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Switching to Elixir

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Re: Switching to Elixir

#251

Post by h0l0cube »

59nadir wrote: post #128
h0l0cube wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll always run into situations where the shape of data is not clear If you're using typespecs, then I think the deficiency is with tooling. I think the language servers (like ElixirLS) were quite buggy for a while, but it's getting better at code completion and inspection. But if the type has no spec then you're in the same situation as any gradually typed language.

If by "defiency is with tooling" you mean that `dialyzer` is bad, then yes. The current type checking facilities that it provides are too lax and also sometimes demonstrably actually incorrect even in the face of the simplest examples.

> incorrect even in the face of the simplest examples

I haven't found this in my experience. Most issues arise from a lack of typespeccing. If one were to rely on type inference, then, yes, it's not going to catch much. Specifying types is a requirement of a strictly-typed language, so to make a claim of deficiency with Dialyzer's type checking, you'd be comparing code that's fully specced with that of a strictly typed language.

The unavoidable problem is when using libraries that aren't properly typespecced, but that the same story as any gradually typed language (e.g., Typescript). The only solution here is to make a PR or a feature request to the product owners.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#252

Post by hmmokidk »

zoogeny wrote: post #56

I have been watching Elixir YouTube videos pretty much every day for the last few weeks. I guess there was an Elixir conference recently and after I watched a couple, YouTube has been sending me a consistent stream of Elixir content. I really want to try out this language. I love the idea of Erlang but the few times I've had to deal with it (an ejabberd chat server was one) I found it to be a bit too quirky. Every vi…

Live view has immensely less magic than react or nextjs.

In fact it's kind of crazy how much of it I understand given I haven't tried. The community is just all about simple tools and understanding them.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#253

Post by querulous »

zoogeny wrote: post #56

I have been watching Elixir YouTube videos pretty much every day for the last few weeks. I guess there was an Elixir conference recently and after I watched a couple, YouTube has been sending me a consistent stream of Elixir content. I really want to try out this language. I love the idea of Erlang but the few times I've had to deal with it (an ejabberd chat server was one) I found it to be a bit too quirky. Every vi…

the big risk with elixir imo is that it's runtime/vm is still owned by ericsson and there's no alternative. i know things like firefly exist but they aren't mature replacements (to my knowledge)

Re: Switching to Elixir

#254

Post by deviprsd »

keep_reading wrote: post #215
sph wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't choose Elixir if you just love setting up autoscaled k8s on AWS with redis, RabbitMQ and half a dozen shenanigans for a webapp that serves 10 users a day.

Elixir is my excuse for refusing to entertain the idea of an k8s cluster at work. Completely unnecessary.

k8s solve a different layer of problems, to me they are a complemental tool to elixir when there is a need for that layer, otherwise yes it is completely unnecessary.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#255

Post by deviprsd »

jswny wrote: post #25
sinuhe69 wrote: post #19

Coming from F# and only dabbled in Elixir, I find the language unfortunately a bit confusing. For instance, the signature of a function only reveals the name and number of the parameters but not type, so in a big library, it’s quite hard to recognize (mentally) what goes into what and one can only see one plugged the wrong parameters after one had ran and debugged the code. In strict-type language like F#, such issue…

Static typing for Elixir is in active development: https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2023/09/20/strong-arrows-gradua... Yes, it is currently dynamic and yes, that means you won't get much int he way of type information from the language itself, it's not currently a statically typed language.

dynamic but still strongly typed

Re: Switching to Elixir

#256

Post by az09mugen »

hosh wrote: post #246
brandensilva wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna say the actor model stems from state machines I believe. It's a nice way to manage state and communication. It reminds me of supervisors and processes in general but not program language specific.

Erlang developed the way it did before people started calling it an Actor model. The key characteristic is not a state machine, but that: - first class processes send messages to each other - messages are queued - each process is single execution flow. If you want to reenter code, start another process and send messages to it - process execution can be preempted - values passed in messages are for the most part, immu…

Erlang did appear after the creation of the actor model. The actor model is from 1973 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model And Erlang is from 1987 : https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_%28langage%29

Re: Switching to Elixir

#257

Post by [deleted] »

skrebbel wrote: post #247
hosh wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me months before it sank in that Nodejs async wasn't really async as I knew it from Elixir -- there's an implicit queue, and no true suspension of the execution flow. One justification for this was that it is supposed to make it easier to reason. It made it more difficult for me to reason -- maybe single-threaded async reactor is a poor substitute for immutability. Unhandled promise rejection is an example of…

> One justification for this was that it is supposed to make it easier to reason. It’s a valid justification because it makes it substantially easier to reason compared to mutable multithreaded languages/runtimes such as C(++), Java and C#. Eg a semaphore in JS doesn’t exist. It’s just a boolean. Interlocked Increment doesn’t exist. It’s just someVar++. And so on, it’s very nice. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t o…

[deleted]

Re: Switching to Elixir

#258

Post by 59nadir »

h0l0cube wrote: post #251
59nadir wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "defiency is with tooling" you mean that `dialyzer` is bad, then yes. The current type checking facilities that it provides are too lax and also sometimes demonstrably actually incorrect even in the face of the simplest examples.

> incorrect even in the face of the simplest examples I haven't found this in my experience. Most issues arise from a lack of typespeccing. If one were to rely on type inference, then, yes, it's not going to catch much. Specifying types is a requirement of a strictly-typed language, so to make a claim of deficiency with Dialyzer's type checking, you'd be comparing code that's fully specced with that of a strictly typ…

I've used dialyzer since 2015, it's not a question of "holding it wrong". I have an example of this that I literally demonstrated live in a talk online. It's very likely you haven't used dialyzer enough if you think it's actually correct 100% of the time even with type specs. Dialyzer is an exceedingly poor implementation of static type checking and not sufficient with any level of use.

Re: Switching to Elixir

#259

Post by 59nadir »

Supermancho wrote: post #59
hartator wrote: post #31

And still 0 successful startup has been built on top of elixir.

Real talk. HN posts on anything OTP continue to be the same echo chamber of responses, with most readers just leaving them to it. Many people have been trying to nicely point out that "uses Elixir in some places" is not the same as "built on Elixir". ie It's exceedingly rare for any system to have a secret sauce called Elixir and none of them have sparked a race to use it. How many decades before someone points out i…

[dead]

Re: Switching to Elixir

#260

Post by agumonkey »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #75
zoogeny wrote: post #56

I have been watching Elixir YouTube videos pretty much every day for the last few weeks. I guess there was an Elixir conference recently and after I watched a couple, YouTube has been sending me a consistent stream of Elixir content. I really want to try out this language. I love the idea of Erlang but the few times I've had to deal with it (an ejabberd chat server was one) I found it to be a bit too quirky. Every vi…

I actually find the opposite to be true. Elixir is less "magic" once you learn it. I can see and understand what most things are doing and read the code. With javascript? Not so much. On the point of hard to hire and hard to find tutorials. It is true. It is way harder to find for example someone that done what you wanna do in elixir vs javascript. When it comes to libaries it isnt so big problem. There are lots of l…

an instance of simple vs easy
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