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Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

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Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, am interested but I'm not terribly literate in elixir yet. I am aware that you can compile executables in elixir with a release command but I'd be curious to hear more about (or at least be pointed to the specific spots in the code) how the bundling was done to give you a discrete application per platform, with app icon and everything. Having a script that opens a web browser pages is simple enough, but the e…

Right, so our goal was to allow configuring the bundle with app icons etc and importantly custom URL schemes and file types [1]. And then macOS- [2] and Windows- [3] specific launchers capture the "open file" and "open url" events and trigger the Elixir side of things. Another reason for native launchers is if for any reason we couldn't start the Elixir side, we want to let the user know that something went wrong and…

I know linux is a future supported platform but as far as I'm aware, there's not a clear unified way to build bundles in this way across linux distributions. What kind of things are you folks considering if you don't mind my curiosity.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#52
Any tips why would you want to learn Elixir or what would you use it for?

I tried to learn it a couple of years ago. Bought a book and couldn't shake the impression that it was created to be complex and hard to reason about or maybe I am wrong and it is "easy", but has a steep learning curve?

That being said, I looked at Go around the same time and I clicked instantly. Easy to read, simple and yet powerful.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I think their move into ML is a genius move that is going to make elixir mainstream. I'm super excited for the future.

I've wondered whether it's easier to add data analyst stuff to Elixir that Python seems to have, or add features to Python that Erlang (and by extension Elixir) provides out of the box. By what I can see, if you want multiprocessing on Python in an easier way (let's say running async), you have to use something like ray core[0], then if you want multiple machines you need redis(?). Elixir/Erlang supports this out of…

Definitely easier to add Pandas to Elixir than preemptively scheduled green threads to Python.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#54
post #28

No Linux download :-( Nevertheless it's fairly easy to install[1]. If you have docker, you can just run the image to try it out: docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 --pull always livebook/livebook You may want to configure some things, so check out the options[2].: If you want a "native" install, after you have elixir installed you can use mix escript.install hex livebook and start it with livebook server Check out…

> No Linux download :-( They discussed it, but no one has taken it on yet. I think Wojtek Mach(the desktop initial author) is a mac user, and they actively wanted to provide a way for windows users to easily try it.

We don't plan to add Linux support ourselves at the moment but we'd love if someone contributed that. As was mentioned elsewhere it might be challenging to provide a bundle that works across different distributions so investigating the possible options would be an important first step.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so our goal was to allow configuring the bundle with app icons etc and importantly custom URL schemes and file types [1]. And then macOS- [2] and Windows- [3] specific launchers capture the "open file" and "open url" events and trigger the Elixir side of things. Another reason for native launchers is if for any reason we couldn't start the Elixir side, we want to let the user know that something went wrong and…

I know linux is a future supported platform but as far as I'm aware, there's not a clear unified way to build bundles in this way across linux distributions. What kind of things are you folks considering if you don't mind my curiosity.

We don't plan to add Linux support ourselves at the moment but we'd love a contribution.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#56
post #19

The Elixir ecosystem is growing incredibly well. I am impressed both from an engineering and a product perspective. It shows that they are playing the long game. I think they are achieving what I wished happen to the Clojure ecosystem: productive, well designed, respected and popular. Clojure missed the last step, unfortunately.

It seems making a Lisp popular is an impossible task.

That said, I'm not sure if the data agrees with you. I think Clojure is more popular and widely used at this time. Not sure, but I think from what I remember of the few rankings, and just the fact I don't know an equivalent success story to NuBank for Elixir, I think maybe Clojure is at the moment more popular in practice.

But with the amazing learning material Elixir is putting out, maybe it won't last.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#57
Props to the Elixir community, it seems for some reason they've attracted a lot of people who have the will, the free time and the talent to provide amazing educational content. I've never seen a language of this size have so much quality learning material and tooling.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#58
post #16

I love the concept of local Web servers as GUI substitutes, and hope we get many more of those. Tachidesk is my favorite example. Thanks to Phoenix Liveview, Elixir is becoming a great option in this space. This method gives us every benefit of Electron and almost none of the downsides.

I have the opposite opinion. These things tend to get lost in my tabs.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#59
post #56
post #19

The Elixir ecosystem is growing incredibly well. I am impressed both from an engineering and a product perspective. It shows that they are playing the long game. I think they are achieving what I wished happen to the Clojure ecosystem: productive, well designed, respected and popular. Clojure missed the last step, unfortunately.

It seems making a Lisp popular is an impossible task. That said, I'm not sure if the data agrees with you. I think Clojure is more popular and widely used at this time. Not sure, but I think from what I remember of the few rankings, and just the fact I don't know an equivalent success story to NuBank for Elixir, I think maybe Clojure is at the moment more popular in practice. But with the amazing learning material El…

In terms of major companies using Elixir, Discord and Whatsapp are built with it. Whatsapp is slowly chipping away at its Elixir for infra homogeneity reasons with the rest of facebook but discord is still all aboard the Elixir train.

Re: Elixir Livebook now as a desktop app

#60
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No Linux download :-( They discussed it, but no one has taken it on yet. I think Wojtek Mach(the desktop initial author) is a mac user, and they actively wanted to provide a way for windows users to easily try it.

We don't plan to add Linux support ourselves at the moment but we'd love if someone contributed that. As was mentioned elsewhere it might be challenging to provide a bundle that works across different distributions so investigating the possible options would be an important first step.

That's what I assumed was the case. Seems like a good opportunity for the community to take on for major distros.
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