Switching to Elixir • Hacker News Board

Re: Switching to Elixir

#201

Post by minton » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

solidninja wrote: post #143

wofo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of proper types is what killed the joy of programming in Elixir for me (I lasted 6 months, hoping I would somehow adapt, but the experience was so miserable that I decided to move on). I simply can't understand how anyone can be productive in a big codebase without the rigor of static typing, but those people exist, so I guess there must be something about our brains that divides us in the dynamic vs static typi…

Nice to see that I'm not the only one - lasted 9 months trying to adapt to Elixir and couldn't. My background is Scala/Rust with heavy use of effect systems and reliance on writing the types out and then solving the puzzle of how to make everything fit. The tooling is pretty poor due to lack of investment compared to some of the other languages, and the debugging story is not great either. But hey, it works for some.

I found the tooling to be quite nice. In my opinion, it’s better or equivalent to most popular languages (python, ruby). It’s definitely not full-on bumper rails/training wheels like a Microsoft IDE, but it’s obvious they’ve invested heavily in tooling early on.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#202

Post by cglan » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

pleoxy wrote: post #190

byhemechi wrote: post #34

I often see people say static typing slows them down and I'd really like to know why that is because for me it's the exact opposite, I really don't like not knowing what format data is in. I'd much rather have to write slightly more verbose code and have a vast number of possible errors caught at compile time instead of having things go wrong in production when someone inputs something a bit weird with nothing so muc…

It does slow some of us down. It's not really about terseness. I can write code that works on all primitives that might be sent down pretty easily. That code, sometimes is longer than limiting the inputs by types would be. I can also write code such that it only runs if the structure of the data is as required for that code to run, allowing for nulls or missing nested objects. These two patterns allow you to write mo…

Making code that works on all primitives and accounting for nulls/empty each time is way more difficult than using a type system.

That’s the same argument people always use. “If you account for every case and also have 30 billion unit tests you can avoid all the problems”. The reality is, people don’t. They cut corners, they forget, or they simply make mistakes.

Not only that, debugging a system without types is a terrible experience, and IDEs don’t offer nearly the same level of refactoring support for untyped languages bc it gets very hard or impossible to infer what’s going on.

If it’s a personal project or a small script, untyped languages are fine. Any other scenario you should be using types

Re: Switching to Elixir

#203

Post by cloverich » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:00 PM UTC

aerhardt wrote: post #157

toolz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm firmly in the camp that it's all perception. The studies I've seen aren't what I would consider conclusive, but they certainly suggest there is very little difference in the output and bugs of dynamic vs static languages. In my experience, static typing seemed to lend itself to poor testing, maybe some sort of belief that static types were good enough to not need tests that can prevent regressions. So from my poi…

I literally struggle to read and work with dynamic code. My head explodes when trying to hold return types or the shape of semi-complex data structures in my head, versus having it spelled out. I wouldn't call it an issue of "perception", I really think in my case it's "capability", pure and simple. I've programmed for thousands of hours in both styles, so we're well past the possibility of this being an adaptation p…

For me personally, my new theory is its an ADD thing. I'm older but recently came to fully appreciate how ADD my mind is, and how I've basically built many habits around coping with it. More recently I learned types is one of those things. I realized with types I can off load a ton of my working memory into the type system. I can bounce between ideas the way my brain wants me to without losing any state, because I'm always setting up the interfaces to the various thoughts I had. And the IDE knows how to take advantage of course, linking everything, popping up docs and hints and etc for every little idea. And so the result is it just matches my brain's natural patterns.

I still remember being quite shocked many years ago when I took a job using Java of all things, I was so fearful coding would take forever. It was my first typed language. But within months, I was faster, by a lot. I would write a lot more code before I had to test it, and once I began testing it there were few if any surprises. Now I'm working in Ruby, and without a debugger and constant tests, I feel I can't hardly get anything complex done in a reasonable amount of time. Like you I thought this was a hurdle that would pass, but while I'm far more effective than when I started, I find that its overall just mentally taxing to write code in this language.

Yet at the same time, when I pair with people who do not dislike Ruby, and watch them work, they are constantly asking "What is this" and "how does this work" and navigating parts of the codebase by grepping. They are effective, and I know its been studied a bit. But to my eyes, they would so obviously be far more effective with types, even when they state they dislike them, I just can't accept its a generally better approach in the absolute sense. I won't judge people for preferring a non-typed language. But I'll likely not accept another job where I can't use a typed language.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#204

Post by liampulles » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

byhemechi wrote: post #34

I often see people say static typing slows them down and I'd really like to know why that is because for me it's the exact opposite, I really don't like not knowing what format data is in. I'd much rather have to write slightly more verbose code and have a vast number of possible errors caught at compile time instead of having things go wrong in production when someone inputs something a bit weird with nothing so muc…

I think loose typing helps to prototype faster, while static typing helps you write the correct/safe version faster.

