6 ms·

Elixir v1.0.0 released

207 points by petercooper 12y ago

knewter 12y ago
Congratulations to everyone involved! I have all of 7 commits in, all trivial, but huge thanks to everyone in the committer list! It's amazing.
prezjordan 12y ago
What have you built with Elixir, HN?
- rubiquity 12y ago
  Personally, in production I've used it for basic web apps, WebSockets and background workers that do the heavy lifting for a web application written in another language such as Ruby. I've also talked to several others that are using Elixir for mobile game and Internet of Things back-ends. Now that I'm more comfortable with the language I'm looking to use it for something more ambitious, such as a messaging layer that's specific to a cluster of application's needs.
- jtmoulia 12y ago
  Not product-y, but I've built a PEG interface [1]. Long term goal is to use it for parsing in an IMAP library. [1] https://github.com/jtmoulia/neotomex https://github.com/jtmoulia/neotomex
- chrismccord 12y ago
  We're working on Phoenix, a highly connected web framework that aims to serve as a backend for all devices, whether your web browser, native mobile client, or smart oven. https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix http://www.confreaks.com/videos/4132-elixirconf2014-rise-of-the-phoenix-building-an-elixir-web-framework http://www.confreaks.com/videos/4132-elixirconf2014-rise-of-...
- DoggettCK 12y ago
  I'm playing with replacing my Python analytics system with Elixir, piece by piece. Working on a little tool with it that'll convert our XML and JSON from two separate parts of the system to a common format.
- wut42 12y ago
  I'm writing (professionally) a backend for the "internet of things".
  - peregrine 12y ago
    I've written a custom url shortener for a client.
  - polskibus 12y ago
    Wow! I had the same idea not so long ago. Are you by any chance targetting Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity? If so, can you share a bit on how are you going to interface BLE with Elixir? If not, what kind of IoT connectivity are you targetting ?
    - wut42 12y ago
      Actually i'm not targetting any specific kind of devices — the core server is extensible, you add your own sources (tcp, udp, whatever) and your encoder/decoder. The original scope of the project was GPS beacons.
- devinus 12y ago
  Several web services in production right now.
- Cyranix 12y ago
  Ultimately didn't move past the proof-of-concept phase, but I wrote an implementation of distributed latent Dirichlet allocation for NLP.
- evgen 12y ago
  Packet creation and manipulation library I hope to open up soon.
- slogsdon 12y ago
  Professionally, we built ChatBlend[1], a live chat system that incorporates SMS conversations as well as standard web chats. Personally, I've built a few projects, most recently a HTTP REST toolkit [2]. [1] https://www.chatblend.com/ https://www.chatblend.com/ [2] https://github.com/slogsdon/placid https://github.com/slogsdon/placid
- Scramblejams 12y ago
  I wrote an RSS feed aggregator.
- bismark 12y ago
  We are using Elixir to build the first server implementation of our new decentralized communication protocol. Hit me up if that sounds interesting, we are looking to hire. Based in London/SF. ryan@spatch.co
- edgurgel 12y ago
  A Pusher server clone: https://github.com/edgurgel/poxa https://github.com/edgurgel/poxa
adefa 12y ago
Wonder why the release announcement came days after it was available through homebrew?
- rubiquity 12y ago
  The language creator and maintainers wanted to give package maintainers time to update their package dependencies to Elixir 1.0.
mjackson 12y ago
I'm constantly impressed by the level of execution of the Elixir project. In ~3 years they have accomplished much more than many other language ecosystems have to date. It's great to see the core maintainers understand that you need MUCH more than just a compiler, runtime, and std lib to create a truly vibrant ecosystem. The Elixir project includes a standard way to do templating, a powerful and robust shell, a very full-featured unit testing library (not just assert statements), a standard logging system (this is sooo often overlooked), and, to top it all off, a build system that also lets you manage dependencies! I honestly can't name any other ecosystem where you can just jump in and all these problems are already solved for you by the core project maintainers, instead of by 3rd parties competing for mindshare. It's truly refreshing because it gives the community a common language and toolchain to work with and get stuff done. Hats off to everyone involved! You guys continue to amaze me.
- rubiquity 12y ago
  I couldn't have said it any better myself. On my way to Elixir I made short stops to Go and Rust. I was immediately impressed by the quality of mix (Elixir's build tool, task runner and dependency manager) and how easy it made getting started with Elixir. José's experience in the Ruby and Rails communities are really evident when you see the quality of tooling in Elixir.
- hderms 12y ago
  I agree. The tooling that is released WITH the language is an amazing bonus. Of course, no one is forcing you to use ExTest, but it's amazing that they decided to just give it to you with the platform itself.
  - edgurgel 12y ago
    *ExUnit http://elixir-lang.org/docs/stable/ex_unit/ http://elixir-lang.org/docs/stable/ex_unit/
- derengel 12y ago
  Don't know or have plans to use Elixir for now since I have always seen the Erlang VM as tackling only the problem domain of requiring high fault tolerance and distributed computing systems but no so much for general purpose programming as languages like ruby/python/js/clojure etc. For example: how may programmers are writing systems like Riak, Amazon's SimpleDB, CouchDB, RabbitMQ every day? That said, from reading the article you forgot to mention Hex, the package manager.
rdtsc 12y ago
Congratulations Valim, Eric and everyone else. Great work.
hderms 12y ago
Elixir is the #1 language I want to succeed. I can't imagine how amazing it would be if web development counted Elixir among its top 5 languages.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
linguafranca 12y ago
Elixir reminds me a lot of Clojure. - It's a language that sits on top of another language's bytecode (Erlang vs JVM) - It has its own task runner and dependency manager (mix vs lein) - It has homoiconicity and macros! - One of its main features is amazing concurrency support. But Elixir has been in development for a much shorter time than Clojure. Yet it's approaching the same level of maturity of Clojure very quickly. I'm eager to see where is Elixir is adopted. I hope to see it gain some traction in the web development world.
- TylerE 12y ago
  I though Elixir was not a whole new compiler, more like coffeescript:javascript than clojure:java.
  - untothebreach 12y ago
    No, it is not like coffeescript:javascript. Coffeescript compiles to javascript source code, which is then turned into bytecode by the VM. Elixir is _NOT_ compiled to Erlang source code; rather, it is compiled directly to BEAM bytecode. So the clojure:java comparison is accurate.
    - andyl 12y ago
      Elixir also gives you really cool meta-programming tools, a way to extend the language, that aren't part of CoffeeScript.
      - untothebreach 12y ago
        I can't say for sure, but I don't think it would be impossible to add that kind of capability to coffeescript, but you are right that right now coffeescript can't do that
        klibertp 12y ago
        Some people tried IIRC but they never got very far. One reason could be that syntactic abstraction is generally not in great demand, but could be something else entirely. Also, take a look at Sweet.js
nodivbyzero 12y ago
Who is the biggest customer of Elixir?
- alco 12y ago
  Open source community.
clynamen 12y ago
I looked at erlang for a while and I really liked it, even if I never used it. Now I'd like to learn Elixir. However,I ask myself why should one prefers Elixir over scala+akka
cIynamen 12y ago
I looked at Erlang for a while and I liked it. Now I want to learn Elixir. However I ask myself why one should prefer it over Scala+Akka
- logicchains 12y ago
  For one, Erlang has much better latency, as it has process-local garbage collection. In Akka, if the gc has to do a major collection then all threads must be paused.
lectrick 12y ago
I have JUST finished Dave Thomas' excellent (beta) book, "Programming Elixir," and honestly I can't wait to start building great concurrent, network-aware processes with it!

