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I can relate. I was just about ready to exit programming until 2 things came along that removed all the analysis paralysis for me. 1. Elixir + Phoenix 2. Tail

I can relate. I was just about ready to exit programming until 2 things came along that removed all the analysis paralysis for me. 1. Elixir + Phoenix 2. TailwindCSS Elixir because you can build a monolith with it and everything is naturally separated by design. The runtime makes it impossible to hurt yourself. It addresses virtually every web use case in an ideal fashion that balances development speed with long term maintenance and scalability because of the language design trade offs. TailwindCSS because it removed the decision about which of the million frontend stacks in should be using. It makes it so easy to do anything I can dream up without feeling like I need to hire somebody to help with a pet project. And honestly, even though I like DevOps and database work just using Heroku/Fly/Gigalixir so I don’t have to worry about it makes my life easier.

fouc 5y ago
Elixir & Phoenix comes across as a "full-stack" framework with tons of potential, much more so than Ruby on Rails.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  I agree that Elixir & Phoenix are the natural evolution in a post-Rails world, but looking further ahead, I think we've reached a point where the compiled & typed languages are starting to have all the goodies that used to be reserved only for the highest of the high level languages, and with web assembly support on the rise, it's going to start to become possible to use languages like this for both backend and frontend in a unified way. So for me, the next natural evolution is using something like Rust or Crystal but with very solid Railsy conventions and intelligent code sharing between frontend and backend. I think this combined with something like the Phoenix live view, but in Rust, is at least where I want my future to be, and I think a workflow like this could become the dominant pattern before, say, Elixir/Phoenix overtakes Rails. I tip my hat though to people diving into Elixir --- it is definitely a cool direction and one I would follow if I weren't already so sold on Rust/Crystal/etc.
  - montblanc 5y ago
    Well the game has also changed for dynamic languages. Writing JS or Ruby with a powerful IDE today isn't what it used to be 5-10 years ago and it will keep getting better. The tools and linters will become smarter about catching silly typos. It will never be like writing in a compiled language but the gap will narrow. Also - I don't think we'll ever agree on any language. Sure, some languages will be dominant - Java maybe or Rust or whatever, but there will always be room for alternative approaches. Humans don't fully agree on much.
    - fault1 5y ago
      yes, it's true that with sophisticated gradual typing and expressive static langs, dynamic and static languages are far more similar than they used to be. personally, I still enjoy the extreme dynamism of lisp and lisp-like langs (julia), but we may never see a resurgence of them in popularity
  - brightball 5y ago
    Where Elixir makes everything work is the runtime that allows millions of concurrent processes to coexist without taking over the processor. I can’t think of another language, even Rust, where you could run a full database inside your codebase without negatively impacting everything else. That BEAM runtime just makes things possible that aren’t in other languages.
machiaweliczny 5y ago
Elixir is kinda nice. I like their macros, db querying layer and mix and low latency. But I feel no typesystem would bite me in bigger project.
- freedomben 5y ago
  I worried about this too, but I found that 90% of the places I want "types" are elegantly handled with pattern matching and what other langs would call "function overloading." I also love that you can treat structs like a map, which I feel is the best feature from javascript.
- OkayPhysicist 5y ago
  The type system problem is somewhat mitigated by ubiquitous use of pattern matching. In python, the function def foo(mymap): blah Has no real information about what my map is. In contrast, a staticly typed language like Java would have public static HashMap<String,Integer> foo(HashMap<String,Integer> mymap){ return mymap } which encourages you to have a lot of classes defining different types of things, which is rigid, but at least makes it clear what exactly the function is expecting. Elixir is somewhere in between, where you'd write def foo(%{"username" => username, "password" => password}) do {username,password} end which makes it abundantly clear what the function expects ( a map, with keys "username" and "password"), and handily unpacks those values for you, making it feel more immediately useful than "In the future it'll be nice to have more clear code", which helps with adoption.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    In practice, the Python example is likely to have considerable information hidden in the “blah” from which existing tooling can often infer much of what would be declared in a language with mandatory explicit static typing; and it has existing tooling for optional explicit static typing, too.
    - OkayPhysicist 5y ago
      So does Elixir with typespecs and Dialyzer, but I'm talking about quick, at a glance analysis of a function definition. Which is really the only benefit from a brittle type system like C or Java's, in contrast to a proper type system like Rust's or Haskell's, which have their place and cannot be adequately replaced merely with pattern matching.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Mizza 5y ago
I'm in exactly the same boat, and hoping that others follow suit. It feels like "the good old days", but the community is still small and resources are scattered, so sometimes doing simple things mean a bit of trial and error at first. Still, it's actually been enjoyable again.

