3 ms·

There is this joke that you don't need to outrun a python, you only need to outrun the humans it is chasing. Elixir does not need to outshine Python it only ne

There is this joke that you don't need to outrun a python, you only need to outrun the humans it is chasing. Elixir does not need to outshine Python it only needs to position better than other "functional style" languages on offer as the "go-to" language if one wants to add such a capability in their programming toolkit. In practice this means outshining Clojure. And on this front Elixir definitely does a good job: E.g., there is no such thing as Phoenix in Clojure. People seem to advance some arguments along the lines: "you don't really need frameworks, just compose your own" but this is not cutting it for the masses :-) In a universe where there are millions of different ways of doing things having a well thought, opinionated, proposal is actually an advantage. The limitations (if any) show much later in the cycle when the choice of programming language might even be the least of your worries.

dgb23 4y ago
I don’t think these languages really compete outside of a fairly narrow dimension. They both seem to be doing well. But that’s beside the point. People in the Clojure community have been trying to build such frameworks. But every one of them seems to stay in a weird niche where they’re not comprehensive and _easy_ enough to draw in people who’d use something like Django et al. I think one of the reasons is that they’re all trying to cater to the crowd that wouldn’t use such a framework anyway. Secondly it’s already very quick to create a web app in Clojure. If you use a set of libraries you pay with some initial setup/thinking/choosing cost. The benefit is then to have a program that is more malleable and composable, which is kind of the point for many who choose Clojure in tge first place. There’s really a mismatch of expectations and philosophy I feel.
- college_physics 4y ago
  The "visibility" of frameworks and the onboarding "ease" are important features for many reasons but there are more attributes that shape people's choices. Talking primarily about open source ecosystems, being able to economise on resources is a major advantage. A "hello world" web app or a "neural net without dependencies" might be quick to do in any modern language but one major pathway to add value is when non-trivial domains are represented in usable detail. This is where a community culture that promotes pooling resources behind a few core libraries or frameworks plays an important role. It enables building on top a second layer of abstractions, plugins, interoperable API's et. Django is one example but the Python world has also "one stack" for numerical calculations (numpy, pandas and friends) and that was maybe more instrumental for adoption.

dgb23 4y ago

I don’t think these languages really compete outside of a fairly narrow dimension. They both seem to be doing well. But that’s beside the point. People in the Clojure community have been trying to build such frameworks. But every one of them seems to stay in a weird niche where they’re not comprehensive and _easy_ enough to draw in people who’d use something like Django et al. I think one of the reasons is that they’re all trying to cater to the crowd that wouldn’t use such a framework anyway. Secondly it’s already very quick to create a web app in Clojure. If you use a set of libraries you pay with some initial setup/thinking/choosing cost. The benefit is then to have a program that is more malleable and composable, which is kind of the point for many who choose Clojure in tge first place. There’s really a mismatch of expectations and philosophy I feel.

college_physics 4y ago
The "visibility" of frameworks and the onboarding "ease" are important features for many reasons but there are more attributes that shape people's choices. Talking primarily about open source ecosystems, being able to economise on resources is a major advantage. A "hello world" web app or a "neural net without dependencies" might be quick to do in any modern language but one major pathway to add value is when non-trivial domains are represented in usable detail. This is where a community culture that promotes pooling resources behind a few core libraries or frameworks plays an important role. It enables building on top a second layer of abstractions, plugins, interoperable API's et. Django is one example but the Python world has also "one stack" for numerical calculations (numpy, pandas and friends) and that was maybe more instrumental for adoption.