[HN Gopher] The Human Side of Elixir
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The Human Side of Elixir
Author : feross
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-07-28 15:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (akoutmos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (akoutmos.com)
| alberth wrote:
| Twitter considered migrating from Ruby on Rails to Erlang 11
| years ago (but ultimately chose Scala due to the Java tie-in).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2825689
|
| I've always wonder how the Erlang ecosystem would be different
| today if a digital giant like a Twitter/FB/Google had used Erlang
| as part of their core business.
|
| Note: yes, I realize WhatsApp owned by FB is run on Erlang.
| hervature wrote:
| Not sure if this against the guidelines (it says no job ads as
| submissions), but on the note of hiring Elixir developers, if
| anyone is interested in being involved in an early stage Elixir
| (Phoenix) startup, we at Jinso are hiring a senior engineer with
| Elixir experience and would love to hear from you:
| https://www.jinso.com/
|
| Don't want to derail the conversation, but shoot us an email at
| admin [at] jinso.com. We are happy to tell you about us and get
| to know who you are!
| japhib wrote:
| 1. What's funny about the photo at the top of this blog post is
| that it scales with the width of the window you're using to view
| it. That normally would seem like a bug but it actually works
| with this photo, to the point that I can't tell what the original
| width of the photo is!
|
| 2. This quote is kinda funny to me:
|
| > Many of the engineers whom I work with, actively seek out
| Elixir specific opportunities because they enjoy the language and
| the run-time that much (I'll be diving into specifically why a
| bit later in the post ). This is also supported by a recent
| StackOverflow developer survey where 68.2% of people working with
| Elixir, wanted to continue working with Elixir. For some
| comparisons, Go received a 67.9% rating and Javascript received a
| 66.8% rating.
|
| It seems like OP is trying to make the point that Elixir is so
| special that engineers will actively seek out Elixir jobs ... and
| then cites stats that show that's true only 1% more than Go and
| Javascript.
|
| Maybe I'm reading it wrong and OP is just trying to show that
| Elixir is only _as_ loved as Go /JS, not better, but in any case
| the stat cited does not show Elixir is any more special than
| either of those other super popular languages.
|
| (I'm currently an Elixir dev, btw. I like it well enough but I
| personally don't think it's _enough_ better than Go or JS to
| justify switching when the community is still so small.)
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think the case was more intended to point out it's no
| different than choosing Go or Javascript, in terms of developer
| affinity (the size of community is part of what the article is
| intending to address).
|
| Personally, I find Stackoverflow's surveys pretty useless.
| Python has 73% "loved", which tells me...what? That 73% of
| Python developers like Python. But what else do they have
| experience with? Is this just objectively "I like Python", or
| "I like Python more than X"? What is X? For those who don't
| "love" their language (which really just translates to "they
| have not expressed interest in continuing to develop with it",
| based on what SO gives us), is it because of another language
| capturing their imagination more? What languages are those,
| have they actually used it in the past in production, etc.
| carlmr wrote:
| >For those who don't "love" their language (which really just
| translates to "they have not expressed interest in continuing
| to develop with it", based on what SO gives us), is it
| because of another language capturing their imagination more?
|
| As a C++ dev, definitely Rust. It got almost everything right
| that is horrible with C++, while still maintaining similar
| power.
| akoutmos wrote:
| Author here. Glad you like the banner image and the zooming
| effect :).
|
| Perhaps I miscommunicated what I took away from the
| StackOverflow survey. The point that I was trying to make was
| that in relation to other programming languages in the survey,
| Elixir ranked high with regards to how loved it is. The
| StackOverflow survey is just one data point in addition to the
| others that I bring up and like many surveys has it's own
| issues (like WebAssembly being a compilation target as opposed
| to a programming language the people program in).
| eric4smith wrote:
| Well echoing what the author wrote - it's quite easy to learn
| Elixir.
|
| We have a new guy who started a bit less than a month ago.
|
| He's now already writing functional Elixir (no pun intended) and
| contributing to big code base.
|
| One of the first things I told him is that "there is no magic in
| elixir". What you see is what you get.
|
| If you understand that everything is literally a function - life
| is easy and using the language becomes fun.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm still not entirely sure if I'll be an Elixir programmer,
| but I do appreciate the culture of the Elixir community. Jose
| definitely seems to be trying to Be the Change with respect to
| inclusivity.
| ketzo wrote:
| The Elixir/Phoenix forums are a genuinely delightful place.
| Can't recommend them enough. Great mix of beginner questions
| and best-practice discussions, and commenters tend to be
| quite knowledgeable and very friendly.
| Kototama wrote:
| > If you understand that everything is literally a function
|
| Except when it's a macro :-D
| ashton314 wrote:
| Come now, macros are just functions over syntax. ;-P
|
| But yes, the only headaches I've had have been with hard-to-
| follow macros.
|
| That said, the Phoenix Framework has some well-chosen macros
| that are a delight to work with. Furthermore, all these
| macros are defined in your source when you create a new
| Phoenix project--I feel that over all there is remarkably
| little magic in Phoenix, and what magic there is is easily
| inspectable.
| ketzo wrote:
| Macros are extremely powerful, and like all really powerful
| things, they're very easy to shoot yourself in the foot
| with... we're lucky that the Phoenix team are some very
| capable wizards!
| paultannenbaum wrote:
| Metaprogramming in elixir (i.e. macros) will definitely feel
| like magic to most. It allows for really powerful abstractions,
| but doubtful the new guy would have been able to be productive
| in a month in a large codebase full of them. Your standard
| phoenix app, yes it is fairly straightforward.
| Kototama wrote:
| But what does a large codebase full of macros would look
| like? It's an anti-pattern to have too much macros. They
| should be used as a last-resort option.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This is kind of a puff-piece highly upvoted by Elixir fanboys.
| I'm a fanboy too lol fwiw.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Ehn, the more pro-Elixir search results out there the better.
|
| I feel the same way as the author and really want to find a job
| where I can work with it full time, but my current work
| situation is too good to give up.
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