207 points by petercooper 12y ago

Congratulations to everyone involved! I have all of 7 commits in, all trivial, but huge thanks to everyone in the committer list! It's amazing.

prezjordan 12y ago

What have you built with Elixir, HN?

rubiquity 12y ago
Personally, in production I've used it for basic web apps, WebSockets and background workers that do the heavy lifting for a web application written in another language such as Ruby. I've also talked to several others that are using Elixir for mobile game and Internet of Things back-ends. Now that I'm more comfortable with the language I'm looking to use it for something more ambitious, such as a messaging layer that's specific to a cluster of application's needs.
jtmoulia 12y ago
Not product-y, but I've built a PEG interface [1]. Long term goal is to use it for parsing in an IMAP library. [1] https://github.com/jtmoulia/neotomex https://github.com/jtmoulia/neotomex
chrismccord 12y ago
We're working on Phoenix, a highly connected web framework that aims to serve as a backend for all devices, whether your web browser, native mobile client, or smart oven. https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix http://www.confreaks.com/videos/4132-elixirconf2014-rise-of-the-phoenix-building-an-elixir-web-framework http://www.confreaks.com/videos/4132-elixirconf2014-rise-of-...
DoggettCK 12y ago
I'm playing with replacing my Python analytics system with Elixir, piece by piece. Working on a little tool with it that'll convert our XML and JSON from two separate parts of the system to a common format.
wut42 12y ago
I'm writing (professionally) a backend for the "internet of things".
- peregrine 12y ago
  I've written a custom url shortener for a client.
- polskibus 12y ago
  Wow! I had the same idea not so long ago. Are you by any chance targetting Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity? If so, can you share a bit on how are you going to interface BLE with Elixir? If not, what kind of IoT connectivity are you targetting ?
  - wut42 12y ago
    Actually i'm not targetting any specific kind of devices — the core server is extensible, you add your own sources (tcp, udp, whatever) and your encoder/decoder. The original scope of the project was GPS beacons.
devinus 12y ago
Several web services in production right now.
Cyranix 12y ago
Ultimately didn't move past the proof-of-concept phase, but I wrote an implementation of distributed latent Dirichlet allocation for NLP.
evgen 12y ago
Packet creation and manipulation library I hope to open up soon.
slogsdon 12y ago
Professionally, we built ChatBlend[1], a live chat system that incorporates SMS conversations as well as standard web chats. Personally, I've built a few projects, most recently a HTTP REST toolkit [2]. [1] https://www.chatblend.com/ https://www.chatblend.com/ [2] https://github.com/slogsdon/placid https://github.com/slogsdon/placid
Scramblejams 12y ago
I wrote an RSS feed aggregator.
bismark 12y ago
We are using Elixir to build the first server implementation of our new decentralized communication protocol. Hit me up if that sounds interesting, we are looking to hire. Based in London/SF. ryan@spatch.co
edgurgel 12y ago
A Pusher server clone: https://github.com/edgurgel/poxa https://github.com/edgurgel/poxa

adefa 12y ago

Wonder why the release announcement came days after it was available through homebrew?

