DEV Community: Muhamamd Yasir

Elixir optimizations for cost cutting $

Muhamamd Yasir — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:49:06 +0000

Everyone talks about Elixir being scalable, fault-tolerant, functional, actor-based, and distributed. But let’s get real: the only thing your boss cares about is cutting costs.

So here’s how I optimized our Elixir system to save real money — not just theoretical “efficiency points” in some Hacker News thread.

1. OTP: Outsourcing To Processes

Each Elixir process costs only a few KB of memory. Compare that to Java threads (they eat memory like your uncle at a buffet).
Result? Instead of renting a small AWS island, I’m now surviving happily on a free-tier canoe.

💰 Cost saved: “Goodbye, t3.2xlarge. Hello, t3.micro.”

2. BEAM Garbage Collector: Marie Kondo for Memory

The BEAM VM has per-process garbage collection. Translation: instead of a global stop-the-world meltdown, each process tidies up its own mess like a polite roommate.

This cut down our RAM bill so hard, I felt guilty. But not guilty enough to tell AWS.

💰 Cost saved: “We don’t need 64 GB RAM, Karen. We need therapy.”

3. Phoenix Channels: Slack for Servers

We replaced our “real-time API” (read: a Kafka cluster with the personality of a tax auditor) with Phoenix Channels. Suddenly, we had millions of live connections on one box without needing a fleet of Kubernetes nodes.

💰 Cost saved: “From 30 Kafka brokers → 1 Elixir app + vibes.”

4*. Hot Code Reloading: The Netflix Trick
*
Deploying without downtime means no rolling restarts, no duplicate environments, no “who left this Kubernetes pod running for six months?” incidents.

💰 Cost saved: “Our CI/CD bill shrank faster than my hairline.”

*5. Pattern Matching: Firing If-Else Statements
*
In other languages, you write 200 lines of if-else spaghetti. In Elixir, you just let pattern matching do the work.
Result: fewer bugs → fewer on-call emergencies → fewer DevOps engineers rage-quitting.

💰 Cost saved: “Recruiter fees for replacing burned-out devs.”

6. ETS: Free Redis (But With Vibes)

Elixir’s ETS tables are basically in-memory key-value stores baked into the VM. That’s right: you don’t need Redis for half your caching problems.

💰 Cost saved: “Bye-bye, managed Redis cluster bill.”

7. Supervision Trees: Netflix for Crashes

When processes crash, they get back up faster than your cousin after chugging an energy drink. Automatic restarts mean fewer PagerDuty alerts and fewer “why is prod down?” all-nighters.

💰 Cost saved: “Time → money. And sleep → priceless.”

*📉 Final Tally
*
With all these, our infra bill dropped so much that the finance team thought it was a bug. No bug — just Elixir being Elixir.

AWS, GCP, and Azure all hate me now. My boss doesn’t. That’s ROI.

⚡ Conclusion: If you want real-world cost-cutting optimizations, don’t chase shiny frameworks. Just unleash the BEAM, sit back, and let Erlang’s 30 years of “telecom austerity mode” pay your bills.

PHP worst programming language of 2025

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:07:38 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

php will kill your soul

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:07:12 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

php will make you miserable developer

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:06:47 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

php erected my career

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:06:06 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

don't use php

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:05:43 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

dont use php

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 06:05:23 +0000

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir ・ Jun 25

🧨 Why PHP Is the Worst Programming Language on the Planet (And Somehow Still Alive)

Muhamamd Yasir — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:48:29 +0000

"If code is poetry, PHP is a ransom note made from magazine clippings."

Once hailed as the duct tape of the web, PHP has powered millions of websites. Yet, in the year 2025, we must ask: how is this language still allowed near a server, let alone running half the internet?

Let’s explore why PHP continues to earn its reputation as the most cursed survivor of the programming apocalypse.

🤯 1. The Syntax That Time Forgot

PHP's syntax is the software equivalent of a junk drawer. It has:
$thisIsAVariable,`

echo for printing,

<?php embedded in HTML,`

AND a function called create_function() that literally takes a string of PHP code and evals it.

Want consistency? Keep dreaming.

strpos($haystack, $needle); // Makes sense array_search($needle, $haystack); // WHY THOUGH

🪦 2. It Was Designed as a Template Engine, Not a Language

PHP was never meant to be a full programming language. It started as "Personal Home Page Tools" — a bunch of macros wrapped around C functions. Then it mutated.

It's like giving Microsoft Paint the ability to run nuclear simulations.

🔓 3. Security Nightmares Are Built-In

Writing insecure code in PHP is easier than writing secure code:

$pass = $_GET['password']; $result = mysqli_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE pass = '$pass'");
Boom. You’ve just invited SQL Injection, XSS, and a lawsuit.

Unless you know what you're doing (and most beginners don’t), PHP is a landmine field wrapped in duct tape.

🪡 4. Global Scope Soup

Everything is global. There’s no isolation by default. You could call a variable from halfway across the codebase, and PHP would go, “Sure, buddy.”

It’s like leaving your house unlocked, hoping no one steals your fridge.

😵 5. A Standard Library That Fails All Standards

strlen() for string length

`count() for array length

sizeof() which is the same as count()

empty(), isset(), and is_null() — good luck remembering which one checks what`

Everything kind of works, sometimes. Error handling? You're lucky if it doesn't just spit out Warning: Cannot modify header information 20 lines after the real bug.

🧟 6. It Refuses to Die
Why is PHP still here? Two reasons:

WordPress — responsible for 40% of websites (🤮)
**
Cheap hosting** — PHP still runs on dusty old shared servers at $1/month

It’s like that horror movie villain who keeps coming back no matter how many times you throw it into the fire.

🔄 7. Every PHP Project Becomes Spaghetti Eventually

You start clean:

`class User { ... }
Two months in:

<?php include('some-script-from-2004.php'); ?>
`
Even with Laravel, the average PHP project begins as MVC and ends up as MVP: Most Volatile Pile.

🤡 8. Its Error Messages Read Like Comedy

Cannot use a scalar value as an array

Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string

Call to a member function on null

Half your time in PHP is Googling why an object is "not an object."

🧼 Bonus: PHP 8 Tried to Clean Up… But It’s Still PHP

Yes, PHP 8 added:

`Proper types

JIT

Nullsafe operators`

But you can't polish a potato and call it a diamond. At the end of the day, PHP is still the weird uncle of web dev. Kinda lovable. Mostly embarrassing.

🧾 Final Verdict
PHP is not a language. It’s a lesson.
A lesson in humility. A lesson in legacy tech.
A reminder that just because something works doesn’t mean it should.

If you want to suffer creatively, write poetry. If you want to suffer programmatically, write PHP.