But part of doing the correct version is clarifying spec, and prototyping can help with that - so it is a weakly held opinion.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#205

Post by weatherlight » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

aerhardt wrote: post #157

toolz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm firmly in the camp that it's all perception. The studies I've seen aren't what I would consider conclusive, but they certainly suggest there is very little difference in the output and bugs of dynamic vs static languages. In my experience, static typing seemed to lend itself to poor testing, maybe some sort of belief that static types were good enough to not need tests that can prevent regressions. So from my poi…

I literally struggle to read and work with dynamic code. My head explodes when trying to hold return types or the shape of semi-complex data structures in my head, versus having it spelled out. I wouldn't call it an issue of "perception", I really think in my case it's "capability", pure and simple. I've programmed for thousands of hours in both styles, so we're well past the possibility of this being an adaptation p…

My working memory is garbage and I do prefer working with dynamic langs, however. (I also have ADHD)

I do agree though if I have to work with spaghetti code, I'd much rather work with a language that has a proper type system (I mean a proper one, like OCaml, Standard ML, Rust, Gleam, Etc.) I think static typing in these languages doesn't get in the way, they all have varying degrees of type inference, the type system is sound and uncomplicated. Whereas a Language like Typescript's type system (of Facebook's Flow for JS) had my head spinning, It often felt like playing a mean spirited scavenger hunt with Simon from Simon says.

As far as dynamic langs go, some languages are terrible to work in, (Perl). and other languages because of strong conventions (Ruby and Elixir,) I find very very easy to work in, write tests, create libraries that use DSLs, etc.

So I guess I'm in the middle? leaning in the dynamic langs direction though.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#206

Post by davidw » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

yuppiepuppie wrote: post #102

throwawaymaths wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're creating a really difficult distributed systems problem then. What happens if the async request gets swallowed? Are you coordinating telemetry and tracing across these compute units? Not all of us can afford elaborate ops teams

Its really not that difficult to trace this stuff with modern APM tools. Datadog and Elastic APM support this out of the box for most languages/frameworks. And id be suprised if other big players in space didnt also.

"Just use Datadog" is fine for a bigger more established company.

But it's a lot of expense and overhead for someone closer to starting out.

I do not think it's a "home run" kind of win, but it's definitely a "nice to have" that you can just run everything in one place, and worry about splitting it up when (if) you get bigger.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#207

Post by cloverich » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #198

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a proponent of dynamic typing. I’d say the same thing. I don’t have enough working memory in my head to store the compile-time type information about every relevant variable, in addition to the actually important information about what the runtime data could be. The way that I write static-typed code is by imagining how I would write dynamic code to solve the problem, and then additionally imagining what types an…

> The way that I write static-typed code is by imagining how I would write dynamic code to solve the problem, and then additionally imagining what types and type constraints I need to add. Is that not how everyone writes static typed code? You have a need for a variable holding some data, you think about the bounds of that data, you pick a type. What other way would you do it? The problem with dynamic typing isn't in…

> The problem with dynamic typing isn't in the first-write. It's all in your head then. It's in the 2 year later bugfix

The 2 year later bugfix is often easier I agree. But for me by far the biggest difference is speed and effectiveness in writing new code. I'm not just much faster, but also much better with typed code probably because it fits the way my brain works better.

> Is that not how everyone writes static typed code?

For me the process is a bit opposite. I tend to write the interfaces first, usually until the entire routine of whatever I am writing is complete. So e.g. only the types accepted and returned by functions, but not the actual function itself. Then I go back and add the code itself usually at the very end.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#208

Post by lolinder » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

pleoxy wrote: post #190

byhemechi wrote: post #34

I often see people say static typing slows them down and I'd really like to know why that is because for me it's the exact opposite, I really don't like not knowing what format data is in. I'd much rather have to write slightly more verbose code and have a vast number of possible errors caught at compile time instead of having things go wrong in production when someone inputs something a bit weird with nothing so muc…

It does slow some of us down. It's not really about terseness. I can write code that works on all primitives that might be sent down pretty easily. That code, sometimes is longer than limiting the inputs by types would be. I can also write code such that it only runs if the structure of the data is as required for that code to run, allowing for nulls or missing nested objects. These two patterns allow you to write mo…

> When you refactor, make a change, or try to add new functionality, and end up fighting the type checker. That's friction to change you are experiencing and that experience is optional.

I don't really see that as "fighting the type checker", I see it as the type checker doing its job and warning me of the places where my refactor broke things. The alternative isn't usually that my refactored code magically works, it's that I have to manually grep through the codebase looking for all the places where I might have broken something, and get runtime errors if I don't catch them all.

In that sense the experience of struggling to make a refactor work isn't optional—the choice you get is whether you want the compiler to assist you with it or not.

I realize there are exceptions for certain types of refactors to certain types of functions, but the vast majority of patterns I've ever seen in any codebase—static or dynamic—are patterns that are difficult to refactor without a type checker and trivial to do with one.

To be clear, there are other reasons to prefer dynamic typing, and I'm not trying to say you're wrong to prefer it, but you're not going to get very far trying to persuade a static types fan that refactoring of all things is better in the dynamic world.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#209

Post by davidw » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #2

The true power of Elixir comes from processes and OTP.

Yep. A lot of these intro things aren't really selling me on how they're using the big features of the BEAM system as an advantage.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#210

Post by keep_reading » Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

mstipetic wrote: post #196

pjerem wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked in a lot of languages, from PHP 3 to Rust, F# and Typescript and a lot of others. So I’m relatively educated about their differences and pretty open minded about languages but I still don’t understand why there is still a debate about this. I mean, I can understand that some language don’t implement types and that they have other advantages (Elixir is a nice example) but I still don’t understand why no ty…

If elixir had types, I'd use them. Right now I'm using it for functional programming aspects, coherent design across libraries, liveview, and the amazing OTP library. Those to me are much more important. With proper discipline you can get a lot of type-like behavior if you use structs to represent your data and ensure they're being passed in function args through pattern matching.

it's waiting for you

{:type_check, "~> 0.13.3"}