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This is great. I think it's crucial to keep convincing the overall tech community about the good sides of Elixir. And yeah, resilient design de-risks itself an

This is great. I think it's crucial to keep convincing the overall tech community about the good sides of Elixir. And yeah, resilient design de-risks itself and that alone is a huge gain because it also reduces other forms of complexity. Still, I think we have to keep pushing to debunk other myths from "it's impossible to find talent" and the fear of "no one uses" that are common myths about any technology that is not the #1 most used.

bsaul 3y ago
Elixir / erlang is not just « not the #1 ». I don’t think it’s even in the top 99% of the programmer’s population commonly used language. once you’ve removed people using c/c++, java / kotlin, dot net, javascript, ruby php and python, you’re left with a really fringe minority of people. And even in that minority, i would say erlang / elixir isn’t even in the top 2 ( my guess go and rust have a much wider audience)
- radlad 3y ago
  No need to suppose, there are decent sources for this.[1][2] Go seems to be much more popular than you expect. Elixir and Erlang are both pretty obscure. [1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popular-technologies https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popula... [2] https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/1 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/1
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    The irony is that for all its obscurity, most startups are using at least one mission critical service that runs on elixir -- slab, pagerduty, elixir, ramp, divvy, discord. brex is probably still half ish elixir, though they claimed to be wanting to replace it with kotlin when they got some new tech leadership. I wonder how that's going. I remember working at a startup where the cto was unsure about putting trust in elixir, claiming it was an "unproven entity". I pointed out to him we used THREE of those services, do if he didn't trust elixir we should probably pivot off of those products.
    - alexgrover 3y ago
      I doubt the reservation is with the language/runtime itself, especially with elixir and the BEAM. More likely, it’s with the maturity of the community. Especially at a small startup, building on elixir even today might still mean having to build things in house you may not in Django/Rails/JS.
      - slondr 3y ago
        Phoenix exists, so I don’t think that’s true.
      - evadne 3y ago
        Indeed. This was covered later in the article on characteristics that may alter the perception of a high-leverage toolchain… More good & relevant information + libraries -> more acceptance (i.e. my use case is no longer a tech uncertainty) The other thought would be that if you didn’t have to do anything yourself then you must have no moat.
        alexgrover 3y ago
        The moat comment depends on the company, not all or even most businesses depend on actual innovation as their moat. Also, I think we’re agreeing here, but there are a huge set of things that you may need to build an application that aren’t the core value prop of your company. Buying into a more mature ecosystem makes it more likely that you don’t have to build those things and can spend more time on the moat stuff.
        evadne 3y ago
        Indeed, I think you are quite right, and we are in agreement.
      - throwawaymaths 3y ago
        I think you are overestimating the intelligence of that CTO
  - parthdesai 3y ago
    It's only obscure professionally; it's also one of the most loved languages. [same survey] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-loved-dreaded-and...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sph 3y ago
      I was surprised to see how low it is on the Want list, even though it's only second to Rust in the Love list. Simply put, many developers don't yet know they're gonna love it!
- RSHEPP 3y ago
  In the Fintech space and we use Go and Elixir. Seems to be pretty common among other companies. Company is out of Utah. It's pretty easy to find talent for Go and a little more difficult for elixir.
  - iends 3y ago
    Elixir people might cringe but why wouldn’t you just be 100% Go?
    - lawik 3y ago
      Go people might cringe but why wouldn't you just be 100% Rust? Actual response: Some similarities, different goals, different strengths, different abstraction levels. Go is cool I hear but I don't see a need from over here doing Elixir.
    - pg_1234 3y ago
      In a concurrent environment Go is not guaranteed memory safe, leaving you exposed to silent errors of value ... which for Fintech is just suicidal.
    - RSHEPP 3y ago
      Because we live with our past decisions... All new services are in Go. The elixir service serves us well still.
      - bsaul 3y ago
        Curious: why did you move from elixir to go ?
    - innocentoldguy 3y ago
      Why not 100% Elixir, since it is more robust and uses less resources?
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I'm still on a hiatus but if you need a senior Elixir and Rust dev that knows Golang okay, we can chat. 21 years of experience in total, including in C/C++ and Java.
sph 3y ago
> it's impossible to find talent It's been 4 months and counting that I've been trying to land an Elixir freelance contract. My theory is that dev. happiness and productivity is so great in Elixir land, there is not much churn, so talent is available, jobs, not so much.
- 8ytecoder 3y ago
  Reach out to me on my email on HN with your resume/GitHub link.
- Plasmoid 3y ago
  I submitted a few patches to an elixir project and from that a company reached out to hire me. This was a while ago but I got the feeling that companies were starved for talent.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    It's also hard to get a job as an elixir junior or senior. There is a disconnect and companies are trying to hire by cargo culting things that other startups/faang are doing, and repeatedly turning down perfectly good candidates. Also recruiters don't know how to find/screen elixir devs, etc.
- napsterbr 3y ago
  (Edited out because I misread the parent comment)
  - pavlov 3y ago
    The GP poster is looking for an Elixir job too.
    - sph 3y ago
      They've put their billboard just next to mine, placing themselves as competition. Not super appreciated in this tight hiring market :-) (j/k, no worries napsterbr)
scraplab 3y ago
We use Elixir. Everyone we’ve hired, from junior to principal, has had no previous Elixir experience. They’ve mostly come from Ruby/Rails or JavaScript backgrounds. They’ve become productive in Elixir quickly and once they’ve understood some of the unique patterns and concepts, all thoroughly enjoyed working in it. Of course, those with more experience tend to have heard of Elixir and be keen to work in it. People with less experience are more concerned about whether investing in this language is a good career move, so we emphasise how learning something like Elixir will ultimately make you a more valuable developer. If you’re considering adopting Elixir for your new project/startup and worried about finding talented developers, I don’t think Elixir will make it harder and might even make it easier.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

