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Ask HN: Whatever Happened to Elixir?

Hi all I've been a great supporter and a fan of the Elixir language and having built huge codebases of my side projects in it, I could feel the robustness and also enjoy the general nature of FP. There were, times when things felt more difficult and challenging compared to Ruby, which was something I was very proficient at before then. Looks like the trend for Elixir Posts and activity on this forum is in the decline now, was wondering what happened to it?! Are people moving away from it already?

boxed 5y ago
I looked at elixir+phoenix+liveview but was a bit put off by the lack of automatic migrations in ecto, the lack of a proper form library, etc. I've been spoiled by Django (and my own iommi on too of that).
jpnc 5y ago
My guess is it went the way of Clojure. Small language that's generally loved but does not have a massive mind-share. Every once in a while you'll see some people gush about it, but then it's right back to regularly scheduled language wars.
- KSPAtlas 5y ago
  There are people who despise it, because it diverges enough from a lisp to not be called a lisp and hate when they say Clojure is a lisp
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    They are free to help Armed Bear Common Lisp increase adoption on the JVM then.
sethammons 5y ago
I just moved from a company doing Go to a start up slinging Elixir. Seems alive and kicking to me :)
dpeck 5y ago
Nothing “happened” it’s still growing and a great language. It’s just past the point where mavens are evangelizing it because it’s not new to the mavens anymore. It’s a fantastic set of tools, and a great community. The real trick is that the organizations that you find using it, especially well established ones, are going to pay well and be looking to invest heavily in their engineering teams.
ljloisnflwef 5y ago
It's the boom/bust cycle we've experienced with Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Scala, MongoDB. The initial adopter/FOMO/hype phase is over.
linkdd 5y ago
Still using it to build Kubirds[0] (a Kubernetes operator for monitoring/alerting). WhatsApp is built with Erlang, as well as RabbitMQ. Discord is built with Elixir. Some people are starting to build NIFs in Rust with Rustler[1]. Erlang/Elixir and OTP are far from dead. But since there is not a new version every 3 minutes, it's not getting a lot of attention. [0] - https://kubirds.com [1] - https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler
- weatherlite 5y ago
  WhatsApp forked and made changes to Erlang afaik, and in any case despite being a hugely influential app they are a tiny team, that's not gonna change the number of Erlang jobs much.
fouc 5y ago
There's actually been a boom in Elixir lately, especially with the recent developments of Liveview.
drannex 5y ago
The language formalized and is "done". The core is written, and while it still has changes and improvements as Erlang OTP improves, the gist of the language is done (even the creator has said this, I believe). That doesn't mean Elixir isn't a fast growing language, or that the developer mindshare is dwindling, in fact I would argue there are more developers (and new developers!) than ever. Surprisingly a lot in the Asian markets, Japan especially. And with work being focused from the core Elixir team towards projects such as with Livebook, Nerves, and Nx for machine learning, there is a lot of valueable and cool work being done, it's just not the most flashy thing because it's so rock solid and stable.
- bnt 5y ago
  Exactly the last part. The language is “complete” and the core team is now focusing on the ecosystem.
discordance 5y ago
Still using it (Elixir + Phoenix) here and enjoying it.
smt88 5y ago
I think Elixir probably lost momentum because dynamic languages are on their way out in our industry (with the exception of Python, due to popularity in ML and data science). Many people are upgrading JS to TS, and most of the popular languages (Java, C#, C++) are static, compiled languages.
- weatherlite 5y ago
  Dynamic JS will always remain a thing...its the easiest way for beginners to learn programming
  - smt88 5y ago
    JS is one of the hardest languages there is. You need enormous discipline and also a deep knowledge of its quirks and sharp edges. You need to know about truthiness, null vs. undefined, type coercion, etc. And if you mess those things up, you often get silent or unclear errors. Languages that are stricter are better able to guess the programmer's intent even when a typo or mistake is made, and the static analyzer can even suggest a fix. JS can't do that. And don't even get me started on modules, monkey-patching, and globals. JS is full of hidden footguns.
    - weatherlite 5y ago
      It still has a monopoly in the browser so...it's gonna be a lot of people's first language.
- JonChesterfield 5y ago
  Big teams and big companies like static languages. That's lots of people in favour and lots of people saying it's better. I'm not sure this is a new trend.
- KSPAtlas 5y ago
  What about both?
mstipetic 5y ago
I'm a huge elixir fan and am using it to write my own projects and MVPs and am crazy productive in it. I find it has more or less everything I need to build web apps. If i were to go look for elixir jobs it's not a very good situation, but I think that will change over time. I think it needs a few big successes so that people realize how powerful LiveView is and the things you can do with a small team. I'm still optimistic.

boxed 5y ago

I looked at elixir+phoenix+liveview but was a bit put off by the lack of automatic migrations in ecto, the lack of a proper form library, etc. I've been spoiled by Django (and my own iommi on too of that).

jpnc 5y ago

My guess is it went the way of Clojure. Small language that's generally loved but does not have a massive mind-share. Every once in a while you'll see some people gush about it, but then it's right back to regularly scheduled language wars.

