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

by fouc 5y ago

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.

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

by fouc 5y ago

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

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.