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A very interesting language on powerful platform with a promising web framework. Many saw it, myself included, as a Ruby / Rails Improved, and expected its quic

A very interesting language on powerful platform with a promising web framework. Many saw it, myself included, as a Ruby / Rails Improved, and expected its quick growth. Unfortunately, initial enthusiasm a few years ago did lead to its wide adoption. I talked with a couple of companies that jumped on it initially, but later decided to move to Java, Kotlin, Go. The main reason was difficulty to hire engineers to scale up quickly (in Europe), not some technical disappointments. Sadly, it seems that being a scalable platform is not enough to scale up to business needs.

bitscrapper 7y ago
I recently had a convo with a company that moved into Elixir because they had an easier time hiring as they could tap into the local Ruby developers and into folks interested in functional programming (in France). Would you mind saying which country in Europe in particular? Was it also France?
- playing_colours 7y ago
  One company in France, the other in Germany.
elcritch 7y ago
Weird, on the Elixir forums and slack channels there seems to be a fair number of developers working or wanting to work in Elixir. Perhaps the initial uptake in interest outpaced the developer interests in some areas. It'd be interesting to know what the community is like in Europe. Based on the recent formation of Dashbit [1] and larger companies like PepsiCo (?!) among others openly jumping onboard I think means Elixir has reached a clear point of sustainability for those willing to find (and train!) devs. Likely it'll never be RoR level, but I'm fine with that if it keeps the dev community more selective. Functional programming in general seems to be a bit of a self-selector. 1: https://elixirforum.com/t/jose-valim-announces-his-new-elixir-consultancy-dashbit/28414 https://elixirforum.com/t/jose-valim-announces-his-new-elixi...
- lawik 7y ago
  I think there is a touch of catch 22 in "are there enough devs? are there enough companies?" But from my end it looks to be improving. I've gotten going with doing it professionally and I hope to maintain that focus mostly.
- ericsanchez 7y ago
  I picked up _Programming Erlang_ because I like Joe. I'm trying to understand why the platform, and the accompanying language(s), aren't more widely used? People seem to speak very highly about Elixir, BEAM, and OTP. It all seems really great... I see comments like This: >A very interesting language on powerful platform with a promising web framework... I talked with a couple of companies that jumped on it initially, but later decided to move... And this: >I recently had a convo with a company that moved into Elixir because they had an easier time hiring... I see this comment pair somewhat often. Also, From @hajile >BEAM is about an order of magnitude faster than Cpython ...If you prefer Ruby syntax over Python, there is no contest here. >BEAM is slower than the JVM, but much more stable. The second quote seems to be a pretty reasonable trade off (my next question is, how much slower?). This makes a lot more sense to me: >Functional programming in general seems to be a bit of a self-selector. I like functional programming, but experiences do tend to be either: "I love FP" or "Eh, not for me." But are these it? I've been getting into erlang lately (to then get into elixir), but I feel like I've been "waiting for the other shoe to drop." As in, I'm wondering if there's some disadvantage that doesn't get talked about. Are there any engineering blogs that talk about using BEAM/Elixir/et al in production?
  - dnautics 7y ago
    Honestly I think you are doing things backward. With all due respect to the fantastic platform and vm that the erlang folks built, it's just not as joyful as elixir. And I feel like writing legible and organized code is easier in elixir since it's opinionated, about everything from directory structure to documentation to tests, and a couple of detailey things like structs are easier to read than records and macros are more sensible than string preprocessing
s3cur3 7y ago
I've been writing Elixir professionally for about a month now. I previously had zero experience with Elixir, Erlang, Ruby, or even any functional languages (though I have read quite a bit about functional programming, and adopted a lot of functional techniques in my C++ & Python). The learning process has been, frankly, incredibly easy. I read a bit of Saša Jurić's "Elixir in Action" and Dave Thomas's "Programming Elixir," but mostly I just dove in with the Elixir docs' tutorial (https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix.html https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction...). I'm not claiming to be writing the best Elixir ever, but I shipped my first production app in the first week and it's been rock solid. I think most companies massively overvalue hiring people with "x years' experience" in whatever tech they're using. Better to hire smart people with a solid foundation in writing good code and train them on your particular tech stack.
ggregoire 7y ago
Not specific to Elixir I think. There are not a lot of people proficient (or even having some experience) in functional programming, and there are not a lot of companies using functional programming neither (1/100? 1/1000?). The chicken and egg problem.
- dnautics 7y ago
  Outside of map/reduce, which honestly even juniors out of bootcamps learn these days, I don't understand the claim that functional programming is hard. It's easier, and usually safer, because you have to keep less things in your head while you're coding.
grimjack00 7y ago
Was it difficult to hire engineers proficient in Elixir, or was it difficult to hire engineers who could _learn_ Elixir? When my employer decided to use Elixir for a new product, we had maybe 2-3 people experienced in Erlang/Elixir; for the rest of us, it was "'Programming Elixir' is on the bookshelf; start working through that." That and pairing with the more experienced devs got most of us up to speed enough that we were fairly productive in a couple weeks. Since we were basically a Rails shop at that point, the similarity to Ruby didn't hurt, and as I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the docs for Elixir and major libraries are really good.
dorian-graph 7y ago
I started a new job a month ago that is all Elixir, with no prior Elixir experience, and honestly it's been completely fine. My only advantage was that I had used a functional language (Elm) for a while before it, so I was used to a functional approach.
pdamoc 7y ago
I learned Elm and Elixir few years ago. In both case, it took me about a week from "hello, world" to having the feeling that I can program in that language. I did this using only online learning materials and the support forums for those languages. With a colleague available I imagine that things would have been even smoother. A lot of companies vastly overestimate the difficulty of getting a decent developer up to speed with a new language. In a lot of cases, it might be easier to learn a new language than a new, complex library for a language that you already know.

