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Elixir v1.4.0 released

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Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#2
Coming from Ruby, Elixir feels like a powerful, beautiful language with a surprisingly radical but ultimately simple approach to concurrency thanks to Erlang/BEAM, and Phoenix is like Rails 2006, as far as the framework to sell Elixir's advantages to the masses. It's very powerful and scaling "just works". All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM, and along with Nerves it's ready for world domination. ;)

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#3
post #2

Coming from Ruby, Elixir feels like a powerful, beautiful language with a surprisingly radical but ultimately simple approach to concurrency thanks to Erlang/BEAM, and Phoenix is like Rails 2006, as far as the framework to sell Elixir's advantages to the masses. It's very powerful and scaling "just works". All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM, and along with Nerves it's ready…

If all you need in js/wasm is the functional layer of the language, that could be easy.

If you want to add processes, that could be very hard.

If you also want the supervisors, that's difficult but probably not has much as adding Erlang style processes.

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#4
post #3
post #2

Coming from Ruby, Elixir feels like a powerful, beautiful language with a surprisingly radical but ultimately simple approach to concurrency thanks to Erlang/BEAM, and Phoenix is like Rails 2006, as far as the framework to sell Elixir's advantages to the masses. It's very powerful and scaling "just works". All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM, and along with Nerves it's ready…

If all you need in js/wasm is the functional layer of the language, that could be easy. If you want to add processes, that could be very hard. If you also want the supervisors, that's difficult but probably not has much as adding Erlang style processes.

What's stopping a compile of Erlang to JS via LLVM and Emscripten and just taking the expected performance hit?

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#5
post #2

Coming from Ruby, Elixir feels like a powerful, beautiful language with a surprisingly radical but ultimately simple approach to concurrency thanks to Erlang/BEAM, and Phoenix is like Rails 2006, as far as the framework to sell Elixir's advantages to the masses. It's very powerful and scaling "just works". All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM, and along with Nerves it's ready…

>All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM

On the off-chance you pulled that name out of a hat, or for the benefit of anyone else who might not realize you are referencing a real project:

https://github.com/bryanjos/elixirscript

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#6
post #2

Coming from Ruby, Elixir feels like a powerful, beautiful language with a surprisingly radical but ultimately simple approach to concurrency thanks to Erlang/BEAM, and Phoenix is like Rails 2006, as far as the framework to sell Elixir's advantages to the masses. It's very powerful and scaling "just works". All Elixir needs now is a viable ElixirScript that can compile down to JS/WASM, and along with Nerves it's ready…

I'm not sure why you want to compile Elixir or Erlang to JS... Most of the magic of the language is provided by BEAM and OTP which for a multitude of reasons cannot be properly implemented in any JS engine/backend I'm aware of. If anything I'd think the abstractions of Elixir/Erlang would be cumbersome and very awkward when writing performant code which had to be transpiled to JS. The biggest reason being is BEAM can do preemptive scheduling, interrupting a running process to ensure all have equal execution time. This is a stark contrast to everything I know about how most any other VM or runtime work (which cannot preempt).

While yes the language is nice, I think using something like Opal would provide most of the syntactic pleasantries while being easier to understand when it comes to tuning and debugging.

If what I'm saying is nonsense, I'm missing the point, or short sighted please learn me! :)

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#7
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you need in js/wasm is the functional layer of the language, that could be easy. If you want to add processes, that could be very hard. If you also want the supervisors, that's difficult but probably not has much as adding Erlang style processes.

What's stopping a compile of Erlang to JS via LLVM and Emscripten and just taking the expected performance hit?

Erlang doesn't compile to machine code, but to bytecode that runs into the Erlang VM. So you would probably have to run the Erlang VM on top of javascript... I'm not sure whether it's possible, but it sure sounds heavy.

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#9
Congratulations to José and the Elixir team! It will be nice to finally settle the bare words debate and fix all the new warnings and deprecations. We compile with warnings as errors, so that should be a fun morning when we upgrade.

Re: Elixir v1.4.0 released

#10
My favorite part about Elixir is that it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. It's not an untested, trendy new paradigm or tool. It's based on decades of Erlang/BEAM/OTP experience and Ruby/Rails/last 10~ years of programming ergonomics. The only things that are added are those that actually add to the experience.

An example: A large part of the Erlang standard library is not translated in Elixir. Instead, you call Erlang methods with a seamless interop. José & co. understand that there's no need to reinvent the wheel and no benefit in another abstraction. I like that.

My least favorite part about Elixir is that it has become a "trendy" language among the web crowd. While the community is overall great, there's always a loud minority of "beginner experts" both claiming it's the best thing ever and deriding those for using other tools. I've seen a lot of random, unwarranted Rails bashing and Elixir shilling (never from a team member or community leader though!).

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