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Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

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Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#3
post #2

I guess for 80% of useful use case, Javascript and NodeJS can do the job.

They wrote there that they were looking at Elixir because they did not like the direction Python had taken. I'm sure Python can do the same as JS but Elixir is just so much nicer. Which is also my experience.

Your point obviously stands, pretty much all of mentioned can do the job.

Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#4
post #2

I guess for 80% of useful use case, Javascript and NodeJS can do the job.

Is your comment based on experience with Elixir? How long did you work with Elixir professionally?

I guess you have some fundamental experience with Elixir, as you would not post some comment here if not?

Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#5
No offense to TFA author, but I don't think this is doing to sell Elixir to Python people. In fact, I have serious doubts as to whether most Python lovers would be willing to set aside their beliefs and practices to learn the Elixir way.

Perhaps Phoenix and LiveView will be the gateway drug, but even to reach that point requires a lot of effort to understand functional programming and Elixir.

Python has some functional capabilities, but in my experiences with Python devs, those are little used and even shunned. Imperative, mutating loops are the Python way; and to suggest otherwise is to hear "But why would I need that? This (long functions with mutations everywhere and loops) is fine."

I went from Ruby to Elixir, and even with my basic Clojure experience, it was an effort. It was worth it, but I think the apparently similarity of Elixir to Ruby is actually a negative. They look awefully similar, but their use is vastly different.

As for Django vs Phoenix, I would argue that Phoenix has a much cleaner story for doing everything that Django can do and more. People promote Django for the "batteries included" aspect, which mostly just means "I get free user/auth system and built-in scaffolding for my CRUD." But those are things which are very easy to add to Phoenix (and Rails, which Phoenix is roughly similar to). Yet people choose Django for these little freebies which almost always get thrown away or ignored in real production worlds. For a quick proof-of-concept, it's nice. But for real projects it doesn't add value enough to offset the crufty boilerplate OO-centric code that results.

Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#6
What is the productivity advantage of Elixir/Phoenix over other frameworks when using it for implementing more mundane SaaS (some dashboards, some CRUD,...) rather than the game lobby feature mentioned in the post?

I am a developer with significant non-web development experience (Although I know pure JS and Erlang quite well), who is interested in learning some full-stack development to implement a SaaS on the side and would like to zone in on the most productive framework possible.

Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#9
post #6

What is the productivity advantage of Elixir/Phoenix over other frameworks when using it for implementing more mundane SaaS (some dashboards, some CRUD,...) rather than the game lobby feature mentioned in the post? I am a developer with significant non-web development experience (Although I know pure JS and Erlang quite well), who is interested in learning some full-stack development to implement a SaaS on the side a…

I would say probably on par. It is a bit less battery included but far far easier to adapt and far cleaner.

The moment you need anything remotely dynamic, then the advantage is imho close to a 5x at least.

Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python

#10
Note on Ecto: the macro based syntax was not exposed at first but ended being public API because everyone used it to be able to do pipelines and complex composition.

I scarcely use it but it does clean up stuff sometimes.

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