11 ms·

Elixir Release v1.0.0

214 points by lidashuang 12y ago

tieTYT 12y ago
Is it recommended that you learn Erlang before you learn Elixir, or can you jump straight into Elixir without Erlang knowledge?
- rmgraham 12y ago
  You should be able to jump straight into Elixir. If anything, Elixir is probably a reasonable gateway into learning Erlang. Disclaimer: I studied Erlang before Elixir, so I don't have a fresh perspective.
- alco 12y ago
  Erlang knowledge is not a requirement to start learning Elixir. You will end up learning about Erlang programming model anyway because Elixir builds on top of it. By "programming model" I mean things like immutability, concurrency, fault-tolerance, and the way you design systems with OTP.
kornakiewicz 12y ago
Well done, guys.
bilalhusain 12y ago
For the uninitiated, there was a fairly positive critique[1] of Elixir by Joe Armstrong, the creator of Erlang, last year (at least that's what got me hooked to Elixir). [1] http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html
- infinite8s 12y ago
  That's a great read! Were the warts he pointed out ever addressed?
  - bilalhusain 12y ago
    I'll try to cover couple of them. Hopefully, others can fill in: - funs have an extra dot in the name: not fixed because that will lead to inconsistency [1] - send operator: removed earlier this year and the operator is reincarnated as comprehension operator (comprehension being more ubiquitous [2]); although, the proposed syntax wasn't adopted Not sure about funs and def. It appears that not much was discussed about versions in source file and docstrings inside function definition (module doc is already inside); the later one can be dismissed being a common bikeshed in PL design. So, yeah, most of the proposals couldn't make it because of complications. [1] https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-core/_kEBXO0NRDY/discussion https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-core/_kEBXO0NR... [2] http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/18.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/18.html
johnzim 12y ago
Congratulations! Great job getting to 1.0! The Erlang VM is a beautiful piece of engineering - anything that brings people into its orbit is good for programming.
samuell 12y ago
For anyone wanting to know more about Elixir, all the videos from this year's ElixirConf are available on the web [1]. The opening keynote by Dave Thomas is an eye opening "must watch" [2]. [1] http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014 http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014 [2] http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-keynote-think-different http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-keyn...
jpgvm 12y ago
Awesome power and maturity of the Erlang VM + modern syntax and hygienic macros... such beauty.
felixgallo 12y ago
Jose Valim is a pretty incredible person. Ships top-tier code at a high level consistently, thinks thoughtfully and strategically, and engages with the world in such a calm and positive way. The BEAM ecosystem is richer for his presence.
- purephase 12y ago
  Agreed. Always pleasant to see his name attached to projects. Gives me reason to look into them further.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  I had the pleasure to chat with him for awhile after he gave an Elixir talk at a ruby conference a couple years ago. He is one of the friendliest and most humble people I've ever met, and his work speaks (very highly) for itself.
gcanti 12y ago
I am very happy, I can not wait to get my hands on
rdtsc 12y ago
Great work Valim, Eric and everyone else! I was following their progress and there was a constant and steady stream of changes over the last years.
emiller829 12y ago
Really happy to see the 1.0 milestone reached. I've enjoyed my time with Elixir. It's really approachable, and made a lot of Erlang/OTP concepts start to click for me in ways that they just hadn't, before. Syntactically, it's a pleasure to use as a long-time Ruby guy, which I suppose is no surprise given José's presence in the Ruby community. However, all of this aside, what makes me the most excited about Elixir is José, himself. It's been my experience that when a language/framework has a BDFL, something of that person gets infused into its community. Anyone who's interacted with José will tell you he's an incredibly friendly, humble, and downright thankful person. Elixir is set up for success in so many ways, but the community aspect is the one we just can't afford to ignore.
- turnip1979 12y ago
  Lack of jobs is a problem :( It is a nice language but has stiff competition from Go.
  - hackerboos 12y ago
    I envision Erlang shops moving to Elixir.
