As someone that is deep into a Python web development, I see where this can be useful. However, after 1/3 down of the article it gets harder and harder to wrap my brain around the concepts without really learning elixir syntax. I feel like it would have been better to have 10 smaller articles than this long one, going deeper into the syntax and showing other example of Python way of doing it. I’m not sure I would do some of the example in Python as the author suggested. That case case it just build a string array and use join. To creat the statement with an eval to run it. Weird I know, but I’ve pulled that trick a couple of times now.
Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
11–20 of 198 posts
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#12What 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…
As long as you don't have any dynamic part to your app, it's pretty much the same, it's the dynamic areas that are very very productive with live view.
I've implemented a simple multiplayer card game in about a day for example.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#13I was randomly watching youtube videos about Elixir ("The Soul of Erlang and Elixir " by Sasa Juric), and I have never really been interested in it... I was completely wrong. BEAM/Erlang is amazing piece of technology, and Elixir does excellent job to bring in new people in.
If you do web development, then just for the sake of professional curiosity, I urge you to go watch a couple of videos to make yourself in idea. I have found that some (many) features which I would go learn and use another tool for, are already included into Elixir ... Now I feel sad for doing Django for my daywork
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#14I 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?
Yes, that's the point.
Seriously i will not choose JS today if i have.a very specific requirements for choosing Elixir or Python (or any other stacks here).
In reality, people choose the stack they're get used to. But it's their limited ability to see JS strength to solve their issue in first place. It's not informed choice.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#15No 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 function…
I’ve personally found Elixir to be a nice balance compared to something like Haskell or even Rust in terms of FP. Most things, certainly testing are made simpler by immutability and the actor model makes parallelism much simpler to reason about. I’ve no doubt python is a great language for some things but once Elixir figure out the best way to add types I’ll be extremely happy that the language does everything I want. Especially with ChatGPT now you can ask it about topics in language learning that you don’t understand and it gives really great examples to help, so for me learning idiomatic ways of programming in Elixir or another language got a lot easier.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#16No 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 function…
There is this joke that you don't need to outrun a python, you only need to outrun the humans it is chasing.
Elixir does not need to outshine Python it only needs to position better than other "functional style" languages on offer as the "go-to" language if one wants to add such a capability in their programming toolkit.
In practice this means outshining Clojure. And on this front Elixir definitely does a good job: E.g., there is no such thing as Phoenix in Clojure. People seem to advance some arguments along the lines: "you don't really need frameworks, just compose your own" but this is not cutting it for the masses :-)
In a universe where there are millions of different ways of doing things having a well thought, opinionated, proposal is actually an advantage. The limitations (if any) show much later in the cycle when the choice of programming language might even be the least of your worries.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#17No 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 function…
I've got experience in both Phoenix and Django and I disagree.
In my view, Phoenix is the less clean one: Django does not generate anything through scaffolding like Phoenix. Your CRUD (and auth and forms and everything more or less) is generated by overring the built-in Django classes or the classes offered by the packages. Nothing gets thrown away in real production; you use your class hierarchy to change it to your requirements. I know that inheritance and polymorphism seems like a 90's technology but this actually is a solved problem in web frameworks and does work excellent.
On the other hand, I agree with you that everything that Phoenix generates through its phx.gen generators are for demo purposes and will get thrown away eventually. This, along with the fact that everything is a function results in having to re-invent the wheel multiple times in your project without any saferails on how to actually architecture it. Should I use a context? What to put there? What's the point of views? Oh views are removed now? So, unless you are really very careful or have much experience/guidance this will result to a total mess.
The batteries included aspect of Django means that if you are a novice developer and follow the best practices you'll get a fine project without too much effort. It isn't really about the batteries, it's about the fact that you'll know how to implement each thing you need in a web project. I can confirm to that that because we've got 12-year old production running Django projects which were developed by a totally novice Django developer (me).
Try to do that in Phoenix (still being a novice developer).
Now I don't want to abolish Phoenix. It's a fine framework considering its age and its popularity and number of people contributing to. However you must be very careful before considering to use it for a real project that will be used and supported for the years to come, expecially if your alternative is something as proved as Django. Personally, I use Phoenix only on projects where its real-time capabilities will be the protagonist.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#18No 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 function…
There is this joke that you don't need to outrun a python, you only need to outrun the humans it is chasing. Elixir does not need to outshine Python it only needs to position better than other "functional style" languages on offer as the "go-to" language if one wants to add such a capability in their programming toolkit. In practice this means outshining Clojure. And on this front Elixir definitely does a good job: E…
I don’t think these languages really compete outside of a fairly narrow dimension. They both seem to be doing well. But that’s beside the point.
People in the Clojure community have been trying to build such frameworks. But every one of them seems to stay in a weird niche where they’re not comprehensive and _easy_ enough to draw in people who’d use something like Django et al.
I think one of the reasons is that they’re all trying to cater to the crowd that wouldn’t use such a framework anyway.
Secondly it’s already very quick to create a web app in Clojure. If you use a set of libraries you pay with some initial setup/thinking/choosing cost. The benefit is then to have a program that is more malleable and composable, which is kind of the point for many who choose Clojure in tge first place.
There’s really a mismatch of expectations and philosophy I feel.
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#19Is there an issue with the link?
Re: Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
#20I was randomly watching youtube videos about Elixir ("The Soul of Erlang and Elixir " by Sasa Juric), and I have never really been interested in it... I was completely wrong. BEAM/Erlang is amazing piece of technology, and Elixir does excellent job to bring in new people in. If you do web development, then just for the sake of professional curiosity, I urge you to go watch a couple of videos to make yourself in idea.…
5+ years elixir exp here, about to take python/django job. Why do you feel sad! I just gave up finding elixir jobs for a couple months.