Elixir feels like the functional language a ruby programmer might create. When you're programming in it, it feels like 90% of the power of ruby with 10% of the

Elixir feels like the functional language a ruby programmer might create. When you're programming in it, it feels like 90% of the power of ruby with 10% of the features. Instead of being constraining, I find the relative lack of features (compared to ruby) liberating. Elixir also has a supremely powerful and elegant macro capability that lets you build really powerful DSLs. For example, chunks of the language are written as Elixir macros -- the if 'keyword', for instance. As a programmer, you have full access to the very same macro system. Writing an unless 'expression' isn't even that hard. phoenix's use of Elixir's macro system is part of why phoenix can feel so much like rails. And yes, from the fragments I've seen of Erlang, the two are completely different. What Elixir wants from Erlang is primarily the VM and the OTP libraries. If you've seen Erlang and it scares you off Elixir, you've got it all wrong.