I decided to learn Elixir in 2024. It isn't off to the start I had planned.
I really love the language so far but I cannot seem to find up-to date and affordable learning resources. For every language I have learned in the past few years (dart, go, python) there have been plenty of fresh and high quality resources (many of them also for free). Here in the Elixir world, however, things are different. Everything costs money, sometimes lots of it, and everything is old. Soooo old. Grandpa Erlang old.
I started out with this class on Udemy. After covering some of the language basics it started to go into version 1.2 of Phoenix. Carbon dating reveals this version of Phoenix came out 2016. I am not going to invest time learning something that old.
Next I toyed with the idea of Pragmatic Studio's Elixir course. Finding a date for when this course was produced is hard because they have kept dates and versions off all their content. My best guess is 2017 based on the copyright year in their intro video cover. Unfortunately $150 is something I cannot afford to risk on this.
In the "way to expensive" category I found the grox.io Elixir courses. If $150 is a stretch for me right now, $350 certainly is too expensive.
I am currently going through the LearnElixir.tv course. While affordable at only $18, I was disappointed to discover that it too is from pre-historic times. Some of the comments on the videos are from 10 years ago! The content is ok for a high level overview so I am going to keep forging ahead.
The big question is what additional resources do I use next to supplement my learning?
There is Dave Thomas' course ($35) which seems like it is more current than other classes. It says it covers Elixir 1.12 and Phoenix 1.6 so props to Dave for being up front about that. Anyone out there tried his course?
I am also going to start working through the Exercism track. This is free! (shhhh.... don't tell the other Elixir folks)
I also found these:
https://alchemist.camp/
https://elixirschool.com/en
https://elixircasts.io/series/learn-elixir
I think I've found enough resources to scratch by. Maybe I'm being a snob about the date of the available courses. It has just been a different experience compared to attempting to learn a more mainstream language.
Top comments (6)
I havens reflected on this, but you are probably right. When I started messing around with Elixir and Phoenix I followed the docs and a bunch of googling. But there are resources to be had, and Ice actually followed along a bit with a YouTube series where we build a GitHub Gist Clone: Building a GitHub Gist Clone with Phoenix LiveView
Perhaps that is something for you? Also, I'm just learning as well. Would love to dive into any more sources you find!
That YouTube series looks great (and it is current too!). Thanks!
joyofelixir.com/ is free :)
In my personal experience the best way to learn is doing projects.
small projects and then look the official docs and forums to search for answers.
For example:
Take a look at this react website reactpractice.dev/ and you can try and do the same exercises in LiveView.
I solved some of those exercises here :)
github.com/ElixirCL/surface-practice/
Thanks for pointing me to joyofelixir @clsource!
If you are into books, I recommend Elixir In Action. It’s new (published in 2024) so it is covering topics in the current version. I an also learning Elixir this year and plan on using Exercism to practice. Good luck on your learning.
I agree. The saving grace is that it's a supportive community and generally really good and consistent documentation.