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Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#111

Post by pg_1234 »

brap wrote: post #52
iterateoften wrote: post #30

I have been a big advocate for Elixir for 5 years before switching off. My takeaways: love José Valim and the team and the libs they produce. The team is always humble and helpful and produces high quality content in both code and documentation. Why I stopped using Elixir: I was using Elixir obsessively as a performance chasing tool, but then it just didn’t fill the gap properly: 1. Python (or other massively used la…

This is an approach I strongly believe in. For 99% of things, language performance doesn't really matter (it's usually cheaper to just scale up). So you might as well focus on developer experience and hire-ability. For the 1% where it does matter, drop down to something like Rust, and use the developer-friendly language above as glue. You see it a lot in Python, where the performance of the runtime itself is kinda cr…

Elixir doesn't offer an easily benchmarkable performance boost the way Rust does.

It does offer a boost, but in the form of system reliability in a concurrent environment. This kind of advantage is seldom properly evaluated until AFTER you have a disaster ... by which time you are typically committed to different stack.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#112

Post by ativzzz »

arrowsmith wrote: post #82
rapsey wrote: post #11

For a technology to become widely used it usually needs one or more of these factors when it is released: 1. A big company that adopted it in a major way or created it (Go, Java, React). 2. A very low barrier to entry (Go, node.js, Python). 3. A major leap in productivity compared to alternatives (Ruby+Rails, Python).

I'd argue that, once you've learned how to use them, Elixir/Phoenix absolutely provide #3

And that's the big barrier.

Rails/python are immediately productive and you need minimal knowledge to start reaping benefits.

Of course once you start doing complex things you need to obtain that knowledge but it can be a gradual process

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#114

Post by pg_1234 »

voicedYoda wrote: post #108
iterateoften wrote: post #30

I have been a big advocate for Elixir for 5 years before switching off. My takeaways: love José Valim and the team and the libs they produce. The team is always humble and helpful and produces high quality content in both code and documentation. Why I stopped using Elixir: I was using Elixir obsessively as a performance chasing tool, but then it just didn’t fill the gap properly: 1. Python (or other massively used la…

Regarding #1, as someone with managerial experience, I'm really tired of hearing, "We can't find enough Elixir resources". That's a cop out excuse. On the Discord, Slack, and Elixir forums, there are hundreds, if not thousands of devs looking for work. Often it is lamented that nobody can find enough Elixir engineers, but they also seem to have a very hidden agenda here. Executives just want the job done, and Elixir…

It also goes the other way.

If you're a savvy dev and a search like:

https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/default.aspx?q=Elixir%2C+Rust%...

comes up with zero for Elixir, you don't sink time into it.

If nothing else, you know that the low job availability puts you in a very weak bargaining position.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#115

Post by Or1on »

atonse wrote: post #97
john_the_writer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just losing the while loop was a big one for me. I miss it often. I know the cost of calling something recursively. It's never going to be as cheep as a while loop.

There is Enum.reduce_while that I've used a couple times. But I don't remember using while loops all that much (for loops/iterators, yes, but not while loops) in other languages. I think I had a tougher time with the immutable stuff than anything else. I'd love to just update a map 3 levels down by saying thing.other.stuff = "new value" sometimes, but you can't. But overall it's nice to work with immutable structures…

Some times I miss being able to do updates in the way you described.

Have you seen Pathex? https://github.com/hissssst/pathex It may not be what you are looking for. But I think it may improve developer experience in some circumstances.

Let me know what you think.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#116

Post by weatherlight »

iterateoften wrote: post #30

I have been a big advocate for Elixir for 5 years before switching off. My takeaways: love José Valim and the team and the libs they produce. The team is always humble and helpful and produces high quality content in both code and documentation. Why I stopped using Elixir: I was using Elixir obsessively as a performance chasing tool, but then it just didn’t fill the gap properly: 1. Python (or other massively used la…

"A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many."

1) There's plenty of Elixir engineers, and most of them specialize in web development or a domain thats web dev adjacent. Python is used for everything, with loose conventions on how to program in each domain.

2) Rust maybe faster than Elixir... but what about things like concurrency across multiple nodes and fault tolerance. Fearless concurrency, etc. also, it's really not that hard to create NIFs in Rust. It's really hard to do the above in Rust.

2.a) for most kinds of developement where both rust, python, and elixir could be used to solve a problem (web dev/data science)..... speed is probably not something you are worrying about.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#117

Post by HerrBertling »

superchris wrote: post #58

Oh, and as far as the "shortage of Elixir developers". Unfortunately with layoffs in the startup community it's probably easy to hire just now. Even when that was not the case, we've had great success with brand new apprentices picking up the language and being productive very quickly. We recently had an apprentice go from brand-new to keynoting Elixirconf in two years. She is super amazing, but still, other apprenti…

I’ve definitely seen that talk - Katelynn, right? :D

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#118

Post by weatherlight »

iterateoften wrote: post #81
davidthewatson wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the pattern you describe here is an emergent property of programming languages that changes with the era: http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html Sadly, the culture of programming language choice in commercial contexts has changed a lot in twenty years, but you can replace python with rust or elixir because programming language choice is a good proxy to understanding insight, intuition, and intell…

Where your argument goes awry is that this discussion is about Elixir. The points you make I did not see happening in the Elixir community so I left even though I was a staunch advocate for years. Programs are meant to be read by humans. Which is why Python and the bunch are so widely popular across foreign contexts. Elixir is hard in that context because it introduces a lot of paradigms. I have had Elixir teams but…

> I have had Elixir teams but there is a big big big difference between someone who has done a Phoenix tutorial and someone who understands supervisor trees and genservers.

Most of the "scary" parts of the BEAM aren't surfaced when using Phoenix. I don't think you are being terribly honest here. Working with Elixir/Phoenix is no more difficult from a academic aspect than working in Python/Django or gasp JS/Typscript/(Front-end framework du jour.)

> There are much better languages than Elixir for communicating intention in programs in a way that a junior dev can come in and understand. Especially if you are working with engineers in foreign countries with language barriers.

If you say something like Go or Python. I'm going to scream, lol. It's just isn't true. Phoenix was voted the most loved web framework in stack overflow's 2022 survey, Elixir was voted second most love language after Rust. A large percentage of the survey takers only had 1-3 years of experience.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#119

Post by weatherlight »

> Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

Very simply. It hasn't been adopted by a giant tech corporation as one of its main languages. All the startups that do use it aren't the size of Google or Microsoft.

Thats not to say it's not a wonderful language.

The frameworks and libs are top notch.

Elixir developers tend to be polyglots and very good engineers.

I know of plenty of small companies who did start off with elixir because they could do so much with a single language across multiple domains, with fewer engineers and lower server costs.

Maybe one of them will be the "next big thing."

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Phoenix/Elixir more mainstream?

#120

Post by djaouen »

pg_1234 wrote: post #114
voicedYoda wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding #1, as someone with managerial experience, I'm really tired of hearing, "We can't find enough Elixir resources". That's a cop out excuse. On the Discord, Slack, and Elixir forums, there are hundreds, if not thousands of devs looking for work. Often it is lamented that nobody can find enough Elixir engineers, but they also seem to have a very hidden agenda here. Executives just want the job done, and Elixir…

It also goes the other way. If you're a savvy dev and a search like: https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/default.aspx?q=Elixir%2C+Rust%... comes up with zero for Elixir, you don't sink time into it. If nothing else, you know that the low job availability puts you in a very weak bargaining position.

This is the kind of attitude that would have seen Java jobs proliferate lol
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