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I'm very bullish on Elixir as a language, but I temper that with the reality that I don't think it will become a mainstream language (in the next few years, at
by sb8244 5y ago
I'm very bullish on Elixir as a language, but I temper that with the reality that I don't think it will become a mainstream language (in the next few years, at least).
I picked up Elixir probably 4-5 years ago when a co-worker kept recommending it and wanted to explore it more. We finally got the approval to do a microservice in it that was well-suited for it. Over time it became one of the two "blessed languages" alongside Ruby, and was probably adopted by 40% of teams. Our monolith was still Ruby, so a lot of teams had to use Ruby.
I found that people could pick up the language fairly quickly, but it would take a few stumbles on OTP before things started to click there. People generally seemed to like learning it, though. Maybe they were just being polite.
For me, Elixir has been the most fun I've had programming since I started. It allows me to more consciously design my systems because I don't really feel limited by it—this is why I'm bullish on the language. I enjoyed programming in Ruby, but felt limited to doing things a certain way.
There's also still a ton of opportunity in the community (which is excellent as it is, imo). For example, I wrote a book with Pragmatic that I don't think I would've been able to write in the Ruby world. If you're the type of person who likes exploring, figuring things out, and documenting afterwards, then you could make a nice name for yourself in the community.
Hiring is still a bit rough. If you're trying to scale to 50+ engineers then you're going to need someone skilled in training to bring the team up. Throwing them into the deep end won't work. I think smaller teams should generally not have as big of a problem? I'm curious to see how my former employer will maintain Elixir—grow or shrink adoption—over the next 2 years.
- joelbluminator 5y agoShrink probably, sorry its not growing and it never became popular...
- sb8244 5y agoSorry, have you worked with the former employer I'm mentioning? I'm talking about a specific use case that has specific needs and challenges. Blanket comments like yours aren't really helpful or necessary.
- joelbluminator 5y agoThe whole discussion is not helpful or necessary actually. Who cares about your employer? We know nothing about him or the situation and no one cares. Yet this is the internet, you brouhgt it up and I opined. Lets meet here in 2 years to see what happened deal?
- sb8244 5y agoThe thread is literally "Are you satisfied with Elixir?" A big piece of that is me having brought it to a SaaS company and from 0 usage to 50% service coverage. So yea, I am curious what they'll do in 2 years—that was my point. It's a point that you're not qualified to constructively opine on. I wouldn't care if someone else posted your comment, but you've been downing (non-constructively) on Elixir in this thread and other posts you've made on Hacker News.
- joelbluminator 5y agoI am free to say what I want about Elixir, I make it no secret. It got most of its (now faded) hype by trashing Ruby, which rubbed me the wrong way. I genuinely believe Elixir is an unsmart career choice , my feelings about Elixir aside. Without a big corporate backing it and never making it into the top 20 languages during it's peak (which is now passed) there is only one way - down. It has nothing to do with Elixir as a language and everything to do with how saturated the market is. As a career it's not a great main language in most areas of the world; sure the superstars will get by nicely. But if you're average you're better off with one of the popular stacks. OP is free to choose what he wants but I don't see how any of what I say isn't true, maybe you'll enlighten me.
- ricketycricket 5y agoJoel, I wish you'd stop appearing in every popular Elixir post's comments to say something bad about the language or ecosystem. You've admitted in previous discussions that you've never even used Elixir, so why even comment on a post asking about personal development experiences with the language? >It got most of its (now faded) hype by trashing Ruby, which rubbed me the wrong way. It's a programming language, not a sports team. Developers excited about a new language are allowed to be excited and compare with other languages. I don't know what trashing you saw that offended you, but commenting on every HN post to try to steer people away is unproductive.