    - nox_ 12y ago
      Hah, yeah, let's port everything for no obvious reason.
      - rmgraham 12y ago
        Erlang and Elixir play very well together. I imagine Erlang shops "moving to Elixir" will be in the form of Erlang shops hiring people with Ruby experience and letting them use Elixir so they can get up to speed faster.
        nox_ 12y ago
        Syntax is the least of your worries when learning a new language. Elixir isn't Ruby. Some new projects may be developed in Elixir but it will never supplant Erlang.
tiffanyh 12y ago
In case you are wonder why the excitement about Exilir ... Exilir allows you to easily create DSL in Erlang. Phoenix is a great example that has used Exilir to create a DSL that is similar to Ruby on Rails. http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-showdown-phoenix-vs-rails/ http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-sh...
sandGorgon 12y ago
A genuine non-flamebait question - if one were to write a Whatsapp-like messaging system today, would you use Erlang, Elixir,Scala,Java 8 or Go? I'm kind of wondering whether Go is not already eating into Erlang (and Scala). I am not an expert, but I understand that Go is not at par with Erlang today, but I am wondering about a 3-year bet for a startup.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  I would definitely go for either Erlang/OTP or Scala+Akka. No other platform you mention has built-in support for clustering to the extent that OTP and Akka do.
  - samuell 12y ago
    Yeah. Go is good for multi-core, but does not provide anything in terms of multi-node distribution. Even Rob Pike admitted (at GopherCon this year) the language would need some fundamental changes to support that.
- mhd 12y ago
  As most people will tell you, it's not really all about the concurrency with Erlang, but more about the reliability that comes with the general programming model, the runtime and OTP. Compared to that, I'm not even willing to bet that within 3 years Go resolves their typesafety issues.
- sh1ps 12y ago
  I (personally) would bet on Elixir, particularly if the team writing it would be learning an alternative like Go anyway. Go can try to reach parity with Erlang one day...but Elixir already is Erlang...That combined with the fact that Elixir's package management already feels light years ahead of Go's disaster and I think it's a winner. I'm sure I'm wrong and the flames of Go lovers will engulf me in the responses, so take this with a mountain of salt.
  - sandGorgon 12y ago
    Are you taking into account the recent efforts in the Go ecosystem to fix the pkg management issue [1] I may be short sighted, but I seeing the ecosystem around Go to be much more ... accelerated than Erlang. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
careersuicide 12y ago
This release is doubly exciting for me because it means my copy of the Programming Elixir book should be shipping very soon! I think I can very closely relate to Dave Thomas when he expressed his excitement about Elixir and how similar it was to what he felt when he first encountered Ruby. Early last summer I took a fairly deep dive into Elixir and discovered that it left me with the same feelings as when I started to explore Ruby at the suggestion of my then boss many years ago. It just made sense. From the structure of an application to the way pattern matching works and even the larger ecosystem. I know a lot of people compare Ruby and Elixir because of the superficial syntactical similarities but there's something deeper there that makes me almost giddy: once you know the basics a lot of the rest just sort of seems to fall into place. Unlike a lot of other languages the learning process isn't filled with head-tilting moments of confusion, just lots of nodding up and down while thinking "Of course that's how it works!"
knewter 12y ago
Required self-promotion: If you're interested, I have produced over 12 hours of content across 106+ videos around Elixir, at http://www.elixirsips.com http://www.elixirsips.com I started when I was first learning Elixir. Was already a pro with Ruby and had around 3 months of Erlang experience at the time. The first video was nearly my first experience with Elixir ever. Some of the more fun projects I've built with it have included synthesizers, API clients, and websites. The release of 1.0 gives me goosebumps. José's done great work, and always does.
hderms 12y ago
Elixir is an amazing language on top of a time-tested VM and incredible concurrency model. It's been a while since I've been so excited about a language. It's an incredibly cohesive language that doesn't appear to have any serious flaws, as far as I can see. It's impressive that it's come so far along in such a short amount of time.

