Ten years without Elixir

As someone who came to erlang at least in part because i hated ruby (and also rails/phoenix like frameworks) i can partially sympathise. I would however put pipe operators clearly on the pro side of elixir and also add the string handling to that list (no pun intended).

I am ultimately really happy about Elixir giving BEAM some new popularity in otherwise unreachable audiences, even though i had really hoped for something more akin to erlang2 or similar to an erlangish coffeescript.

But in the end even joe approved of elixir and i don't remember significant effort on erlang2 after initial experiments.

But the problem seems not to be syntax but more culture. I see many ruby/rails people coming into the BEAM ecosystem who bring their poisonous way to think about systems with them, even when they understand the theory about functional programming and what BEAM is about, they seem to still fall back all the time, maybe partially because the syntax is too familiar.

If is see

  defmodule TimelineLive do
     use Phoenix.LiveView

i am already fighting a puking reflex, does elixir dictate to to build a framework like this? No, but the culture bleads over.

Funnily this is a similar effect to java culture poison-swapping into javascript after class and decorator syntax was added.

> I'd argue you're not commenting on any specific language at all here, but rather the sheer size of the community/user base for a given language.

Yes and no. A larger community will for sure help with filling in knowledge gaps, but those gaps stem from the documentation not covering something in enough detail.

Maybe it's just me but whenever I read Elixir, Phoenix or Ecto's docs I can't really relate to them. It feels like they are written for a completely different type of person and very rarely do they focus on practical applications of something. Most of the docs feel more like a reference guide to a library's API and if you're lucky you'll get an example or 2, but there's not enough context written around it to figure out how to apply that to your specific problem. That and the docs are rarely linked to a meaningful result when Googling for stuff.

It's a much different world than Python, Ruby and PHP IMO.

> Funnily this is a similar effect to java culture poison-swapping into javascript after class and decorator syntax was added.

This is a great insight. I remember arguing at the time that adding that stuff to javascript was stupid, and people responded arguing that it increased accessibility of the language. It’s heresy, but I think there’s something to be said for bringing people in to a language slowly so they have time and inclination to leave their past experiences at the door. Rust uses the borrow checker. Ruby has metaclasses and it’s excessive magic everywhere. Javascript used to use prototype based inheritance and callbacks. I use classes sometimes and async everywhere but we paid a price for that syntax. The price was in our previously more cohesive identity as a community around how JS was written.

> Maybe it's just me but whenever I read Elixir, Phoenix or Ecto's docs I can't really relate to them. It feels like they are written for a completely different type of person and very rarely do they focus on practical applications of something.

My only experience before Phoenix was Django, and I have to say, even though it took a little while to wrap my head around Phoenix, it was about the same time it took to get my head around Django. Once I did, I found Pheonix to be more expressive and exceedingly productive.

Meta: if the author happens to see this comment, just letting you know your mobile styling is a bit off. Font size and letter/line spacing is all off (far too large). Just trying to be helpful, apologies if you already know!