bsaul 3y ago

Elixir / erlang is not just « not the #1 ». I don’t think it’s even in the top 99% of the programmer’s population commonly used language. once you’ve removed people using c/c++, java / kotlin, dot net, javascript, ruby php and python, you’re left with a really fringe minority of people. And even in that minority, i would say erlang / elixir isn’t even in the top 2 ( my guess go and rust have a much wider audience)

radlad 3y ago
No need to suppose, there are decent sources for this.[1][2] Go seems to be much more popular than you expect. Elixir and Erlang are both pretty obscure. [1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popular-technologies https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-most-popula... [2] https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/1 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/1
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  The irony is that for all its obscurity, most startups are using at least one mission critical service that runs on elixir -- slab, pagerduty, elixir, ramp, divvy, discord. brex is probably still half ish elixir, though they claimed to be wanting to replace it with kotlin when they got some new tech leadership. I wonder how that's going. I remember working at a startup where the cto was unsure about putting trust in elixir, claiming it was an "unproven entity". I pointed out to him we used THREE of those services, do if he didn't trust elixir we should probably pivot off of those products.
  - alexgrover 3y ago
    I doubt the reservation is with the language/runtime itself, especially with elixir and the BEAM. More likely, it’s with the maturity of the community. Especially at a small startup, building on elixir even today might still mean having to build things in house you may not in Django/Rails/JS.
    - slondr 3y ago
      Phoenix exists, so I don’t think that’s true.
    - evadne 3y ago
      Indeed. This was covered later in the article on characteristics that may alter the perception of a high-leverage toolchain… More good & relevant information + libraries -> more acceptance (i.e. my use case is no longer a tech uncertainty) The other thought would be that if you didn’t have to do anything yourself then you must have no moat.
      - alexgrover 3y ago
        The moat comment depends on the company, not all or even most businesses depend on actual innovation as their moat. Also, I think we’re agreeing here, but there are a huge set of things that you may need to build an application that aren’t the core value prop of your company. Buying into a more mature ecosystem makes it more likely that you don’t have to build those things and can spend more time on the moat stuff.
        evadne 3y ago
        Indeed, I think you are quite right, and we are in agreement.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      I think you are overestimating the intelligence of that CTO
- parthdesai 3y ago
  It's only obscure professionally; it's also one of the most loved languages. [same survey] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-loved-dreaded-and...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sph 3y ago
    I was surprised to see how low it is on the Want list, even though it's only second to Rust in the Love list. Simply put, many developers don't yet know they're gonna love it!
RSHEPP 3y ago
In the Fintech space and we use Go and Elixir. Seems to be pretty common among other companies. Company is out of Utah. It's pretty easy to find talent for Go and a little more difficult for elixir.
- iends 3y ago
  Elixir people might cringe but why wouldn’t you just be 100% Go?
  - lawik 3y ago
    Go people might cringe but why wouldn't you just be 100% Rust? Actual response: Some similarities, different goals, different strengths, different abstraction levels. Go is cool I hear but I don't see a need from over here doing Elixir.
  - pg_1234 3y ago
    In a concurrent environment Go is not guaranteed memory safe, leaving you exposed to silent errors of value ... which for Fintech is just suicidal.
  - RSHEPP 3y ago
    Because we live with our past decisions... All new services are in Go. The elixir service serves us well still.
    - bsaul 3y ago
      Curious: why did you move from elixir to go ?
  - innocentoldguy 3y ago
    Why not 100% Elixir, since it is more robust and uses less resources?
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I'm still on a hiatus but if you need a senior Elixir and Rust dev that knows Golang okay, we can chat. 21 years of experience in total, including in C/C++ and Java.

sph 3y ago

> it's impossible to find talent It's been 4 months and counting that I've been trying to land an Elixir freelance contract. My theory is that dev. happiness and productivity is so great in Elixir land, there is not much churn, so talent is available, jobs, not so much.

8ytecoder 3y ago
Reach out to me on my email on HN with your resume/GitHub link.
Plasmoid 3y ago
I submitted a few patches to an elixir project and from that a company reached out to hire me. This was a while ago but I got the feeling that companies were starved for talent.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  It's also hard to get a job as an elixir junior or senior. There is a disconnect and companies are trying to hire by cargo culting things that other startups/faang are doing, and repeatedly turning down perfectly good candidates. Also recruiters don't know how to find/screen elixir devs, etc.
napsterbr 3y ago
(Edited out because I misread the parent comment)
- pavlov 3y ago
  The GP poster is looking for an Elixir job too.
  - sph 3y ago
    They've put their billboard just next to mine, placing themselves as competition. Not super appreciated in this tight hiring market :-) (j/k, no worries napsterbr)

scraplab 3y ago

We use Elixir. Everyone we’ve hired, from junior to principal, has had no previous Elixir experience. They’ve mostly come from Ruby/Rails or JavaScript backgrounds. They’ve become productive in Elixir quickly and once they’ve understood some of the unique patterns and concepts, all thoroughly enjoyed working in it. Of course, those with more experience tend to have heard of Elixir and be keen to work in it. People with less experience are more concerned about whether investing in this language is a good career move, so we emphasise how learning something like Elixir will ultimately make you a more valuable developer. If you’re considering adopting Elixir for your new project/startup and worried about finding talented developers, I don’t think Elixir will make it harder and might even make it easier.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]