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Elixir / Phoenix. Specifically: Phoenix LiveView. I've spent the last five years building SPAs using mainly React and see LiveView evolving as a compelling al

Elixir / Phoenix. Specifically: Phoenix LiveView. I've spent the last five years building SPAs using mainly React and see LiveView evolving as a compelling alternative.

aloukissas 7y ago
+1 for elixir. I've been a happy convert since 2 years ago.
nickjj 7y ago
Do you have any apps running in production that's using LiveView?
- dsiegel2275 7y ago
  I built a LiveView app that allows my kids to practice their spelling words. It isn't hosted publicly - I simply run it on localhost for them. https://github.com/darrensiegel/spelling https://github.com/darrensiegel/spelling
- dnautics 7y ago
  I have a very backend (like, orchestrating customer vms) admin panel running in prod with liveview. the elixir backend replaced a flawed stateless django program and has been error-free since we kicked it over a few months ago. Mind you the scale isn't big (we have 10 or so customers at any given time) and will be hiring a junior to build a user facing liveview. I'm confident that elixir is footgun-proof enough to do this.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    Nice. Do you still feel that way even with the new features of LV being developed? It feels like how you use it is being heavily churned on with the introduction of Live Components and now people are also building custom unofficial abstractions on top of that. But at the same time, end user features don't seem to be being released that often. IMO it's starting to feel like Phoenix is becoming very fragmented even though it's already a small community. You have people not using Live View, some people using Live View, other people using Live View Components and others trying to build their own custom take on what a LV component is. Combined with the documentation being pretty sparse on LV in general makes it pretty non-friendly to develop with and a lot of the articles you read online don't apply to "Phoenix". The apply to whatever variant of no LV vs LV vs LV components vs LV custom component library style you use. It reminds me of the Node days when tj stopped working with Node and a million other libraries and styles started to spring up to become an alternative to Express. It took years for that to settle down and it's still pretty fragmented. But a lot of folks just want to go heads down and write cool applications. I really do like Phoenix but yeah, since the introduction of LV and watching its development pace for the last year+, I'm getting kind of uneasy with how things are unfolding.
    - dnautics 7y ago
      I dunno, I guess i'm too busy coding to be worried? I think the biggest thing to worry about as an elixir developer is C#/orleans, but it might be okay on account of who the hell wants to muck with C# when you can be in easy-mode FP land.
lostcolony 7y ago
Yeah; I would recommend Elixir over Go, honestly. Speaking from having used both Go and Erlang in production, Go is easy to pick up from a more Algol-based language background, but has a lot of implicit complexities that Elixir/Erlang forces you to address explicitly rather than ignore (and potentially be bitten by). I.e., what happens in case of failure (blocking send/receives on channels; what happens if the sender/receiver fails?), distribution, memory management (Go requiring you to be very cognizant as to whether it's heap or stack based; Erlang is basically all stack based), the dangers of mutability and the required patterns needed to be consistently immutable, etc.
ghoshbishakh 7y ago
+1 this is something new! Thanks!

Elixir / Phoenix. Specifically: Phoenix LiveView. I've spent the last five years building SPAs using mainly React and see LiveView evolving as a compelling alternative.

aloukissas 7y ago

+1 for elixir. I've been a happy convert since 2 years ago.

nickjj 7y ago

Do you have any apps running in production that's using LiveView?

dsiegel2275 7y ago
I built a LiveView app that allows my kids to practice their spelling words. It isn't hosted publicly - I simply run it on localhost for them. https://github.com/darrensiegel/spelling https://github.com/darrensiegel/spelling
dnautics 7y ago
I have a very backend (like, orchestrating customer vms) admin panel running in prod with liveview. the elixir backend replaced a flawed stateless django program and has been error-free since we kicked it over a few months ago. Mind you the scale isn't big (we have 10 or so customers at any given time) and will be hiring a junior to build a user facing liveview. I'm confident that elixir is footgun-proof enough to do this.
- nickjj 7y ago
  Nice. Do you still feel that way even with the new features of LV being developed? It feels like how you use it is being heavily churned on with the introduction of Live Components and now people are also building custom unofficial abstractions on top of that. But at the same time, end user features don't seem to be being released that often. IMO it's starting to feel like Phoenix is becoming very fragmented even though it's already a small community. You have people not using Live View, some people using Live View, other people using Live View Components and others trying to build their own custom take on what a LV component is. Combined with the documentation being pretty sparse on LV in general makes it pretty non-friendly to develop with and a lot of the articles you read online don't apply to "Phoenix". The apply to whatever variant of no LV vs LV vs LV components vs LV custom component library style you use. It reminds me of the Node days when tj stopped working with Node and a million other libraries and styles started to spring up to become an alternative to Express. It took years for that to settle down and it's still pretty fragmented. But a lot of folks just want to go heads down and write cool applications. I really do like Phoenix but yeah, since the introduction of LV and watching its development pace for the last year+, I'm getting kind of uneasy with how things are unfolding.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    I dunno, I guess i'm too busy coding to be worried? I think the biggest thing to worry about as an elixir developer is C#/orleans, but it might be okay on account of who the hell wants to muck with C# when you can be in easy-mode FP land.

lostcolony 7y ago

Yeah; I would recommend Elixir over Go, honestly. Speaking from having used both Go and Erlang in production, Go is easy to pick up from a more Algol-based language background, but has a lot of implicit complexities that Elixir/Erlang forces you to address explicitly rather than ignore (and potentially be bitten by). I.e., what happens in case of failure (blocking send/receives on channels; what happens if the sender/receiver fails?), distribution, memory management (Go requiring you to be very cognizant as to whether it's heap or stack based; Erlang is basically all stack based), the dangers of mutability and the required patterns needed to be consistently immutable, etc.

ghoshbishakh 7y ago

+1 this is something new! Thanks!