concurrency myself, so I think it will be easier to rapid prototype and then scale as needed.

eddd 11y ago

Release notes are not that important, the fact that this post remains on the top of HM is the best sign that elixir is finally hitting of.

gjkood 11y ago

Here is my highly opinionated 2 cents. Don't choose Elixir/Erlang just for the language. There are plenty of functional languages to choose from. Choose them for what OTP provides. I doubt there is any language framework with as mature an operational framework as what Erlang/OTP provides. For a startup it might feel like an extreme case of premature optimization but if you can make the technical investment you might reduce technical debt down the line. I think Elixir in particular allows you to still get an MVP out the door with all the bells and whistles of OTP waiting silently in the background if your startup ever reaches the volumes to justify it. BTW, I just attended a FANTASTIC 2 day (FREE) workshop conducted by Norberto Ortigoza (twitter: @hiphoox) at the HackerDojo that gave an overview of Elixir/Erlang/Phoenix and OTP. Thanks Hackers/Founders, Norberto and HackderDojo for arranging the training.

vvanders 11y ago
I feel like there's some room for building a nice scripting DSL given how strong of a macro support there is. However that does mean you're bringing in a pretty heavy VM for something that could be relatively simple.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/escript.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/escript.html The above is for erlang. It brings up the same VM so I imagine, if it doesn't exist, it would work as well for elixir if someone were to set it up. Perhaps we need an elixir shell project like scsh.

troyk 11y ago

I have been watching Elixir/Phoenix for over a year with a lot of interest, one thing that I really appreciate is how dedicated they are to their CHANGELOG files. https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/v1.1/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/CHAN... https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/blob/v1.0/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/blob/v1.0/CHANGELOG.md

josep2 11y ago

I tried Elixir about 2 months ago for a project and found the standard library was lacking and the quality of community contributed modules wasn't up to par with other languages. I've worked with Python and Node my career and I prefer the Multi-paradigm approach of a Language like Go or Rust than the functional approach. I'll probably give it a try again in a year when it's more mature.

namelezz 11y ago
I love Bitstring Syntax in Elixir and Erlang. Similar feature is coming for Rust[1]. [1] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/346 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/issues/346
lectrick 11y ago
This may be a perennial issue with functional langs, but using a functional lang only made sense to me after working with OO problems for YEARS. You'll see quite a few people commenting in this thread (including me) who have spent something like 10-15+ years working with OO languages, we've seen the ugly sides of mutability, dependency spaghetti, holding onto state too tightly, too much coupling between classes, and the like; not to mention the difficulty with concurrency in a world where anything can mutate global state (such as class definitions).
rubiquity 11y ago
What do you think the standard library is lacking? I mostly wrote Ruby before picking up Elixir and Ruby's standard library is loaded with mostly garbage. I've found Elixir's std lib to be focused to the core purposes of the language but I would love to hear what you think it needs.
RobertKerans 11y ago
I'm curious what you found lacking; I've been using Elixir for personal stuff for a year now, and every time I've thought what you said, I've gone to Erlang and found an OTP module that either covers, or goes far beyond my use case. José's said that they deliberately kept the stdlib small for this reason, that unless there was a pressing need to wrap the underlying Erlang libs, they would be excluded from the Elixir stdlib For a minor example, recently I was building a representation of a rectangular tiled game board, and after fighting with the stdlib and lists for a while, found I could just, out-of-the-box and with a bare minimum of effort, build a directed graph, with built in pathfinding and access. What you get for free is phenomenal

aalhour 11y ago

Sorry if this sounds like a noob question. Since everyone is asking why going with Elixir and not {X}, I am going to ask why would someone go with Elixir/Erlang and not Scala? I am asking this because we are evaluating new languages at the work place.

vvanders 11y ago
It's answered in detail a bit farther down but the tldr is Erlang VM > Java VM for high concurrency.
- aalhour 11y ago
  Thanks! Will check out the other comments.

scardine 11y ago

Elixir and Lua are among the few relevant contributions to the computer science field originating from my country (Brazil).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cpitman 11y ago

I was pretty excited about Elixir: great scalability and performance? Awesome! I had an idea for a type of reverse proxy, so I wrote in on elixir + cowboy. Go to performance test it, and the results are nothing to write home about. Thought I was doing something wrong, but looking around I didn't find any performance test results that were all that different. What is the point of "lightweight threads" if the "heavier" solutions are way faster? Here's TechEmpower's latest benchmark results. Keey scrolling till you get to an Erlang/Elixir based solution: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=peak&test=query&l=2i1e8&a=1 https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=...

unvs 11y ago
There are multiple pull requests pending to tune those benchmarks, and reports that the numbers are off by a factor of 10x.
- perishabledave 11y ago
  For reference: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pull/1730 https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pull/1730

rubyn00bie 11y ago

For anyone trying to install from Homebrew, the new formula hasn't been merged, you can brew edit it, if you need it now... Simply replace the existing formula, with the new one: https://github.com/josevalim/homebrew/blob/patch-30/Library/Formula/elixir.rb https://github.com/josevalim/homebrew/blob/patch-30/Library/... > brew edit elixir Then just paste the new file in. You'll have to reset this eventually... which you can do for all your formulas using: cd `brew --cellar` git reset --hard HEAD Installs like a charm on El Capitan.

vishaldpatel 11y ago

I just started learning Erlang. Should I bother, or should I just go ahead and learn Elixir instead?

illicium 11y ago
Elixir is a different syntax and standard library on top of the Erlang VM (BEAM) and OTP, the distributed/HA magic written in Erlang, that Erlang (ecosystem) gets a lot of its praise for. Ultimately you'll need to know Erlang (language) anyway if you want to use some external libraries that aren't in Elixir natively. IMO, Elixir as a language is not too different from Erlang, other than syntax.
yumraj 11y ago
IMO, it depends on your background. If you have a lot of functional programming experience in languages similar to Erlang, I'll say just go ahead with Erlang. If you come from a more traditional language background, such as C, C++, c#, java, scala, ruby, python, js and others, especially ruby since elixir is very ruby-ish, Elixir is more approachable and I'll suggest that you go with it.
- eggy 11y ago
  LFE - Lisp Flavoried Erlang - is also an option. Created by Robert Virding, one of the creators of Erlang, it is a Lisp-2 with full access to Erlang and the OTP. Elixir is cool though too, and certainly is similar to Ruby.
quaunaut 11y ago
Like most things in programming, 'it depends'! What's your background? If it's in a more interpreted language like Ruby or Python, learning Elixir instead might be a good idea. If you want something that's going to be more approachable, it also might be a better idea. Are you going to do web development, and want to use a more conventions-over-configuration type of framework? Do Elixir with the Phoenix framework. If you already enjoy Erlang though? Don't get discouraged just because something is built on top of it- keep going! Elixir will be there regardless, and might even be easier to learn when you understand what it's built on.

shadykiller 11y ago

We created our microservice router in Elixir. It is rock solid and even the deployment is a breeze with exrm. Even though I am the only one in the team who picked up Elixir, but soon we will have more. Elixir and its tooling is a welcoming change.