7 ms·

Elm, Elixir, and Phoenix: Reflecting on a Functional Full-Stack Project

135 points by deathtrader666 9y ago

myth_drannon 9y ago
If anyone wants to learn more about the stack, Pragmatic Studio are about to release their course on Elixir/Phoenix/Elm - building Multi-Player Bingo. https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/unpacked-bingo https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/unpacked-bingo I worked through their Elm course and it was excellent.
- scardine 9y ago
  Your comment landed kind of spammy, is it a free course?
  - Dangeranger 9y ago
    There are many comments on HN which recommend products/services that are not free. The fact that the course has a cost doesn’t make the comment “spammy”. If the parent posted an affiliate link then that would have indeed been spam. The courses from Pragmatic Studio are indeed excellent. Sometimes quality has a cost, and people should be ok with that. Not everything will be a free resource. Note: I have no affiliation with Pragmatic Studio, they are just great courses.
    - scardine 9y ago
      Yeah, I should just ask the price ballpark. It was not meant to criticize the OP but English is not my first language and sometimes I sound judgmental by mistake.
      - Dangeranger 9y ago
        The courses on Pragmatic Studio are $50-80 each depending on the their length, which varies from 8-10 hours each.
    - ad-hominem 9y ago
      I assume scardine thought it "landed spammy" because the comment had no content other than "You can buy this thing, offered here", which I think is pretty defensible on his part.
  - myth_drannon 9y ago
    Linking to a paid product is not a spam. If it was a paper book would you complain as well?
    - scardine 9y ago
      I can look for a paper book in a library, I can add it to my wish list at Amazon if the book is there, it is not always a hard cash investment. And I love to read good reviews here, they spare me a lot of time I would otherwise use researching a service or product. For me a good review of a paid resource must mention the price ballpark so people have a choice to follow the link or not. May be OP is just a happy customer and not affiliated with them in any way but IMHO the parent comment really sounds like a guerrilla marketing ad for me.
      - nickjj 9y ago
        I think in the context of courses and books, it's more common that they are paid unless noted otherwise. So in this case, if it happened to be a free course, I would have expected the parent comment to specifically mention that it's free, otherwise it's implied to cost money. I'm kind of curious now, how exactly would you have written the parent comment's message?
        scardine 9y ago
        My first answer to the OP sounded a lot more judgmental than intended. His post is fine although I would try to spare fellow HNrs a visit to the site just search for basic information like duration and how much it costs or how it compares to similar online resources.
        sena 9y ago
        Well, since his post didn't have that information, it would be nice for you to provide that info and spare fellow HNrs a visit to the site, instead of accusing the poster of being a marketing drone.
- haizop 9y ago
  I have done several of their courses over the years and they have all been fantastic. Perfect pacing.
s_kilk 9y ago
I'm a big fan of Elixir, but the community gravitation toward Elm has always struck me as a bit weird. The two languages have nothing in common beyond both being functional, and it kinda feels like someone posted a "Elixir and Elm" blog post in the early days and it all just snowballed arbitrarily from there.
- jrobn 9y ago
  I think it’s mostly people who are writing in Elixir are, at this point, already on the fringes of using “new shiny language” and would be more likely to us “new shiny front-end framework” in new projects. I really like Elixir, a lot. I’ve had Erlang experience and I’ve never understood the hate around it’s syntax. Elixir is definitely more friendly in that regard and I’m glad it’s bringing the tremendous value of the BEAM and OTP to more mainstream development circles.
- lilactown 9y ago
  I think it's a novel inversion of the status quo, where statically typed languages live on the server and dynamic languages live on the client. I think that Elm and Elixir fit their respective development niches (UI, distributed systems) extremely well, both have similar community cultures, and both started gaining some traction at around the same time.
  - true_religion 9y ago
    I think Elixir is a wonderfully expressive language built on a strong foundation in the ErlangVM. It inherits Erlang's semantics which I've always liked. Elm on the other hand inherits Javascript as its foundation, and the browser as its target. Javascript has an anemic standard library, and isn't a functional strongly typed language to begin with. Now since the browser is the target, file size is important, preventing Elm from simply shipping its own runtime + standard library.
    - pseudonom- 9y ago
      Are you confused or am I confused? Elm does ship it's own runtime and standard library. Or at least it used to.
leshow 9y ago
Seems pretty inconvenient that the library you want to use isn't allowed in elm's package repo. edit: FYI, you have a typo: > This is represented in Maybe‘s definition: type Maybe = Just a | Nothing. Maybe's type is type Maybe a = Just a | Nothing
brightball 9y ago
That was a much more involved read than I expected. I haven't really tinkered with Elm much, despite hearing a lot about it.