rubiquity 12y ago
The language creator and maintainers wanted to give package maintainers time to update their package dependencies to Elixir 1.0.

mjackson 12y ago

I'm constantly impressed by the level of execution of the Elixir project. In ~3 years they have accomplished much more than many other language ecosystems have to date. It's great to see the core maintainers understand that you need MUCH more than just a compiler, runtime, and std lib to create a truly vibrant ecosystem. The Elixir project includes a standard way to do templating, a powerful and robust shell, a very full-featured unit testing library (not just assert statements), a standard logging system (this is sooo often overlooked), and, to top it all off, a build system that also lets you manage dependencies! I honestly can't name any other ecosystem where you can just jump in and all these problems are already solved for you by the core project maintainers, instead of by 3rd parties competing for mindshare. It's truly refreshing because it gives the community a common language and toolchain to work with and get stuff done. Hats off to everyone involved! You guys continue to amaze me.

rubiquity 12y ago
I couldn't have said it any better myself. On my way to Elixir I made short stops to Go and Rust. I was immediately impressed by the quality of mix (Elixir's build tool, task runner and dependency manager) and how easy it made getting started with Elixir. José's experience in the Ruby and Rails communities are really evident when you see the quality of tooling in Elixir.
hderms 12y ago
I agree. The tooling that is released WITH the language is an amazing bonus. Of course, no one is forcing you to use ExTest, but it's amazing that they decided to just give it to you with the platform itself.
- edgurgel 12y ago
  *ExUnit http://elixir-lang.org/docs/stable/ex_unit/ http://elixir-lang.org/docs/stable/ex_unit/
derengel 12y ago
Don't know or have plans to use Elixir for now since I have always seen the Erlang VM as tackling only the problem domain of requiring high fault tolerance and distributed computing systems but no so much for general purpose programming as languages like ruby/python/js/clojure etc. For example: how may programmers are writing systems like Riak, Amazon's SimpleDB, CouchDB, RabbitMQ every day? That said, from reading the article you forgot to mention Hex, the package manager.

rdtsc 12y ago

Congratulations Valim, Eric and everyone else. Great work.

hderms 12y ago

Elixir is the #1 language I want to succeed. I can't imagine how amazing it would be if web development counted Elixir among its top 5 languages.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

linguafranca 12y ago

Elixir reminds me a lot of Clojure. - It's a language that sits on top of another language's bytecode (Erlang vs JVM) - It has its own task runner and dependency manager (mix vs lein) - It has homoiconicity and macros! - One of its main features is amazing concurrency support. But Elixir has been in development for a much shorter time than Clojure. Yet it's approaching the same level of maturity of Clojure very quickly. I'm eager to see where is Elixir is adopted. I hope to see it gain some traction in the web development world.

TylerE 12y ago
I though Elixir was not a whole new compiler, more like coffeescript:javascript than clojure:java.
- untothebreach 12y ago
  No, it is not like coffeescript:javascript. Coffeescript compiles to javascript source code, which is then turned into bytecode by the VM. Elixir is _NOT_ compiled to Erlang source code; rather, it is compiled directly to BEAM bytecode. So the clojure:java comparison is accurate.
  - andyl 12y ago
    Elixir also gives you really cool meta-programming tools, a way to extend the language, that aren't part of CoffeeScript.
    - untothebreach 12y ago
      I can't say for sure, but I don't think it would be impossible to add that kind of capability to coffeescript, but you are right that right now coffeescript can't do that
      - klibertp 12y ago
        Some people tried IIRC but they never got very far. One reason could be that syntactic abstraction is generally not in great demand, but could be something else entirely. Also, take a look at Sweet.js

nodivbyzero 12y ago

Who is the biggest customer of Elixir?

alco 12y ago
Open source community.

clynamen 12y ago

I looked at erlang for a while and I really liked it, even if I never used it. Now I'd like to learn Elixir. However,I ask myself why should one prefers Elixir over scala+akka

cIynamen 12y ago

I looked at Erlang for a while and I liked it. Now I want to learn Elixir. However I ask myself why one should prefer it over Scala+Akka

logicchains 12y ago
For one, Erlang has much better latency, as it has process-local garbage collection. In Akka, if the gc has to do a major collection then all threads must be paused.

lectrick 12y ago

I have JUST finished Dave Thomas' excellent (beta) book, "Programming Elixir," and honestly I can't wait to start building great concurrent, network-aware processes with it!