For anyone curious about Phoenix and Elixir, I can sincerely recommend the following resources to get you started: - Programming Phoenix by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate, and José Valim [1] - The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook by Benjamin Tan Wei Hao [2] - Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić [3] Phoenix initially attracted me to Elixir, I've stuck around for that and the OTP platform: pattern matching, process based concurrency…
I just got it a few days ago and I'm about 30% into the first book. What I can say so far is that the author's approach resonates really well with me. Going through the book feels like sitting next to a colleague, who is introducing you to Phoenix and is really knowledgeable in the topic. The book is full of interesting tidbits and explanations about Phoenix internals without getting in the way. I also appreciate the TDD approach including both acceptance and unit testing. The most important thing for me though, is how Shankar condensed teaching Elixir into a single chapter. I have previously tried to study Elixir a few times with the intention of eventually getting into Phoenix but I always got overwhelmed by the OTP material. I didn't want to make the mistake of trying to learn Rails before being comfortable with Ruby again so I put off on learning Phoenix altogether. What Shankar has done is to dedicate one chapter to teach just enough Elixir for you to get started. This was perfect for what I needed and it was reassuring knowing exactly how much (or little) Elixir you need to know before diving into Phoenix.
If you have previous experience in another MVC framework and are interested in Phoenix I highly recommend this series (at least based on what I've read so far).
I should note that the current version of the book is targeting Phoenix v1.3.0-rc.2. Although Shankar has already made an announcement with the intention to update the book soon after the officially 1.3.0 release.