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Elixir/Phoenix is the spiritual successor to Rails. Same philosophy of batteries included, developer productivity focussed etc. But with lots of great new shiny

by Jedi72 8y ago

Elixir/Phoenix is the spiritual successor to Rails. Same philosophy of batteries included, developer productivity focussed etc. But with lots of great new shiny things, for example websockets is built directly into the framework, its not an add-on. Its not a direct upgrade, but if you value Rails definitely check it out

fishtoaster 8y ago
Elixir/Phoenix is great, and it's first-party support for websockets is an excellent selling point! That said, I feel compelled to mention that rails does have websockets built into the framework now too, as of Rails 5.
- karmajunkie 8y ago
  There is no comparison between those two socket implementations. There's several orders of magnitude difference between what elixir and Ruby will support on a single server there.
joelbluminator 8y ago
The Elixir community would LIKE it to be a spiritual successor for Rails, but it really isn't. If only because of the learning curve of understanding Elixir. Sorry to disappoint anyone but Phenoix is not going to be the new Rails/Django.
- nickjj 8y ago
  > If only because of the learning curve of understanding Elixir. Sorry to disappoint anyone but Phenoix is not going to be the new Rails/Django. The learning curve isn't too bad. I've been a Rails developer for quite some time and am picking up Elixir / Phoenix in my spare time while building a single side project. This is my first real attempt at picking up a functional language too. The project I'm building is an ambitious project (users, accepting stripe / paypal payments, lots of data modeling, real time aspects, decent amount of logic I haven't implemented in other more familiar frameworks, etc.) but thanks to the community and open source projects to look at I'm making reasonable progress. Of course I'm not as productive as I am in Rails but that's because I'm only putting in a few hours a week into this project (while learning Elixir / Phoenix as I go).
- conradfr 8y ago
  I like Elixir and Phoenix but I agree with you. First I think a very large number of developers don't care for functional programming. Then Phoenix is mainly run by only two persons, Chris McCord and José Valim (who also manages Elixir and Ecto). If I compare the pace of development and what you get out of the box with PHP/Symfony (I don't know RoR) it's quite clear that Phoenix is not there yet (without even speaking of the difference in ecosystem size). Having said that I'm excited for Phoenix 1.4 https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/milestone/17 https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/milestone/17
cutler 8y ago
Please, let's lose this Elixir = Ruby.new nonsense. Once you get beyond the superficial syntax similarities between Elixir and Ruby the 2 languages couldn't be further apart. Ruby is mutable/OOP whilst Elixir is immutable/FP. Diametrically opposite so anyone who is heavily invested in Ruby's OOP mindset is going to have a shock if they dive into Elixir.
- karmajunkie 8y ago
  This is the most salient point in the elixir thread so far. If you are heavily invested in OOP, no functional or immutable language is really going to do it for you. Period.

by Jedi72 8y ago

fishtoaster 8y ago

Elixir/Phoenix is great, and it's first-party support for websockets is an excellent selling point! That said, I feel compelled to mention that rails does have websockets built into the framework now too, as of Rails 5.

karmajunkie 8y ago
There is no comparison between those two socket implementations. There's several orders of magnitude difference between what elixir and Ruby will support on a single server there.

joelbluminator 8y ago

The Elixir community would LIKE it to be a spiritual successor for Rails, but it really isn't. If only because of the learning curve of understanding Elixir. Sorry to disappoint anyone but Phenoix is not going to be the new Rails/Django.

nickjj 8y ago
> If only because of the learning curve of understanding Elixir. Sorry to disappoint anyone but Phenoix is not going to be the new Rails/Django. The learning curve isn't too bad. I've been a Rails developer for quite some time and am picking up Elixir / Phoenix in my spare time while building a single side project. This is my first real attempt at picking up a functional language too. The project I'm building is an ambitious project (users, accepting stripe / paypal payments, lots of data modeling, real time aspects, decent amount of logic I haven't implemented in other more familiar frameworks, etc.) but thanks to the community and open source projects to look at I'm making reasonable progress. Of course I'm not as productive as I am in Rails but that's because I'm only putting in a few hours a week into this project (while learning Elixir / Phoenix as I go).
conradfr 8y ago
I like Elixir and Phoenix but I agree with you. First I think a very large number of developers don't care for functional programming. Then Phoenix is mainly run by only two persons, Chris McCord and José Valim (who also manages Elixir and Ecto). If I compare the pace of development and what you get out of the box with PHP/Symfony (I don't know RoR) it's quite clear that Phoenix is not there yet (without even speaking of the difference in ecosystem size). Having said that I'm excited for Phoenix 1.4 https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/milestone/17 https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/milestone/17

cutler 8y ago

Please, let's lose this Elixir = Ruby.new nonsense. Once you get beyond the superficial syntax similarities between Elixir and Ruby the 2 languages couldn't be further apart. Ruby is mutable/OOP whilst Elixir is immutable/FP. Diametrically opposite so anyone who is heavily invested in Ruby's OOP mindset is going to have a shock if they dive into Elixir.

karmajunkie 8y ago
This is the most salient point in the elixir thread so far. If you are heavily invested in OOP, no functional or immutable language is really going to do it for you. Period.