fouc 5y ago

Elixir & Phoenix comes across as a "full-stack" framework with tons of potential, much more so than Ruby on Rails.

sam0x17 5y ago
I agree that Elixir & Phoenix are the natural evolution in a post-Rails world, but looking further ahead, I think we've reached a point where the compiled & typed languages are starting to have all the goodies that used to be reserved only for the highest of the high level languages, and with web assembly support on the rise, it's going to start to become possible to use languages like this for both backend and frontend in a unified way. So for me, the next natural evolution is using something like Rust or Crystal but with very solid Railsy conventions and intelligent code sharing between frontend and backend. I think this combined with something like the Phoenix live view, but in Rust, is at least where I want my future to be, and I think a workflow like this could become the dominant pattern before, say, Elixir/Phoenix overtakes Rails. I tip my hat though to people diving into Elixir --- it is definitely a cool direction and one I would follow if I weren't already so sold on Rust/Crystal/etc.
- montblanc 5y ago
  Well the game has also changed for dynamic languages. Writing JS or Ruby with a powerful IDE today isn't what it used to be 5-10 years ago and it will keep getting better. The tools and linters will become smarter about catching silly typos. It will never be like writing in a compiled language but the gap will narrow. Also - I don't think we'll ever agree on any language. Sure, some languages will be dominant - Java maybe or Rust or whatever, but there will always be room for alternative approaches. Humans don't fully agree on much.
  - fault1 5y ago
    yes, it's true that with sophisticated gradual typing and expressive static langs, dynamic and static languages are far more similar than they used to be. personally, I still enjoy the extreme dynamism of lisp and lisp-like langs (julia), but we may never see a resurgence of them in popularity
- brightball 5y ago
  Where Elixir makes everything work is the runtime that allows millions of concurrent processes to coexist without taking over the processor. I can’t think of another language, even Rust, where you could run a full database inside your codebase without negatively impacting everything else. That BEAM runtime just makes things possible that aren’t in other languages.

machiaweliczny 5y ago

Elixir is kinda nice. I like their macros, db querying layer and mix and low latency. But I feel no typesystem would bite me in bigger project.

freedomben 5y ago
I worried about this too, but I found that 90% of the places I want "types" are elegantly handled with pattern matching and what other langs would call "function overloading." I also love that you can treat structs like a map, which I feel is the best feature from javascript.
OkayPhysicist 5y ago
The type system problem is somewhat mitigated by ubiquitous use of pattern matching. In python, the function def foo(mymap): blah Has no real information about what my map is. In contrast, a staticly typed language like Java would have public static HashMap<String,Integer> foo(HashMap<String,Integer> mymap){ return mymap } which encourages you to have a lot of classes defining different types of things, which is rigid, but at least makes it clear what exactly the function is expecting. Elixir is somewhere in between, where you'd write def foo(%{"username" => username, "password" => password}) do {username,password} end which makes it abundantly clear what the function expects ( a map, with keys "username" and "password"), and handily unpacks those values for you, making it feel more immediately useful than "In the future it'll be nice to have more clear code", which helps with adoption.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  In practice, the Python example is likely to have considerable information hidden in the “blah” from which existing tooling can often infer much of what would be declared in a language with mandatory explicit static typing; and it has existing tooling for optional explicit static typing, too.
  - OkayPhysicist 5y ago
    So does Elixir with typespecs and Dialyzer, but I'm talking about quick, at a glance analysis of a function definition. Which is really the only benefit from a brittle type system like C or Java's, in contrast to a proper type system like Rust's or Haskell's, which have their place and cannot be adequately replaced merely with pattern matching.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Mizza 5y ago

I'm in exactly the same boat, and hoping that others follow suit. It feels like "the good old days", but the community is still small and resources are scattered, so sometimes doing simple things mean a bit of trial and error at first. Still, it's actually been enjoyable again.