If anyone wants to learn more about the stack, Pragmatic Studio are about to release their course on Elixir/Phoenix/Elm - building Multi-Player Bingo. https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/unpacked-bingo https://pragmaticstudio.com/courses/unpacked-bingo I worked through their Elm course and it was excellent.

scardine 9y ago
Your comment landed kind of spammy, is it a free course?
- Dangeranger 9y ago
  There are many comments on HN which recommend products/services that are not free. The fact that the course has a cost doesn’t make the comment “spammy”. If the parent posted an affiliate link then that would have indeed been spam. The courses from Pragmatic Studio are indeed excellent. Sometimes quality has a cost, and people should be ok with that. Not everything will be a free resource. Note: I have no affiliation with Pragmatic Studio, they are just great courses.
  - scardine 9y ago
    Yeah, I should just ask the price ballpark. It was not meant to criticize the OP but English is not my first language and sometimes I sound judgmental by mistake.
    - Dangeranger 9y ago
      The courses on Pragmatic Studio are $50-80 each depending on the their length, which varies from 8-10 hours each.
  - ad-hominem 9y ago
    I assume scardine thought it "landed spammy" because the comment had no content other than "You can buy this thing, offered here", which I think is pretty defensible on his part.
- myth_drannon 9y ago
  Linking to a paid product is not a spam. If it was a paper book would you complain as well?
  - scardine 9y ago
    I can look for a paper book in a library, I can add it to my wish list at Amazon if the book is there, it is not always a hard cash investment. And I love to read good reviews here, they spare me a lot of time I would otherwise use researching a service or product. For me a good review of a paid resource must mention the price ballpark so people have a choice to follow the link or not. May be OP is just a happy customer and not affiliated with them in any way but IMHO the parent comment really sounds like a guerrilla marketing ad for me.
    - nickjj 9y ago
      I think in the context of courses and books, it's more common that they are paid unless noted otherwise. So in this case, if it happened to be a free course, I would have expected the parent comment to specifically mention that it's free, otherwise it's implied to cost money. I'm kind of curious now, how exactly would you have written the parent comment's message?
      - scardine 9y ago
        My first answer to the OP sounded a lot more judgmental than intended. His post is fine although I would try to spare fellow HNrs a visit to the site just search for basic information like duration and how much it costs or how it compares to similar online resources.
        sena 9y ago
        Well, since his post didn't have that information, it would be nice for you to provide that info and spare fellow HNrs a visit to the site, instead of accusing the poster of being a marketing drone.
haizop 9y ago
I have done several of their courses over the years and they have all been fantastic. Perfect pacing.

s_kilk 9y ago

I'm a big fan of Elixir, but the community gravitation toward Elm has always struck me as a bit weird. The two languages have nothing in common beyond both being functional, and it kinda feels like someone posted a "Elixir and Elm" blog post in the early days and it all just snowballed arbitrarily from there.

jrobn 9y ago
I think it’s mostly people who are writing in Elixir are, at this point, already on the fringes of using “new shiny language” and would be more likely to us “new shiny front-end framework” in new projects. I really like Elixir, a lot. I’ve had Erlang experience and I’ve never understood the hate around it’s syntax. Elixir is definitely more friendly in that regard and I’m glad it’s bringing the tremendous value of the BEAM and OTP to more mainstream development circles.
lilactown 9y ago
I think it's a novel inversion of the status quo, where statically typed languages live on the server and dynamic languages live on the client. I think that Elm and Elixir fit their respective development niches (UI, distributed systems) extremely well, both have similar community cultures, and both started gaining some traction at around the same time.
- true_religion 9y ago
  I think Elixir is a wonderfully expressive language built on a strong foundation in the ErlangVM. It inherits Erlang's semantics which I've always liked. Elm on the other hand inherits Javascript as its foundation, and the browser as its target. Javascript has an anemic standard library, and isn't a functional strongly typed language to begin with. Now since the browser is the target, file size is important, preventing Elm from simply shipping its own runtime + standard library.
  - pseudonom- 9y ago
    Are you confused or am I confused? Elm does ship it's own runtime and standard library. Or at least it used to.

leshow 9y ago

Seems pretty inconvenient that the library you want to use isn't allowed in elm's package repo. edit: FYI, you have a typo: > This is represented in Maybe‘s definition: type Maybe = Just a | Nothing. Maybe's type is type Maybe a = Just a | Nothing

brightball 9y ago

That was a much more involved read than I expected. I haven't really tinkered with Elm much, despite hearing a lot about it.