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Elixir 1.9

elixir-lang.org

61–70 of 174 posts

Re: Elixir 1.9

#61

One part of releasing Elixir applications I never found a definite answer was how closely the build environment has to match the final environment where the release is deployed. The Erlang runtime is bundled with a release, and this part is platform-dependent as far as I understand. If I'm writing an application that I'll only deploy myself I can of course match the environments exactly. But what about if I wanted to…

Currently releases require the OS and architecture to match. However, Erlang/OTP does support cross compilation, so at least a possibility is there, it needs to be further explored: http://erlang.org/doc/installation_guide/INSTALL-CROSS.html

The other concern is packages with NIFs (native code) and they would need to be changed if they don't support cross-compilation yet.

I believe Nerves, which is an Elixir framework for embedded, does a good amount of cross compilation too but they have a more controlled environment.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#62
post #22

Fantastic. Congratulations to the Elixir team! Something striking from the release announcement: > As mentioned earlier, releases was the last planned feature for Elixir. We don’t have any major user-facing feature in the works nor planned. Part of me is a little alarmed—no one wants a language to stagnate. José makes it clear that this doesn't mean it's the last version: > Of course, it does not mean that v1.9 is th…

Honestly I'm happy to see that they're gonna slow down a little bit. You need a certain stability for the language to become more attractive. Think that the book "Elixir 1.6" was only released a few months ago, and today we're already getting Elixir 1.9. Yes, of course 99% of the book is probably still relevant and all, but I believe it is important to brand a language as having reached maturity and stability.

By the metric above, which is release numbers, we won't slow down because we will continue with two releases per year (this is our frequency since v1.2/v1.3). :)

However, in terms of new features, we have already been slowing down over the last releases.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#64
post #39

If anyone is on the fence on learning Elixir / Phoenix (Elixir's most popular web framework library) please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you're on a time crunch and want the best bang for your buck on "why bother learning yet another language to write web apps in?" then watch this talk called "The Soul of Erlang and Elixir": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE I'm not affiliated with the languag…

My preferred way of learning a new language/framework is watching someone walk through creating a real app in that language/framework so I can see all the folders/files I need to touch and the thought process moving step-by-step. Unfortunately I haven't found much in the way of that for Phoenix, the stuff on Udemy is pretty outdated last time I checked. Any recommendations?

Re: Elixir 1.9

#65
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but they do come with a lot of cognitive load and sharp edges. For many apps they are simply not worth it.

The cognitive load is quite low when deploying changes which only involve your app code (i.e., no dependency upgrades). My app has a few tens of millions of open websockets at a time, and it's worth it to me to avoid mass reconnects. I'm not everyone, but my use case isn't totally unique either.

I am not sure about your specific use case but it owuld be hard to imagine that graceful reconnect on websocket + a more traditional deploy would not be much more effective resourcing vs that hurdles you have to go through to properly appup. Is it really an advantage to you or has it slowed your ability to get to market for something that seems like it "should" be an advantage.

Its not like you don't need graceful reconnect handling logic for the websockets anyways -- net-splits and endpoint failures are a thing.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#66
post #39

If anyone is on the fence on learning Elixir / Phoenix (Elixir's most popular web framework library) please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you're on a time crunch and want the best bang for your buck on "why bother learning yet another language to write web apps in?" then watch this talk called "The Soul of Erlang and Elixir": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE I'm not affiliated with the languag…

My preferred way of learning a new language/framework is watching someone walk through creating a real app in that language/framework so I can see all the folders/files I need to touch and the thought process moving step-by-step. Unfortunately I haven't found much in the way of that for Phoenix, the stuff on Udemy is pretty outdated last time I checked. Any recommendations?

That's exactly what I do at https://alchemist.camp. Most the videos and all the intro-level ones are free.

I've also put up about a hundred screencasts at http://youtube.com/alchemistcamp.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preferred way of learning a new language/framework is watching someone walk through creating a real app in that language/framework so I can see all the folders/files I need to touch and the thought process moving step-by-step. Unfortunately I haven't found much in the way of that for Phoenix, the stuff on Udemy is pretty outdated last time I checked. Any recommendations?

That's exactly what I do at https://alchemist.camp . Most the videos and all the intro-level ones are free. I've also put up about a hundred screencasts at http://youtube.com/alchemistcamp .

Looks like a cool site. I'll check it out. My Elixir is Good. My Phoenix is not.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I do at https://alchemist.camp . Most the videos and all the intro-level ones are free. I've also put up about a hundred screencasts at http://youtube.com/alchemistcamp .

Looks like a cool site. I'll check it out. My Elixir is Good. My Phoenix is not.

I'd say you're in good shape, then. Phoenix is really well-designed and doesn't have a lot of "magic" in it.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#69
post #39

If anyone is on the fence on learning Elixir / Phoenix (Elixir's most popular web framework library) please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you're on a time crunch and want the best bang for your buck on "why bother learning yet another language to write web apps in?" then watch this talk called "The Soul of Erlang and Elixir": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE I'm not affiliated with the languag…

I gave it a try, but for me after years of programming in C like languages the syntax is really hard.

I know it is very similar to Ruby.

I wish there was a ElixirC syntax that would also compile to Earlang.

Re: Elixir 1.9

#70
post #20
post #3

Are releases supposed to replace Distillery? If so, are there any particular reasons to switch?

Elixir's `mix release` is intended to replace (or remove the need for) third-party packages like Distillery. However, it's not there yet, and Distillery is strictly more powerful at the moment. Notably, Elixir's release implementation does not support hot code upgrades. I use upgrades all the time, and won't be trying out Elixir's releases until this shortcoming is addressed.

What's the benefit of a hot code upgrade vs a blue/green deploy?
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