214 points by lidashuang 12y ago

Is it recommended that you learn Erlang before you learn Elixir, or can you jump straight into Elixir without Erlang knowledge?

rmgraham 12y ago
You should be able to jump straight into Elixir. If anything, Elixir is probably a reasonable gateway into learning Erlang. Disclaimer: I studied Erlang before Elixir, so I don't have a fresh perspective.
alco 12y ago
Erlang knowledge is not a requirement to start learning Elixir. You will end up learning about Erlang programming model anyway because Elixir builds on top of it. By "programming model" I mean things like immutability, concurrency, fault-tolerance, and the way you design systems with OTP.

kornakiewicz 12y ago

Well done, guys.

bilalhusain 12y ago

For the uninitiated, there was a fairly positive critique[1] of Elixir by Joe Armstrong, the creator of Erlang, last year (at least that's what got me hooked to Elixir). [1] http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html

infinite8s 12y ago
That's a great read! Were the warts he pointed out ever addressed?
- bilalhusain 12y ago
  I'll try to cover couple of them. Hopefully, others can fill in: - funs have an extra dot in the name: not fixed because that will lead to inconsistency [1] - send operator: removed earlier this year and the operator is reincarnated as comprehension operator (comprehension being more ubiquitous [2]); although, the proposed syntax wasn't adopted Not sure about funs and def. It appears that not much was discussed about versions in source file and docstrings inside function definition (module doc is already inside); the later one can be dismissed being a common bikeshed in PL design. So, yeah, most of the proposals couldn't make it because of complications. [1] https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-core/_kEBXO0NRDY/discussion https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-core/_kEBXO0NR... [2] http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/18.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/18.html

johnzim 12y ago

Congratulations! Great job getting to 1.0! The Erlang VM is a beautiful piece of engineering - anything that brings people into its orbit is good for programming.

samuell 12y ago

For anyone wanting to know more about Elixir, all the videos from this year's ElixirConf are available on the web [1]. The opening keynote by Dave Thomas is an eye opening "must watch" [2]. [1] http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014 http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014 [2] http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-keynote-think-different http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-keyn...

jpgvm 12y ago

Awesome power and maturity of the Erlang VM + modern syntax and hygienic macros... such beauty.

felixgallo 12y ago

Jose Valim is a pretty incredible person. Ships top-tier code at a high level consistently, thinks thoughtfully and strategically, and engages with the world in such a calm and positive way. The BEAM ecosystem is richer for his presence.

purephase 12y ago
Agreed. Always pleasant to see his name attached to projects. Gives me reason to look into them further.
sanderjd 12y ago
I had the pleasure to chat with him for awhile after he gave an Elixir talk at a ruby conference a couple years ago. He is one of the friendliest and most humble people I've ever met, and his work speaks (very highly) for itself.

gcanti 12y ago

I am very happy, I can not wait to get my hands on

rdtsc 12y ago

Great work Valim, Eric and everyone else! I was following their progress and there was a constant and steady stream of changes over the last years.

emiller829 12y ago

Really happy to see the 1.0 milestone reached. I've enjoyed my time with Elixir. It's really approachable, and made a lot of Erlang/OTP concepts start to click for me in ways that they just hadn't, before. Syntactically, it's a pleasure to use as a long-time Ruby guy, which I suppose is no surprise given José's presence in the Ruby community. However, all of this aside, what makes me the most excited about Elixir is José, himself. It's been my experience that when a language/framework has a BDFL, something of that person gets infused into its community. Anyone who's interacted with José will tell you he's an incredibly friendly, humble, and downright thankful person. Elixir is set up for success in so many ways, but the community aspect is the one we just can't afford to ignore.

