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0 pointsmrcwinn10mo ago0 comments

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?

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prophesi10mo ago

What packages in Elixir have you found unmaintained/missing in the ecosystem? Genuinely curious.

AlchemistCamp10mo 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

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

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.

movedx0110mo ago

anything OAuth

uncircle10mo ago

There is an excellent (maintained, funded, audited AND with official certification) erlang/Elixir library for that: https://github.com/erlef/oidcc

I have just shipped a production service centered around OAuth and interfacing with OpenID Connect servers.

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