> I think maybe is a clearer name for what the statement is doing and the lack of the 'do' block It's because basically everything in Elixir is a macro :), and

> I think maybe is a clearer name for what the statement is doing and the lack of the 'do' block It's because basically everything in Elixir is a macro :), and the do block is an argument/parameter to that macro: maybe x do ... end # is really maybe x, do: ... # which ends up being a macro call with a named parameter maybe(x, do: ...) Same goes for many (all?) other things in Elixir: if x do ... end # is really if x, do: ... # which ends up being a macro call with a named parameter if(x, do: ...) And so on. But it took me a very long to come to grips with this, too :)