turnip1979 12y ago
Lack of jobs is a problem :( It is a nice language but has stiff competition from Go.
- hackerboos 12y ago
  I envision Erlang shops moving to Elixir.
  - nox_ 12y ago
    Hah, yeah, let's port everything for no obvious reason.
    - rmgraham 12y ago
      Erlang and Elixir play very well together. I imagine Erlang shops "moving to Elixir" will be in the form of Erlang shops hiring people with Ruby experience and letting them use Elixir so they can get up to speed faster.
      - nox_ 12y ago
        Syntax is the least of your worries when learning a new language. Elixir isn't Ruby. Some new projects may be developed in Elixir but it will never supplant Erlang.

tiffanyh 12y ago

In case you are wonder why the excitement about Exilir ... Exilir allows you to easily create DSL in Erlang. Phoenix is a great example that has used Exilir to create a DSL that is similar to Ruby on Rails. http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-showdown-phoenix-vs-rails/ http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-sh...

sandGorgon 12y ago

A genuine non-flamebait question - if one were to write a Whatsapp-like messaging system today, would you use Erlang, Elixir,Scala,Java 8 or Go? I'm kind of wondering whether Go is not already eating into Erlang (and Scala). I am not an expert, but I understand that Go is not at par with Erlang today, but I am wondering about a 3-year bet for a startup.

vertex-four 12y ago
I would definitely go for either Erlang/OTP or Scala+Akka. No other platform you mention has built-in support for clustering to the extent that OTP and Akka do.
- samuell 12y ago
  Yeah. Go is good for multi-core, but does not provide anything in terms of multi-node distribution. Even Rob Pike admitted (at GopherCon this year) the language would need some fundamental changes to support that.
mhd 12y ago
As most people will tell you, it's not really all about the concurrency with Erlang, but more about the reliability that comes with the general programming model, the runtime and OTP. Compared to that, I'm not even willing to bet that within 3 years Go resolves their typesafety issues.
sh1ps 12y ago
I (personally) would bet on Elixir, particularly if the team writing it would be learning an alternative like Go anyway. Go can try to reach parity with Erlang one day...but Elixir already is Erlang...That combined with the fact that Elixir's package management already feels light years ahead of Go's disaster and I think it's a winner. I'm sure I'm wrong and the flames of Go lovers will engulf me in the responses, so take this with a mountain of salt.
- sandGorgon 12y ago
  Are you taking into account the recent efforts in the Go ecosystem to fix the pkg management issue [1] I may be short sighted, but I seeing the ecosystem around Go to be much more ... accelerated than Erlang. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

careersuicide 12y ago

This release is doubly exciting for me because it means my copy of the Programming Elixir book should be shipping very soon! I think I can very closely relate to Dave Thomas when he expressed his excitement about Elixir and how similar it was to what he felt when he first encountered Ruby. Early last summer I took a fairly deep dive into Elixir and discovered that it left me with the same feelings as when I started to explore Ruby at the suggestion of my then boss many years ago. It just made sense. From the structure of an application to the way pattern matching works and even the larger ecosystem. I know a lot of people compare Ruby and Elixir because of the superficial syntactical similarities but there's something deeper there that makes me almost giddy: once you know the basics a lot of the rest just sort of seems to fall into place. Unlike a lot of other languages the learning process isn't filled with head-tilting moments of confusion, just lots of nodding up and down while thinking "Of course that's how it works!"

knewter 12y ago

Required self-promotion: If you're interested, I have produced over 12 hours of content across 106+ videos around Elixir, at http://www.elixirsips.com http://www.elixirsips.com I started when I was first learning Elixir. Was already a pro with Ruby and had around 3 months of Erlang experience at the time. The first video was nearly my first experience with Elixir ever. Some of the more fun projects I've built with it have included synthesizers, API clients, and websites. The release of 1.0 gives me goosebumps. José's done great work, and always does.

hderms 12y ago

Elixir is an amazing language on top of a time-tested VM and incredible concurrency model. It's been a while since I've been so excited about a language. It's an incredibly cohesive language that doesn't appear to have any serious flaws, as far as I can see. It's impressive that it's come so far along in such a short amount of time.