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For anyone curious about Phoenix and Elixir, I can sincerely recommend the following resources to get you started: - Programming Phoenix by Chris McCord, Bruce

For anyone curious about Phoenix and Elixir, I can sincerely recommend the following resources to get you started: - Programming Phoenix by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate, and José Valim [1] - The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook by Benjamin Tan Wei Hao [2] - Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić [3] Phoenix initially attracted me to Elixir, I've stuck around for that and the OTP platform: pattern matching, process based concurrency (actor model), supervision, immutability, macros, and more. "Elixir took the Erlang virtual machine, BEAM, and put a sensible face on it. It gives you all the power of Erlang plus a powerful macro system." – Dave Thomas [1] https://startlearningelixir.com/r/programming-phoenix https://startlearningelixir.com/r/programming-phoenix [2] https://startlearningelixir.com/r/the-little-elixir-and-otp-guidebook https://startlearningelixir.com/r/the-little-elixir-and-otp-... [3] https://startlearningelixir.com/r/elixir-in-action https://startlearningelixir.com/r/elixir-in-action

sergiotapia 9y ago
This is the best Elixir material I've used: https://pragmaticstudio.com/elixir https://pragmaticstudio.com/elixir You build you a simple HTTP server using Elixir and learn a lot of the core language and architecture choices when writing Elixir code. It doesn't pester you with this is an int, this is a string. You just start building this HTTP server out and learn about Elixir along the way.
- rbankston 9y ago
  Learned a lot from the pragmaticstudio resource as well and couldn't recommend it highly enough.
jmcgough 9y ago
+1 on "The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook". It's a generally good introduction to OTP, though the book has a lot more errors than I'm used to seeing (their github code differs without explanation from the code in the book at times, and sometimes one or the other won't run successfully).
myth_drannon 9y ago
Elixir in Action is a bit outdated, no?
- matthewrudy 9y ago
  I read it a while ago, but I remember it being pretty useful. Some of the elixir bits are now out of date. (eg. it still has a section on Records) But it touched on a lot of OTP topics that were missing from other places. (this was before Benjamin Tan's book was finished) At the time I remember Elixir in Action really made me finally understand the OTP concepts.
  - bitwalker 9y ago
    Just want to point out that Records are still part of the standard library, and can be important for integrating with Erlang code using records which you need to work with. Even though they are avoided in Elixir, because structs are better in every way, they are still alive and well in Erlang.
    - matthewrudy 9y ago
      Thanks for the extra info. For comparison, though, Dave Thomas' "Programming Elixir" doesn't even mention them.
ezero 9y ago
Another great resource that was recently released is the Phoenix Inside Out series by Shankar: https://shankardevy.com/phoenix-book/ https://shankardevy.com/phoenix-book/ I just got it a few days ago and I'm about 30% into the first book. What I can say so far is that the author's approach resonates really well with me. Going through the book feels like sitting next to a colleague, who is introducing you to Phoenix and is really knowledgeable in the topic. The book is full of interesting tidbits and explanations about Phoenix internals without getting in the way. I also appreciate the TDD approach including both acceptance and unit testing. The most important thing for me though, is how Shankar condensed teaching Elixir into a single chapter. I have previously tried to study Elixir a few times with the intention of eventually getting into Phoenix but I always got overwhelmed by the OTP material. I didn't want to make the mistake of trying to learn Rails before being comfortable with Ruby again so I put off on learning Phoenix altogether. What Shankar has done is to dedicate one chapter to teach just enough Elixir for you to get started. This was perfect for what I needed and it was reassuring knowing exactly how much (or little) Elixir you need to know before diving into Phoenix. If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far). I should note that the current version of the book is targeting Phoenix v1.3.0-rc.2. Although Shankar has already made an announcement with the intention to update the book soon after the officially 1.3.0 release.
- digitalzombie 9y ago
  > If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far). Do you need Elixir experiences too? I've done MVC and have some functional experiences. I've seen this book but wasn't sure if it was for me and decided to do exercism's elixir exercises before buying this book. thanks
  - ezero 9y ago
    I think you should be fine, especially considering you have some functional experience. In the second chapter of the book, the author goes over Elixir from scratch. By the end of the chapter you should have a working knowledge of the language. Even beyond this chapter, the author takes time to dissect and explain the more complicated looking code. It really does feel quite approachable to anyone with a few years of programming experience.
olieidel 9y ago
You might want to add that all those book links have an Amazon referral link attached which (presumably?) points to you.
DDerTyp 9y ago
Hey, are there already some tutorials / books for Phoenix 1.3? I found this [1], but it will be released in late december 2017. Any ideas / recommendations for the Phoenix 1.3? Folder structure and models (schemas) got changed quite a bit. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Phoenix-1-3-Productive-Reliable/dp/1680502263/ https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Phoenix-1-3-Productive-Re...