KSPAtlas 5y ago
There are people who despise it, because it diverges enough from a lisp to not be called a lisp and hate when they say Clojure is a lisp
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They are free to help Armed Bear Common Lisp increase adoption on the JVM then.

sethammons 5y ago

I just moved from a company doing Go to a start up slinging Elixir. Seems alive and kicking to me :)

dpeck 5y ago

Nothing “happened” it’s still growing and a great language. It’s just past the point where mavens are evangelizing it because it’s not new to the mavens anymore. It’s a fantastic set of tools, and a great community. The real trick is that the organizations that you find using it, especially well established ones, are going to pay well and be looking to invest heavily in their engineering teams.

ljloisnflwef 5y ago

It's the boom/bust cycle we've experienced with Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Scala, MongoDB. The initial adopter/FOMO/hype phase is over.

linkdd 5y ago

Still using it to build Kubirds[0] (a Kubernetes operator for monitoring/alerting). WhatsApp is built with Erlang, as well as RabbitMQ. Discord is built with Elixir. Some people are starting to build NIFs in Rust with Rustler[1]. Erlang/Elixir and OTP are far from dead. But since there is not a new version every 3 minutes, it's not getting a lot of attention. [0] - https://kubirds.com [1] - https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler

weatherlite 5y ago
WhatsApp forked and made changes to Erlang afaik, and in any case despite being a hugely influential app they are a tiny team, that's not gonna change the number of Erlang jobs much.

fouc 5y ago

There's actually been a boom in Elixir lately, especially with the recent developments of Liveview.

drannex 5y ago

The language formalized and is "done". The core is written, and while it still has changes and improvements as Erlang OTP improves, the gist of the language is done (even the creator has said this, I believe). That doesn't mean Elixir isn't a fast growing language, or that the developer mindshare is dwindling, in fact I would argue there are more developers (and new developers!) than ever. Surprisingly a lot in the Asian markets, Japan especially. And with work being focused from the core Elixir team towards projects such as with Livebook, Nerves, and Nx for machine learning, there is a lot of valueable and cool work being done, it's just not the most flashy thing because it's so rock solid and stable.

bnt 5y ago
Exactly the last part. The language is “complete” and the core team is now focusing on the ecosystem.

discordance 5y ago

Still using it (Elixir + Phoenix) here and enjoying it.

smt88 5y ago

I think Elixir probably lost momentum because dynamic languages are on their way out in our industry (with the exception of Python, due to popularity in ML and data science). Many people are upgrading JS to TS, and most of the popular languages (Java, C#, C++) are static, compiled languages.

weatherlite 5y ago
Dynamic JS will always remain a thing...its the easiest way for beginners to learn programming
- smt88 5y ago
  JS is one of the hardest languages there is. You need enormous discipline and also a deep knowledge of its quirks and sharp edges. You need to know about truthiness, null vs. undefined, type coercion, etc. And if you mess those things up, you often get silent or unclear errors. Languages that are stricter are better able to guess the programmer's intent even when a typo or mistake is made, and the static analyzer can even suggest a fix. JS can't do that. And don't even get me started on modules, monkey-patching, and globals. JS is full of hidden footguns.
  - weatherlite 5y ago
    It still has a monopoly in the browser so...it's gonna be a lot of people's first language.
JonChesterfield 5y ago
Big teams and big companies like static languages. That's lots of people in favour and lots of people saying it's better. I'm not sure this is a new trend.
KSPAtlas 5y ago
What about both?

mstipetic 5y ago

I'm a huge elixir fan and am using it to write my own projects and MVPs and am crazy productive in it. I find it has more or less everything I need to build web apps. If i were to go look for elixir jobs it's not a very good situation, but I think that will change over time. I think it needs a few big successes so that people realize how powerful LiveView is and the things you can do with a small team. I'm still optimistic.