Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

sleepeasy.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 142 posts

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#11

Post by bcrosby95 »

karmajunkie wrote: post #4

i have to be honest: as a lover of the language, and with due respect to the author, i’m really tired of these “why i picked elixir” takes extolling the same virtues (or some subset thereof) we’ve seen written up in darn near every introductory article on elixir for the last five or six years. it’s not that i think they’re wrong, at all. it’s just that they add nothing new to the conversation, they’re superficial, an…

> i rewrote my startups

Yeah, rewrites are bad, especially as a startup.

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#12

Post by cpursley »

stanislavb wrote: post #5
stanmancan wrote: post #2

I moved from PHP/Laravel to Elixir/Phoenix about two years ago and I can't imagine using anything else these days.

Do you have experience with Ruby on Rails? I've built apps both with Elixir/Phoenix and with Rails. Yes, the Elixir/Phoenix stack is amazing and is definitely superior over Rails in several ways; however, with regards to Bootstrapping and releasing a real-world app/business (web based), Rails is still the king.

I just don't understand this, the ergonomics are about the same. Phoenix was inspired by Rails and Elixir by Ruby, after all. I've also worked with both and I'd say it's a match in terms of productivity.

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#13

Post by bnchrch »

Disclaimer: Elixir is extremely productive, Phoenix is outstanding, the community is world-class, and as a result of the Erlang VM / OTP / Beam you can remove whole parts of your traditional webstack. If you haven't tried it I cannot recommend it enough.

But!

As a long-time Elixir Developer who has gladly used it to bootstrap many applications and companies, I have to say I think this article is actively harmful to the community.

It's an extremely thinly veiled sales pitch for their "Petal Pro" paid boilerplate.

At the same time, it does nothing to address the tradeoffs of certain features like Live View. Which for the record is a poor fit if your app suffers from client-side latency or requires any kind of offline-enabled features.

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#14

Post by behnamoh »

karmajunkie wrote: post #4

i have to be honest: as a lover of the language, and with due respect to the author, i’m really tired of these “why i picked elixir” takes extolling the same virtues (or some subset thereof) we’ve seen written up in darn near every introductory article on elixir for the last five or six years. it’s not that i think they’re wrong, at all. it’s just that they add nothing new to the conversation, they’re superficial, an…

honestly these sorts of sentiments (in the link) remind me of the "lisp gives you enlightenment, lisp is the language of gods" etc. that we've heard for decades. I love lisp, but come on, gods?

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#15

Post by tomtheelder »

pier25 wrote: post #6
karmajunkie wrote: post #4

i have to be honest: as a lover of the language, and with due respect to the author, i’m really tired of these “why i picked elixir” takes extolling the same virtues (or some subset thereof) we’ve seen written up in darn near every introductory article on elixir for the last five or six years. it’s not that i think they’re wrong, at all. it’s just that they add nothing new to the conversation, they’re superficial, an…

> but because the year and a half i spent reproducing functionality could have been spent adding new features What would you have used instead?

I assume the original language of the codebase

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#17

Post by gregors »

stanislavb wrote: post #5
stanmancan wrote: post #2

I moved from PHP/Laravel to Elixir/Phoenix about two years ago and I can't imagine using anything else these days.

Do you have experience with Ruby on Rails? I've built apps both with Elixir/Phoenix and with Rails. Yes, the Elixir/Phoenix stack is amazing and is definitely superior over Rails in several ways; however, with regards to Bootstrapping and releasing a real-world app/business (web based), Rails is still the king.

I've got in-depth experience with many Rails apps and quite a few Phoenix apps (and many other stacks). I used to agree with your opinion, though I think Rails no longer holds a massive edge. Phoenix is now just as effective at releasing real-world products especially run-of-the-mill web apps. And when things get complex after a bit of time (usually due to business logic evolving) - much more effective.

The place where I feel Rails still holds an edge is the massive amount of gems available, but hex is absolutely catching up and I'm only running into missing packages/libraries when I'm doing "weirder" things these days. The ecosystem continues to evolve for the better. On the other hand Phoenix destroys Rails in any realtime scenario. Maybe those edge cases matter to your particular project then again maybe not.

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#18

Post by throwawaymaths »

dartos wrote: post #9
stanislavb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have experience with Ruby on Rails? I've built apps both with Elixir/Phoenix and with Rails. Yes, the Elixir/Phoenix stack is amazing and is definitely superior over Rails in several ways; however, with regards to Bootstrapping and releasing a real-world app/business (web based), Rails is still the king.

What makes you say that? I think, once you learn both frameworks, they’re just about as productive as the other.

maybe in the "writing code" dimension. I would much much rather maintain code in elixir.

Re: Why Elixir Is the Best Language for Building a Bootstrapped, B2B SaaS in 2024

#20

Post by gregors »

cpursley wrote: post #10
karmajunkie wrote: post #4

i have to be honest: as a lover of the language, and with due respect to the author, i’m really tired of these “why i picked elixir” takes extolling the same virtues (or some subset thereof) we’ve seen written up in darn near every introductory article on elixir for the last five or six years. it’s not that i think they’re wrong, at all. it’s just that they add nothing new to the conversation, they’re superficial, an…

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Remember when they rewrote their app and blogged about it? I do!

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/04/11/our-net-strategy/

Post reply on HN