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I find it strange how always the "mainstream" and "not popular enough " arguments comes up in any Elixir related post. Does tech have to be "mainstream" to use

I find it strange how always the "mainstream" and "not popular enough " arguments comes up in any Elixir related post. Does tech have to be "mainstream" to use it? I would say it doesn't. Take Erlang, or OCaml, or F#, I wouldn't call those mainstream but they are great languages that solve real problems, and people using them seems generally very positive about them. All you need is enough popularity and enough companies using and backing it for it to be maintained. I think Elixir has this. Can't speak to the hiring situation but I wonder how problematic it can be given all the stories of how easy it is to onboard people and plenty of posts and comments of devs wanting to do Elixir. Even if, it depends on your situation, you don't always need a big workforce to do big things, see Whatsapp for example.

brightball 5y ago
FWIW I think that this is because it was the main selling point of adopting Go instead for many companies. I was at a company 6 years ago that was looking at introducing a language with a better concurrency profile. It was between Elixir and Go. Go ended up winning out because “Google makes it more mainstream”. That was the crux of the decision. Don’t get me wrong, Go has plenty of selling points but there were a lot of supporting articles making that claim. Denouncing Elixir as “not mainstream” is probably just a result of the built in defensiveness from people who argued against it for a while. Elixir’s fantastic. It has made me a much better programmer.
joelbluminator 5y ago
I mean being mainstream helps. More blogs, more Stackoverflow answers, more battle tested libraries. A Java or Python business are 100% positive they will find devs 20 years from now and the ecosystem won't die. Php, Go, Ruby? Lets say 80% sure. With Elixir its very hard to say what's going to happen. Its quite possible it will go the way of Perl eventually. I don't know what F# or Ocaml are good for but if you are starting a business you need a pretty compelling reason to use those instead of something mainstream. Being mainstream helps a lot I wouldn't underestimate it.
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Elixir is gaining momentum, though. It just made it into top 50 TIOBE index. Projects like Nerves for IoT, Nx, etc are giving it life in new applications and industries. It's never going to be a top 5 language, but it's on its way to become a well-known language with a strong community.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    > but it's on its way to become a well-known language with a strong community I agree it has a strong community for its size. It remains to be seen what happens 5 years from now when the hype settles (It arguably already is happening). Some languages reach sizes where it's impossible to die out even though they are declining (PHP for example. Probably Ruby as well). Perl seems to have gone extinct though, probably due to competition in the web sphere and also poor decision making (Perl 6 etc). It's impossible to know what's in store for Elixir; I do see a lot of love and excitement by Elixir devs so that's a reason to be optimistic I guess.
    - sergiomattei 5y ago
      I'd honestly argue the hype already settled. Elixir peaked in hype and mind share near 2016, where everyone was calling it the Rails killer. There were articles about it every day and the language burst into the scene with incredible force. Since then, the community has matured, many have either moved out or settled with it. It's gaining momentum but the strong and steady kind, not the overhype kind. There isn't this infatuation over it anymore as we used to see those days. Elixir is now in the strong, mature community stage. It's not hype anymore, it's the period of subdued stability and steady growth.
      - joelbluminator 5y ago
        It definitely wasn't the Rails killer people thought it would be though. It remains to be seen if devs want to be a part of a small community (albeit strong and passionate) because now it's clear that it is small.

brightball 5y ago

FWIW I think that this is because it was the main selling point of adopting Go instead for many companies. I was at a company 6 years ago that was looking at introducing a language with a better concurrency profile. It was between Elixir and Go. Go ended up winning out because “Google makes it more mainstream”. That was the crux of the decision. Don’t get me wrong, Go has plenty of selling points but there were a lot of supporting articles making that claim. Denouncing Elixir as “not mainstream” is probably just a result of the built in defensiveness from people who argued against it for a while. Elixir’s fantastic. It has made me a much better programmer.

joelbluminator 5y ago

I mean being mainstream helps. More blogs, more Stackoverflow answers, more battle tested libraries. A Java or Python business are 100% positive they will find devs 20 years from now and the ecosystem won't die. Php, Go, Ruby? Lets say 80% sure. With Elixir its very hard to say what's going to happen. Its quite possible it will go the way of Perl eventually. I don't know what F# or Ocaml are good for but if you are starting a business you need a pretty compelling reason to use those instead of something mainstream. Being mainstream helps a lot I wouldn't underestimate it.

sergiomattei 5y ago
Elixir is gaining momentum, though. It just made it into top 50 TIOBE index. Projects like Nerves for IoT, Nx, etc are giving it life in new applications and industries. It's never going to be a top 5 language, but it's on its way to become a well-known language with a strong community.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  > but it's on its way to become a well-known language with a strong community I agree it has a strong community for its size. It remains to be seen what happens 5 years from now when the hype settles (It arguably already is happening). Some languages reach sizes where it's impossible to die out even though they are declining (PHP for example. Probably Ruby as well). Perl seems to have gone extinct though, probably due to competition in the web sphere and also poor decision making (Perl 6 etc). It's impossible to know what's in store for Elixir; I do see a lot of love and excitement by Elixir devs so that's a reason to be optimistic I guess.
  - sergiomattei 5y ago
    I'd honestly argue the hype already settled. Elixir peaked in hype and mind share near 2016, where everyone was calling it the Rails killer. There were articles about it every day and the language burst into the scene with incredible force. Since then, the community has matured, many have either moved out or settled with it. It's gaining momentum but the strong and steady kind, not the overhype kind. There isn't this infatuation over it anymore as we used to see those days. Elixir is now in the strong, mature community stage. It's not hype anymore, it's the period of subdued stability and steady growth.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      It definitely wasn't the Rails killer people thought it would be though. It remains to be seen if devs want to be a part of a small community (albeit strong and passionate) because now it's clear that it is small.