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Worried it might fall behind… further? I love LiveView, Phoenix, Elixir, OTP. But the ecosystem is a wasteland of abandoned packages. If Phoenix.new helps sol

Worried it might fall behind… further? I love LiveView, Phoenix, Elixir, OTP. But the ecosystem is a wasteland of abandoned packages. If Phoenix.new helps solve that problem, I’m all for the effort. But otherwise, the sole focus of the community leaders of Elixir should be squarely and exactly focused on creating the incentives and dynamics to grow the base. Compare, for example, Mastra in TypeScript or PydanticAI in Python. Elixir? Nothing. Not here to bash. It’s more just a disappointment because otherwise I think nothing comes close.

uncircle 1y ago
All languages are a wasteland of abandoned packages, i.e. there is a very long tail of stuff no one has maintained for years. It’s all relative to the mindshare. For its size, Elixir is doing quite well.
- erichocean 1y ago
  Most languages require maintenance. Some languages—Clojure is a good example—have packages from 10 years ago, entirely unmaintained, that still work great because no maintenance is needed.
  - arrowsmith 1y ago
    This is also true for Elixir though. A lot of "unmaintained" Elixir packages still work fine.
    - sodapopcan 1y ago
      That's their point (I think, lol).
  - spiderice 1y ago
    In my experience, Elixir is very much on that end of the spectrum as well. I'm wondering if GGP just considers packages that don't have updates for 6 months as "unmaintained" or "dead" because they come from Javascript world where everything is, well... you know.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - debo_ 1y ago
      Broken and deprecated from inception?
      - weego 1y ago
        Fragmented, 'not developed here, and 'only I can create the one standard everyone needs'?
- mrcwinn 1y ago
  It's not the long tail. It's that the HEAD of packages in Elixir are also often poorly maintained or not maintained. The fundamental question for any developer: can I be productive quickly? Despite all that Elixir has going for it, the answer is often "no." Want a first-party client library for the service you're using? Typically the answer is "too bad, Elixir developer." And writing your own Finch or Req wrapper for their REST endpoint simply isn't a valid answer. >For its size, Elixir is doing quite well. I'm actually arguing the opposite. Elixir is not doing well because of its size. So how can that be influenced and changed?
  - prophesi 1y ago
    What packages in Elixir have you found unmaintained/missing in the ecosystem? Genuinely curious.
    - AlchemistCamp 1y ago
      Probably the highest profile and most consistent example would be Stripe. The most popular Stripe wrapper for Elixir’s docs point to a 2019 Stripe API version: https://github.com/beam-community/stripity-stripe https://github.com/beam-community/stripity-stripe Worse still, the quality of Stripe’s own docs have really degraded this decade for anyone not using a language they have an SDK for. Most of their newer docs assume m have a drop-down toggle for on backend language with a few popular languages and no option for “other”. Example: https://docs.stripe.com/billing/quickstart https://docs.stripe.com/billing/quickstart None of this is a fault of anyone working on Elixir or Phoenix but it definitely has an effect of discouraging some of the fledgling entrepreneur types who Elixir would otherwise be a near perfect fit for, as Rails was in the late aughts.
    - movedx01 1y ago
      anything OAuth
      - uncircle 1y ago
        There is an excellent (maintained, funded, audited AND with official certification) erlang/Elixir library for that: https://github.com/erlef/oidcc https://github.com/erlef/oidcc I have just shipped a production service centered around OAuth and interfacing with OpenID Connect servers.
conradfr 1y ago
Old packages usually still run great in Elixir though.
mervz 1y ago
This is such a weird thing to say and I see it all of the time. It sucks people have been tricked into thinking a library must be updated every 2 weeks in order to still be relevant. You think just because an author bumps the version number of a library it's somehow better than a library that is considered complete? It boggles my mind that people actually think this way.
- sodapopcan 1y ago
  You must never have been a Ruby developer. “I notice this library hasn’t been updated in 8 days, is it still being maintained?”

uncircle 1y ago

All languages are a wasteland of abandoned packages, i.e. there is a very long tail of stuff no one has maintained for years. It’s all relative to the mindshare. For its size, Elixir is doing quite well.

erichocean 1y ago
Most languages require maintenance. Some languages—Clojure is a good example—have packages from 10 years ago, entirely unmaintained, that still work great because no maintenance is needed.
- arrowsmith 1y ago
  This is also true for Elixir though. A lot of "unmaintained" Elixir packages still work fine.
  - sodapopcan 1y ago
    That's their point (I think, lol).
- spiderice 1y ago
  In my experience, Elixir is very much on that end of the spectrum as well. I'm wondering if GGP just considers packages that don't have updates for 6 months as "unmaintained" or "dead" because they come from Javascript world where everything is, well... you know.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - debo_ 1y ago
    Broken and deprecated from inception?
    - weego 1y ago
      Fragmented, 'not developed here, and 'only I can create the one standard everyone needs'?
mrcwinn 1y ago
It's not the long tail. It's that the HEAD of packages in Elixir are also often poorly maintained or not maintained. The fundamental question for any developer: can I be productive quickly? Despite all that Elixir has going for it, the answer is often "no." Want a first-party client library for the service you're using? Typically the answer is "too bad, Elixir developer." And writing your own Finch or Req wrapper for their REST endpoint simply isn't a valid answer. >For its size, Elixir is doing quite well. I'm actually arguing the opposite. Elixir is not doing well because of its size. So how can that be influenced and changed?
- prophesi 1y ago
  What packages in Elixir have you found unmaintained/missing in the ecosystem? Genuinely curious.
  - AlchemistCamp 1y ago
    Probably the highest profile and most consistent example would be Stripe. The most popular Stripe wrapper for Elixir’s docs point to a 2019 Stripe API version: https://github.com/beam-community/stripity-stripe https://github.com/beam-community/stripity-stripe Worse still, the quality of Stripe’s own docs have really degraded this decade for anyone not using a language they have an SDK for. Most of their newer docs assume m have a drop-down toggle for on backend language with a few popular languages and no option for “other”. Example: https://docs.stripe.com/billing/quickstart https://docs.stripe.com/billing/quickstart None of this is a fault of anyone working on Elixir or Phoenix but it definitely has an effect of discouraging some of the fledgling entrepreneur types who Elixir would otherwise be a near perfect fit for, as Rails was in the late aughts.
  - movedx01 1y ago
    anything OAuth
    - uncircle 1y ago
      There is an excellent (maintained, funded, audited AND with official certification) erlang/Elixir library for that: https://github.com/erlef/oidcc https://github.com/erlef/oidcc I have just shipped a production service centered around OAuth and interfacing with OpenID Connect servers.

conradfr 1y ago

Old packages usually still run great in Elixir though.

mervz 1y ago

This is such a weird thing to say and I see it all of the time. It sucks people have been tricked into thinking a library must be updated every 2 weeks in order to still be relevant. You think just because an author bumps the version number of a library it's somehow better than a library that is considered complete? It boggles my mind that people actually think this way.

sodapopcan 1y ago
You must never have been a Ruby developer. “I notice this library hasn’t been updated in 8 days, is it still being maintained?”