bitscrapper 7y ago

I recently had a convo with a company that moved into Elixir because they had an easier time hiring as they could tap into the local Ruby developers and into folks interested in functional programming (in France). Would you mind saying which country in Europe in particular? Was it also France?

playing_colours 7y ago
One company in France, the other in Germany.

elcritch 7y ago

Weird, on the Elixir forums and slack channels there seems to be a fair number of developers working or wanting to work in Elixir. Perhaps the initial uptake in interest outpaced the developer interests in some areas. It'd be interesting to know what the community is like in Europe. Based on the recent formation of Dashbit [1] and larger companies like PepsiCo (?!) among others openly jumping onboard I think means Elixir has reached a clear point of sustainability for those willing to find (and train!) devs. Likely it'll never be RoR level, but I'm fine with that if it keeps the dev community more selective. Functional programming in general seems to be a bit of a self-selector. 1: https://elixirforum.com/t/jose-valim-announces-his-new-elixir-consultancy-dashbit/28414 https://elixirforum.com/t/jose-valim-announces-his-new-elixi...

lawik 7y ago
I think there is a touch of catch 22 in "are there enough devs? are there enough companies?" But from my end it looks to be improving. I've gotten going with doing it professionally and I hope to maintain that focus mostly.
ericsanchez 7y ago
I picked up _Programming Erlang_ because I like Joe. I'm trying to understand why the platform, and the accompanying language(s), aren't more widely used? People seem to speak very highly about Elixir, BEAM, and OTP. It all seems really great... I see comments like This: >A very interesting language on powerful platform with a promising web framework... I talked with a couple of companies that jumped on it initially, but later decided to move... And this: >I recently had a convo with a company that moved into Elixir because they had an easier time hiring... I see this comment pair somewhat often. Also, From @hajile >BEAM is about an order of magnitude faster than Cpython ...If you prefer Ruby syntax over Python, there is no contest here. >BEAM is slower than the JVM, but much more stable. The second quote seems to be a pretty reasonable trade off (my next question is, how much slower?). This makes a lot more sense to me: >Functional programming in general seems to be a bit of a self-selector. I like functional programming, but experiences do tend to be either: "I love FP" or "Eh, not for me." But are these it? I've been getting into erlang lately (to then get into elixir), but I feel like I've been "waiting for the other shoe to drop." As in, I'm wondering if there's some disadvantage that doesn't get talked about. Are there any engineering blogs that talk about using BEAM/Elixir/et al in production?
- dnautics 7y ago
  Honestly I think you are doing things backward. With all due respect to the fantastic platform and vm that the erlang folks built, it's just not as joyful as elixir. And I feel like writing legible and organized code is easier in elixir since it's opinionated, about everything from directory structure to documentation to tests, and a couple of detailey things like structs are easier to read than records and macros are more sensible than string preprocessing

s3cur3 7y ago

I've been writing Elixir professionally for about a month now. I previously had zero experience with Elixir, Erlang, Ruby, or even any functional languages (though I have read quite a bit about functional programming, and adopted a lot of functional techniques in my C++ & Python). The learning process has been, frankly, incredibly easy. I read a bit of Saša Jurić's "Elixir in Action" and Dave Thomas's "Programming Elixir," but mostly I just dove in with the Elixir docs' tutorial (https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix.html https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction...). I'm not claiming to be writing the best Elixir ever, but I shipped my first production app in the first week and it's been rock solid. I think most companies massively overvalue hiring people with "x years' experience" in whatever tech they're using. Better to hire smart people with a solid foundation in writing good code and train them on your particular tech stack.

ggregoire 7y ago

Not specific to Elixir I think. There are not a lot of people proficient (or even having some experience) in functional programming, and there are not a lot of companies using functional programming neither (1/100? 1/1000?). The chicken and egg problem.

dnautics 7y ago
Outside of map/reduce, which honestly even juniors out of bootcamps learn these days, I don't understand the claim that functional programming is hard. It's easier, and usually safer, because you have to keep less things in your head while you're coding.

grimjack00 7y ago

Was it difficult to hire engineers proficient in Elixir, or was it difficult to hire engineers who could _learn_ Elixir? When my employer decided to use Elixir for a new product, we had maybe 2-3 people experienced in Erlang/Elixir; for the rest of us, it was "'Programming Elixir' is on the bookshelf; start working through that." That and pairing with the more experienced devs got most of us up to speed enough that we were fairly productive in a couple weeks. Since we were basically a Rails shop at that point, the similarity to Ruby didn't hurt, and as I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the docs for Elixir and major libraries are really good.

dorian-graph 7y ago

I started a new job a month ago that is all Elixir, with no prior Elixir experience, and honestly it's been completely fine. My only advantage was that I had used a functional language (Elm) for a while before it, so I was used to a functional approach.

pdamoc 7y ago

I learned Elm and Elixir few years ago. In both case, it took me about a week from "hello, world" to having the feeling that I can program in that language. I did this using only online learning materials and the support forums for those languages. With a colleague available I imagine that things would have been even smoother. A lot of companies vastly overestimate the difficulty of getting a decent developer up to speed with a new language. In a lot of cases, it might be easier to learn a new language than a new, complex library for a language that you already know.