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I liked this approachable talk I watched few years ago. I wish developing in Elixir was as easy as python. https://youtu.be/xoNRtWl4fZU https://youtu.be/xoNRt

I liked this approachable talk I watched few years ago. I wish developing in Elixir was as easy as python. https://youtu.be/xoNRtWl4fZU https://youtu.be/xoNRtWl4fZU

Dowwie 3y ago
I've found Elixir to be easy to understand given what it's doing, and it's doing a lot more work than Python does for each application. The thing is, though, that there are a lot of declarative frameworks in Python that make applications go further without burdening a developer with low-level detail. Elixir does the same thing. Elixir and OTP abstract away a lot of complexity, at times too much. Import enough frameworks into your Python application and you'll be making a lot more decisions. Thinking about process management for every application you write (BEAM process, not OS process) pushes you up front to think about the paradigm that is used everywhere, and once you grasp what you're considering you can apply your understanding of concurrency when using other languages. This often happens when an Erlang/Elixir developer works with Rust: many programmers adopt message-passing rather than sharing state, and as they make their system more robust think about how to control threads/tasks, adopting OTP-like paradigms.
lawik 3y ago
What do you find more difficult? The achieving tasks in it or the getting paid to do so part?
- jasonjmcghee 3y ago
  There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve if you’ve never written in a language where everything is immutable. Certain problems have to be approached in a fundamentally different way if you can’t mutate state. Fortunately there’s Agent/OTP, but again, pretty different than other (or popular with beginners - js/python/java) languages.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    You really shouldn't be using agent for mutable state. Kind of annoying that the docs push you to that. Agent is most useful when you need to tie the transient lifetime of some state with something else (think: compilers). Otherwise, it's generally better to use a database, (or ets, if you need performance), GenServer/gen_statem if you need reactive events attached to the state. Agent is just a wrapper over GenServer so it is strictly worse in terms of performance, and honestly, slightly hard to grok as to where actions take place (and thus, who is responsible for failures)
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      I love elixir and am very comfortable with functional programming and generally prefer it. But being told you have to write a state machine instead of just += a var is an excellent experience in believing elixir is harder than python.
      - sodapopcan 3y ago
        Of course you example is hyperbole and I certainly understand what you are saying. But the attitude that many programmers take when learning a new language that something is "harder" when it's just different than what they are used to bothers me (to be clear, I'm not directing that at you). But comparing: i = 0 for x in [1, 2, 3, 4]: i += x vs i = Enum.reduce([1, 2, 3, 4], fn x, i -> i + x end) There is nothing inherently "harder" about the functional version, it's just different (and of course comes with its own benefits).
        jcparkyn 3y ago
        I find that pure functional loops with reduce or fold often get a lot harder to read/write as soon as you have more than one variable to keep track of. Imperative loops don't really have this problem.
        throwawaymaths 3y ago
- passion__desire 3y ago
  If faced with the one-off problem shown in the video, I would have reached for a python solution like joblib etc. But knowing efficient better way to do would be additional tool. As shown in the video, it took him jumping through multiple hoops and expert help to get to his solution and without knowing beforehand if all the required pieces can be put together in Elixir ecosystem. No such hurdle in python solution.
thibaut_barrere 3y ago
Coming from (a lot of) Ruby which is quite close from Python IMO, initially I felt Elixir was harder, but it was just because of my habits, and the huge "comfort vendor lock-in" that both Ruby & Python provide. Ultimately I am still as fluent with Ruby as before, but I find developing with Elixir is easier than Ruby (it took a few years to get there though).

I liked this approachable talk I watched few years ago. I wish developing in Elixir was as easy as python. https://youtu.be/xoNRtWl4fZU https://youtu.be/xoNRtWl4fZU

Dowwie 3y ago

I've found Elixir to be easy to understand given what it's doing, and it's doing a lot more work than Python does for each application. The thing is, though, that there are a lot of declarative frameworks in Python that make applications go further without burdening a developer with low-level detail. Elixir does the same thing. Elixir and OTP abstract away a lot of complexity, at times too much. Import enough frameworks into your Python application and you'll be making a lot more decisions. Thinking about process management for every application you write (BEAM process, not OS process) pushes you up front to think about the paradigm that is used everywhere, and once you grasp what you're considering you can apply your understanding of concurrency when using other languages. This often happens when an Erlang/Elixir developer works with Rust: many programmers adopt message-passing rather than sharing state, and as they make their system more robust think about how to control threads/tasks, adopting OTP-like paradigms.

lawik 3y ago

What do you find more difficult? The achieving tasks in it or the getting paid to do so part?

jasonjmcghee 3y ago
There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve if you’ve never written in a language where everything is immutable. Certain problems have to be approached in a fundamentally different way if you can’t mutate state. Fortunately there’s Agent/OTP, but again, pretty different than other (or popular with beginners - js/python/java) languages.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  You really shouldn't be using agent for mutable state. Kind of annoying that the docs push you to that. Agent is most useful when you need to tie the transient lifetime of some state with something else (think: compilers). Otherwise, it's generally better to use a database, (or ets, if you need performance), GenServer/gen_statem if you need reactive events attached to the state. Agent is just a wrapper over GenServer so it is strictly worse in terms of performance, and honestly, slightly hard to grok as to where actions take place (and thus, who is responsible for failures)
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    I love elixir and am very comfortable with functional programming and generally prefer it. But being told you have to write a state machine instead of just += a var is an excellent experience in believing elixir is harder than python.
    - sodapopcan 3y ago
      Of course you example is hyperbole and I certainly understand what you are saying. But the attitude that many programmers take when learning a new language that something is "harder" when it's just different than what they are used to bothers me (to be clear, I'm not directing that at you). But comparing: i = 0 for x in [1, 2, 3, 4]: i += x vs i = Enum.reduce([1, 2, 3, 4], fn x, i -> i + x end) There is nothing inherently "harder" about the functional version, it's just different (and of course comes with its own benefits).
      - jcparkyn 3y ago
        I find that pure functional loops with reduce or fold often get a lot harder to read/write as soon as you have more than one variable to keep track of. Imperative loops don't really have this problem.
        throwawaymaths 3y ago
passion__desire 3y ago
If faced with the one-off problem shown in the video, I would have reached for a python solution like joblib etc. But knowing efficient better way to do would be additional tool. As shown in the video, it took him jumping through multiple hoops and expert help to get to his solution and without knowing beforehand if all the required pieces can be put together in Elixir ecosystem. No such hurdle in python solution.

thibaut_barrere 3y ago

Coming from (a lot of) Ruby which is quite close from Python IMO, initially I felt Elixir was harder, but it was just because of my habits, and the huge "comfort vendor lock-in" that both Ruby & Python provide. Ultimately I am still as fluent with Ruby as before, but I find developing with Elixir is easier than Ruby (it took a few years to get there though).