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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, div

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

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