sergiotapia 9y ago

This is the best Elixir material I've used: https://pragmaticstudio.com/elixir https://pragmaticstudio.com/elixir You build you a simple HTTP server using Elixir and learn a lot of the core language and architecture choices when writing Elixir code. It doesn't pester you with this is an int, this is a string. You just start building this HTTP server out and learn about Elixir along the way.

rbankston 9y ago
Learned a lot from the pragmaticstudio resource as well and couldn't recommend it highly enough.

jmcgough 9y ago

+1 on "The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook". It's a generally good introduction to OTP, though the book has a lot more errors than I'm used to seeing (their github code differs without explanation from the code in the book at times, and sometimes one or the other won't run successfully).

myth_drannon 9y ago

Elixir in Action is a bit outdated, no?

matthewrudy 9y ago
I read it a while ago, but I remember it being pretty useful. Some of the elixir bits are now out of date. (eg. it still has a section on Records) But it touched on a lot of OTP topics that were missing from other places. (this was before Benjamin Tan's book was finished) At the time I remember Elixir in Action really made me finally understand the OTP concepts.
- bitwalker 9y ago
  Just want to point out that Records are still part of the standard library, and can be important for integrating with Erlang code using records which you need to work with. Even though they are avoided in Elixir, because structs are better in every way, they are still alive and well in Erlang.
  - matthewrudy 9y ago
    Thanks for the extra info. For comparison, though, Dave Thomas' "Programming Elixir" doesn't even mention them.

ezero 9y ago

Another great resource that was recently released is the Phoenix Inside Out series by Shankar: https://shankardevy.com/phoenix-book/ https://shankardevy.com/phoenix-book/ I just got it a few days ago and I'm about 30% into the first book. What I can say so far is that the author's approach resonates really well with me. Going through the book feels like sitting next to a colleague, who is introducing you to Phoenix and is really knowledgeable in the topic. The book is full of interesting tidbits and explanations about Phoenix internals without getting in the way. I also appreciate the TDD approach including both acceptance and unit testing. The most important thing for me though, is how Shankar condensed teaching Elixir into a single chapter. I have previously tried to study Elixir a few times with the intention of eventually getting into Phoenix but I always got overwhelmed by the OTP material. I didn't want to make the mistake of trying to learn Rails before being comfortable with Ruby again so I put off on learning Phoenix altogether. What Shankar has done is to dedicate one chapter to teach just enough Elixir for you to get started. This was perfect for what I needed and it was reassuring knowing exactly how much (or little) Elixir you need to know before diving into Phoenix. If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far). I should note that the current version of the book is targeting Phoenix v1.3.0-rc.2. Although Shankar has already made an announcement with the intention to update the book soon after the officially 1.3.0 release.

digitalzombie 9y ago
> If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far). Do you need Elixir experiences too? I've done MVC and have some functional experiences. I've seen this book but wasn't sure if it was for me and decided to do exercism's elixir exercises before buying this book. thanks
- ezero 9y ago
  I think you should be fine, especially considering you have some functional experience. In the second chapter of the book, the author goes over Elixir from scratch. By the end of the chapter you should have a working knowledge of the language. Even beyond this chapter, the author takes time to dissect and explain the more complicated looking code. It really does feel quite approachable to anyone with a few years of programming experience.

olieidel 9y ago

You might want to add that all those book links have an Amazon referral link attached which (presumably?) points to you.

DDerTyp 9y ago

Hey, are there already some tutorials / books for Phoenix 1.3? I found this [1], but it will be released in late december 2017. Any ideas / recommendations for the Phoenix 1.3? Folder structure and models (schemas) got changed quite a bit. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Phoenix-1-3-Productive-Reliable/dp/1680502263/ https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Phoenix-1-3-Productive-Re...