Elixir 1.0.5 released (opens in new tab)

On tooling: `Mix` is a great build tool which directly integrates `Hex`, a package manager similar to ruby gems. Additionally, ExUnit is a great built-in unit test library. These tools alone would be a good reason for an erlanger to check out Elixir.

I've been recommending Elixir as the language of choice to all my colleagues. I truly believe it will bring the advantages of OTP architecture to a wider audience of programmers.

Love the language, I've been using it (phoenix) to build a more real-time version of my current rails app. But I have a concern with Elixir core's Enum. In particular, the Enumerable protocol has us implementing Enum.reduce for our own data-types, but Enum.map is written as

`reduce(collection, [], R.map(fun)) |> :lists.reverse`

is there any chance Elixir's enum core can take a page from Clojure's transducer idea and, instead of implementing map with reduce and [], implement it with transduce and some function that steps?

I've often had the need to map and filter over strings to achieve rails-like features such as #to_url, #classify, #underscore, and #humanize... but being forced to either rewrite Enum functions for strings or constantly peppering in String.split("") and Enum.join("") feels really bad.

The independent stdlib is interesting, and I haven’t seen Elixir advocates mention it much before. I’ll have to look into that.

> Elixir is not really about the syntax

Don't lie, Jose; we all know it's about the syntax ;)

Kudos for the awesome language you've created.

I'm interested in more than just the use cases (although still curious to hear why someone chose Elixir, whether it be for the language, BEAM, or whatever.) I'm looking for stories of why it was chosen over another language and what the end results were.

Hopefully some day! ☺

All my programming is public, so if I ever start making something with it, it'll be at https://github.com/sivers

But I'm a fan of OpenBSD, and like to make sure it stays current. I've contributed a few thousand $ over the years to help.

And I'm a fan of Dave Thomas from Pragmatic Programmers, so when I heard him raving about Elixir, I had to give it a try. I like it so far.

Good overview video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hht9s6nAAx8

Good books:

"Introducing Elixir - Getting Started in Functional Programming"

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030584.do

"Elixir in Action"

http://www.manning.com/juric/

"Programming Elixir"

https://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming-elixir

My current feeling [bearing in mind that it's been less than a week!] is that Elixir is to Haskell as Python is to C++. If you want to learn a dynamically typed FP language, then I think Elixir is a fine choice; especially from a JS/Python background, plus all the goodies that come with the Erlang VM. I've read it's also good for metaprogramming, so it ticks the same boxes as Lisp, without having to get used to S-expressions!... It's certainly something you can dive into :)

Then, if you find you're really in to the FP Kool-Aid, I would definitely give Haskell (or OCaml) a try as well. It's a completely different ball game, but even as just a beginner -- I kinda-sorta-understand monads -- I would say that it's already improved my general programming skills.

With this book:

https://pragprog.com/book/elixir/programming-elixir

I would say it's an outstanding choice to learn functional programming. The book is written for someone who knows an imperative language and wants to learn about functional programming.

I personally didn't understand FP at all until I played around with Erlang (specifically, the "Learn You Some Erlang" book). I reckon Elixir would be similarly enlightening (if not more; I feel like Elixir's macros are easier to wield than most Erlang equivalents, for example).

The friendly, consistent syntax and the imperative-ish constructs in some places can work as a great stepping stone into the rest of the functional/declarative programming world.