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Have led multiple teams on Elixir projects across a few companies. And while I still love the projects, the community just isn't there anymore. I hope this pro

by veg 4y ago

Have led multiple teams on Elixir projects across a few companies. And while I still love the projects, the community just isn't there anymore. I hope this project sparks some renewed interest in Elixir! (That said, the linked site has basically zero information or examples)

bmhin 4y ago
Elixir was one of the few languages I saw in companies (albeit, infrequently) that wasn't like Java, C#, Python, or JS (Scala here and there). Was always curious about it as perhaps something that could be reasonably pitched as having some nominal uptake. Pure anecdata there also. Literally just ones I have personally seen on clients or heard about from coworkers.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  We use it at a large company and employ almost 60 people writing it. It’s been great so far. The talent pool is really good and it’s easy to teach to junior devs.
ipnon 4y ago
The community seems stronger than ever. What was your experience of its fading away like? Projects like this don’t give the impression of a language falling by the wayside. People tend to fall in love with Elixir. You never forget falling in love.
- jononomo 4y ago
  Seems like the volume of posts on ElixirForum.com is way down over the last 12 months.
  - lawik 4y ago
    I'm very active in Elixir but the forum just hasn't been my vibe.
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    might be just that core elixir is pretty stable. I haven't consulted the elixir forums in months because I rarely run into issues that require external help. I write elixir every day though. Would love to see more people get into elixir though for when we start hiring more people.
  - rch 4y ago
    I enjoy using Elixir but I've never been able to get into any of the forums, channels, etc. Maybe there are better metrics to gage momentum.
    - hosh 4y ago
      The most recent StackOverflow poll shows Elixir as having the highest percentage of people happy with working with it (over 70%), taking top spots among all tech languages and platforms … and is among the lowest for tech people wish they are using for work, but are not. In other words, many of the developers who want to be working with Elixir are working with Elixir, and are quite happy doing so.
  - travisgriggs 4y ago
    The slack channel seems more active than ever.
ch4s3 4y ago
That hasn’t been my experience at all. ElixirConf was well attended this year and regional conferences are coming back. The Slack is active. Most of the podcasts are still running.
Existenceblinks 4y ago
What drives great web framework is a culture of making product. RoR and PHP based frameworks have massive product makers, thus it drives forces into libraries made for variety of products. Elixir's culture is engineering-ish. So you will see decent libs that deal with weird mechanism stuff, but lack of vibe and forces driven from business needs.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  This is very true. the ecosystem has astounding next gen tooling for solving all sorts of things easily that are real bugbears in other languages (oban, horde, genstage, numbat) but the libraries for interfacing with actual third party services or doing mundane things are a bit lacking. Its the reason I tell startups to use laravel or node instead even though I built my startup in elixir. Yes its a huge advantage for what we do (realtime synced apps for managing restaurants) but its overkill for most saas products that are just glorified crud apps. laravel is a huge winner there with its library of prebuilt apps that handle user authentication, billing, tenancy as drop in components.
  - PaulStatezny 4y ago
    > the libraries for interfacing with actual third party services or doing mundane things are a bit lacking Can you provide concrete examples for this? I work with Elixir every day and your statement does not resonate with me at all. Integrating with third party services and doing mundane things are generally no harder in Elixir than any other language.
    - superzadeh 4y ago
      Datadog APM, Segment: both key to building day to day products, none first party support. Community libraries exist, but their bus factor isn’t looking good.
      - atonse 4y ago
        Spent weeks getting spandex (elixir Datadog lib) to work properly. Totally concur. And then found out it was abandoned. But everyone is moving to open telemetry.
ianbutler 4y ago
I'd be curious what gave you this impression?
ramchip 4y ago
Interesting, I was thinking the opposite. Elixir Forum has so much volume I stopped following it 1-2 years ago and now hang out in the much quieter Erlang Forum :D What gave you that impression?

by veg 4y ago

bmhin 4y ago

Elixir was one of the few languages I saw in companies (albeit, infrequently) that wasn't like Java, C#, Python, or JS (Scala here and there). Was always curious about it as perhaps something that could be reasonably pitched as having some nominal uptake. Pure anecdata there also. Literally just ones I have personally seen on clients or heard about from coworkers.

ch4s3 4y ago
We use it at a large company and employ almost 60 people writing it. It’s been great so far. The talent pool is really good and it’s easy to teach to junior devs.

ipnon 4y ago

The community seems stronger than ever. What was your experience of its fading away like? Projects like this don’t give the impression of a language falling by the wayside. People tend to fall in love with Elixir. You never forget falling in love.

jononomo 4y ago
Seems like the volume of posts on ElixirForum.com is way down over the last 12 months.
- lawik 4y ago
  I'm very active in Elixir but the forum just hasn't been my vibe.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  might be just that core elixir is pretty stable. I haven't consulted the elixir forums in months because I rarely run into issues that require external help. I write elixir every day though. Would love to see more people get into elixir though for when we start hiring more people.
- rch 4y ago
  I enjoy using Elixir but I've never been able to get into any of the forums, channels, etc. Maybe there are better metrics to gage momentum.
  - hosh 4y ago
    The most recent StackOverflow poll shows Elixir as having the highest percentage of people happy with working with it (over 70%), taking top spots among all tech languages and platforms … and is among the lowest for tech people wish they are using for work, but are not. In other words, many of the developers who want to be working with Elixir are working with Elixir, and are quite happy doing so.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  The slack channel seems more active than ever.

ch4s3 4y ago

That hasn’t been my experience at all. ElixirConf was well attended this year and regional conferences are coming back. The Slack is active. Most of the podcasts are still running.

Existenceblinks 4y ago

What drives great web framework is a culture of making product. RoR and PHP based frameworks have massive product makers, thus it drives forces into libraries made for variety of products. Elixir's culture is engineering-ish. So you will see decent libs that deal with weird mechanism stuff, but lack of vibe and forces driven from business needs.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
This is very true. the ecosystem has astounding next gen tooling for solving all sorts of things easily that are real bugbears in other languages (oban, horde, genstage, numbat) but the libraries for interfacing with actual third party services or doing mundane things are a bit lacking. Its the reason I tell startups to use laravel or node instead even though I built my startup in elixir. Yes its a huge advantage for what we do (realtime synced apps for managing restaurants) but its overkill for most saas products that are just glorified crud apps. laravel is a huge winner there with its library of prebuilt apps that handle user authentication, billing, tenancy as drop in components.
- PaulStatezny 4y ago
  > the libraries for interfacing with actual third party services or doing mundane things are a bit lacking Can you provide concrete examples for this? I work with Elixir every day and your statement does not resonate with me at all. Integrating with third party services and doing mundane things are generally no harder in Elixir than any other language.
  - superzadeh 4y ago
    Datadog APM, Segment: both key to building day to day products, none first party support. Community libraries exist, but their bus factor isn’t looking good.
    - atonse 4y ago
      Spent weeks getting spandex (elixir Datadog lib) to work properly. Totally concur. And then found out it was abandoned. But everyone is moving to open telemetry.

ianbutler 4y ago

I'd be curious what gave you this impression?

ramchip 4y ago

Interesting, I was thinking the opposite. Elixir Forum has so much volume I stopped following it 1-2 years ago and now hang out in the much quieter Erlang Forum :D What gave you that impression?