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It's a near certainty that I've written an order of magnitude more elixir code than you have and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that elixir's lack of sta

It's a near certainty that I've written an order of magnitude more elixir code than you have and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that elixir's lack of static typing definitely makes it less useful. Even if you disregard the modeling power that you can get from this there is an upper bound on any elixir project after which any work on it becomes less and less easy to do, as with all languages that lack a static type system. We write assertive elixir code as much as we can, but that doesn't mean that you can actually guarantee anything about a code path that is less traveled. dialyzer is also not the answer. Oftentimes we'll find ourselves in a situation where dialyzer complains because someone who made a major library simply doesn't use dialyzer. You might wonder why they don't in that case, because it would pick this particular issue up very easily, but the next time you run into some garbage error that dialyzer spat out that you are instantly reminded that you can neither trust it to be correct or safe, so people turn it off. Elixir has upsides: I think it's solidly the best language for creating servers of different kinds, but it's near useless after you pass a fairly short distance with it. I would absolutely never, in my personal endeavors (as opposed to my working contract) write an elixir server that actually tries to do anything meaningful itself other than just route messages to other servers.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
What language would you use to write a server "that actually tries to do anything meaningful"?
- 59nadir 7y ago
  Any language with the possibility to express variant types that all can have different structure and have that structure be checked at compile time, properly, will be a better choice for describing simple, medium and complex domains. Whether or not this is based on nominal or structural typing is less important, because the feature itself only depends on differentiating between what is essentially different cases and having that be done safely and properly at compile time. Elixir has no satisfying solution to this problem and it likely will never be able to. It is a huge penalty in domain modeling, which is why I personally don't want to use it for anything that actually has to deal with the flow of things. To some extent I expected and wanted the VM to feel like it makes up for this by being so great that what it does, but there's no band-aid you can use to fix lack of modeling power.
enraged_camel 7y ago
> It's a near certainty that I've written an order of magnitude more elixir code than you have and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that elixir's lack of static typing definitely makes it less useful. You should really read that post I linked, and do a bit more research on this topic. The consensus in the Elixir community (where many members have written an order of magnitude more Elixir than you) is that static typing would be "nice to have", but is not critical by any means. Your post seems to be an attempt to spread FUD.
- 59nadir 7y ago
  I've done all the research I need to, thank you very much, and I was there when this thread was started and much earlier than that. The consensus in the elixir community is hardly relevant when most of the users aren't experienced enough with type systems to know what they're talking about. If you asked a community of people who primarily have never used languages that don't have garbage collection, they'll likely not understand at all why it could be a bad thing. Someone who has used a language without garbage collection and is comfortable with basic allocation strategies is very likely to remark that having control of memory allocation and deallocation is very often something that you end up wanting instead of having to re-architect your solution in indirect ways to influence the garbage collector. This comes from having a wider perspective and the elixir community at large does not have this. Given that the elixir community is also very cultlike it's hardly a productive thing to take what they say as the objective truth. (I'm not saying this is an outsider at all, I've been a part of the elixir community since 2016. It's not really despite that I am saying these things, it's because of that.)
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    Friend, you're making a lot of assumptions and claims about people you don't know (including me), and have a certain streak of arrogance that is difficult to get past. This makes it impossible to have a productive conversation, if having a productive conversation is your goal. I advise some humility, as well as some effort to recognize that your opinions sound very dogmatic. You are of course free to like or dislike any language you want, but it is important to understand that going from one's own preferences to grandiose claims about a language's merits and usefulness is a rather big leap.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago

What language would you use to write a server "that actually tries to do anything meaningful"?

59nadir 7y ago
Any language with the possibility to express variant types that all can have different structure and have that structure be checked at compile time, properly, will be a better choice for describing simple, medium and complex domains. Whether or not this is based on nominal or structural typing is less important, because the feature itself only depends on differentiating between what is essentially different cases and having that be done safely and properly at compile time. Elixir has no satisfying solution to this problem and it likely will never be able to. It is a huge penalty in domain modeling, which is why I personally don't want to use it for anything that actually has to deal with the flow of things. To some extent I expected and wanted the VM to feel like it makes up for this by being so great that what it does, but there's no band-aid you can use to fix lack of modeling power.

enraged_camel 7y ago

> It's a near certainty that I've written an order of magnitude more elixir code than you have and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that elixir's lack of static typing definitely makes it less useful. You should really read that post I linked, and do a bit more research on this topic. The consensus in the Elixir community (where many members have written an order of magnitude more Elixir than you) is that static typing would be "nice to have", but is not critical by any means. Your post seems to be an attempt to spread FUD.

59nadir 7y ago
I've done all the research I need to, thank you very much, and I was there when this thread was started and much earlier than that. The consensus in the elixir community is hardly relevant when most of the users aren't experienced enough with type systems to know what they're talking about. If you asked a community of people who primarily have never used languages that don't have garbage collection, they'll likely not understand at all why it could be a bad thing. Someone who has used a language without garbage collection and is comfortable with basic allocation strategies is very likely to remark that having control of memory allocation and deallocation is very often something that you end up wanting instead of having to re-architect your solution in indirect ways to influence the garbage collector. This comes from having a wider perspective and the elixir community at large does not have this. Given that the elixir community is also very cultlike it's hardly a productive thing to take what they say as the objective truth. (I'm not saying this is an outsider at all, I've been a part of the elixir community since 2016. It's not really despite that I am saying these things, it's because of that.)
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  Friend, you're making a lot of assumptions and claims about people you don't know (including me), and have a certain streak of arrogance that is difficult to get past. This makes it impossible to have a productive conversation, if having a productive conversation is your goal. I advise some humility, as well as some effort to recognize that your opinions sound very dogmatic. You are of course free to like or dislike any language you want, but it is important to understand that going from one's own preferences to grandiose claims about a language's merits and usefulness is a rather big leap.