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Joy of Elixir

joyofelixir.com

21–30 of 92 posts

Re: Joy of Elixir

#21
post #12

Another book by someone with no experience in the language. Typical vultures latching onto a community and trying to monetize it.

Ryan Bigg (github: https://github.com/radar ) has been active in the Ruby community for years (and is seriously intelligent, at least based on his many past IRC responses to my Ruby questions, assuming he's also named Radar on there), has apparently been working with Elixir on the side for a while, and IMHO can definitely handle an Elixir book intended for new programmers. He would be a very significant asset to the…

If being active in the community means brown nosing on irc then sure, they have been super active.

IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more, yet these are usually the last people you would ever see slapping their name on a book. They are happy to just improve the existing documentation and contribute that way.

Then of course you have the ilk of people who think a community will only exist if everyone adopts the contributor covenant while having daily kumbaya meetups ....

(I'm well aware of what Ryan Bigg is and isn't, it's why I'm pointing this out)

>>I'm sorry if someone defecated into your Cheerios this morning, though.

There's no need for that.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#22
post #4

is there any news recently about Elixir? I'm asking since recently Im seeing a lot of articles about how to get into Elixir which is really nice since I just started pickup the language as well.

Erlang/OTP 20.0, Elixir 1.5 and Phoenix framework 1.3 were all released in a timespan of 2 months or so - huge improvements to the already great ecosystem.

The Phoenix team was waiting for Elixir 1.5 to release the new version of the framework (or at least one of the devs said as much in a talk I watched a while ago).

Re: Joy of Elixir

#23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryan Bigg (github: https://github.com/radar ) has been active in the Ruby community for years (and is seriously intelligent, at least based on his many past IRC responses to my Ruby questions, assuming he's also named Radar on there), has apparently been working with Elixir on the side for a while, and IMHO can definitely handle an Elixir book intended for new programmers. He would be a very significant asset to the…

If being active in the community means brown nosing on irc then sure, they have been super active. IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more, yet these are usually the last people you would ever see slapping their name on a book. They are happy to just improve the existing documentation and contribute that way. Then of course you have the ilk of peo…

> IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more

I think you're underestimating a number of things that are not visible on github yet can definitely have a positive effect on the community:

1) evangelizing a technology you believe in (something I've been known to do, on here and elsewhere)

2) organizers of meetings, confs and get-togethers

3) guys who help all the time on IRC and Slack in the relevant channels (something I've also been known to do, because I enjoy mentoring yet sort of abhor the spotlight)

4) book authors... has Dave Thomas been a big committer of elixir code? I don't think so, and yet his Programming Elixir book is considered one of the best

5) a lot of other stuff that is simply not very visible, such as Jose trying to make the community more inclusive

Re: Joy of Elixir

#24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryan Bigg (github: https://github.com/radar ) has been active in the Ruby community for years (and is seriously intelligent, at least based on his many past IRC responses to my Ruby questions, assuming he's also named Radar on there), has apparently been working with Elixir on the side for a while, and IMHO can definitely handle an Elixir book intended for new programmers. He would be a very significant asset to the…

If being active in the community means brown nosing on irc then sure, they have been super active. IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more, yet these are usually the last people you would ever see slapping their name on a book. They are happy to just improve the existing documentation and contribute that way. Then of course you have the ilk of peo…

> (I'm well aware of what Ryan Bigg is and isn't, it's why I'm pointing this out)

So you're taking your personal issue with him, here. That's nice.

> There's no need for that.

Says the person who's quite frankly being a dick towards this guy without presenting any justification or evidence whatsoever, and I know for a personal fact that this guy has aided me on many occasions. I think you should check yourself before you wreck yourself any further, person. If you have a personal problem with him, take it up personally and not in a public forum. I have zero tolerance for evidence-less public humiliation, and so should all of you.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#25
post #12

Another book by someone with no experience in the language. Typical vultures latching onto a community and trying to monetize it.

Errm.... I work with the guy and he's been paid to write code in it for the last year now.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#26
post #25
post #12

Another book by someone with no experience in the language. Typical vultures latching onto a community and trying to monetize it.

Errm.... I work with the guy and he's been paid to write code in it for the last year now.

Good, so he's finally made himself useful

Re: Joy of Elixir

#27

I've certainly enjoyed Elixir as an nth programming language and the idea of Elixir as a 1st programming language is really interesting. I know I've seen at least one educator in the community speculate that Elixir (or FP languages in general) could potentially make great 1st programming languages because they're often conceptually easier than OOP languages and in many ways the difficulties people associate with lear…

I've actually been discussing this with a couple of people within the community. Been hacking with Elixir for a bit, and in an effort to teach it to people around me who've never programmed I've started compiling my notes into a book.

Would love to share it here in a bit when I have some time to finish things up and get some feedback.

I will say, writing from the perspective of it being one's first language is really interesting, because you just can't assume anything.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If being active in the community means brown nosing on irc then sure, they have been super active. IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more, yet these are usually the last people you would ever see slapping their name on a book. They are happy to just improve the existing documentation and contribute that way. Then of course you have the ilk of peo…

> IMHO someone which actually contributes high quality libraries or code to said community should be valued more I think you're underestimating a number of things that are not visible on github yet can definitely have a positive effect on the community: 1) evangelizing a technology you believe in (something I've been known to do, on here and elsewhere) 2) organizers of meetings, confs and get-togethers 3) guys who he…

I googled Dave Thomas, and was not disappointed by the images of Dave Thomas of Wendy's fame with a description of the computer programmer and author underneath.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#29
While I applaud creating documentation, books, and guides for those new to the language, there's still a significant accessibility gap in resources. I already know the language, I've already done some basic stuff in phoenix, I've even made my own HTTP API wrapper as its own library. But when it comes to architecting backend systems that aren't tied to phoenix or playing around with IEx, I really feel like I am on my own.

There are erlang books, of which I am reading, though it feels like there's always emphasis on history for backwards compatibility and the other warts that Erlang has with its age. I'd like to design reliable systems that operate outside of the classic HTTP -> Elixir -> Database pattern. Things that involve working in memory, processing queues, managing sessions and state, patterns for fallbacks and breakers for services, and so on, that is where I seek more content.

Unfortunately I hear the big BEAM player around, Basho, is shutting the lights--so I can't expect to witness the wonderful presentations their engineers provide at conferences or through recordings of such conferences.

Re: Joy of Elixir

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erlang/OTP 20.0, Elixir 1.5 and Phoenix framework 1.3 were all released in a timespan of 2 months or so - huge improvements to the already great ecosystem.

Two months? Try all within the last 2 weeks!

Erlang/OTP 20 came out June 21[0], so about 5 weeks ago. Makes sense though, Eliir 1.5 was waiting for final release of OTP, and Phoenix was waiting on final release of Elixir, but they'd all had very stable preview releases for a while, so it wasn't a ton of work left on any of them, just finalizing and testing I imagine. I'm super excited to get my side project[1] upgraded to 1.5 and see the new dev conveniences!

[0] https://www.erlang.org/news/114

[1] https://github.com/MasbiaSoupKitchenNetwork/open_pantry

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