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Discussion on: What is your opinion on Elixir language, why don't more developers use it?

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wolfiton profile image
wolfiton • Edited

Not impressed by praprog books when I have to deal with all the errata(mistakes that make the code not work) instead of learning. Even though they tried to cover a lot, the errors just break the experience.

The rest of the sites I agree.

Also, absinthe looks very powerful and clean so far from what I experienced.

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mitchartemis profile image
Mitch Stanley

Not impressed by praprog books when I have to deal with all the errata(mistakes that make the code not work) instead of learning. Even though they tried to cover a lot, the errors just break the experience.

Unfortunately I find this to be a downside of programming books in general, not specific to pragprog. Many authors don't update their books at all making language updates a real pain to work through. Although many pragprog books are outdated now, from what I've seen most of the Elixir ones are relatively up to date.

Also, absinthe looks very powerful and clean so far from what I experienced.

I've not had the pleasure of trying it yet, but it does look good. Nerves is another great looking library if you're interested in embedded software.

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wolfiton profile image
wolfiton

Elixir has a large ecosystem but unfortunately, it lacks documentation and a lot of up to date tutorials plus libraries or guides on certain things(ex: payment gateway options are limited)

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oshanwisumperuma profile image
Oshan Wisumperuma
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wolfiton profile image
wolfiton • Edited

Thanks @oshanwisumperuma, unfortunately, it has no documentation for absinthe.

If you look at rails and python they have a lot of options.

Also, a library becomes valid once it has documentation and examples, that is my opinion.

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sb8244 profile image
Stephen Bussey

I'm not sure about the other PragProg books, but having just written Real-Time Phoenix, I'm confident in the accuracy of the information.

In general, I've found them to be high quality. If the books are dated because of library changes, that just comes with the territory.

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wolfiton profile image
wolfiton • Edited

I am not referring to your book @stephenbussey, I am referring to programming phoenix 1.4 errata and also to the way The Pragmatic Programmer, in general point of view on learning.

As someone new to the language, the first step is to share code and create your own style but for that you need a template, so restricting what you learn from the books makes this impossible.

Humans are not: copy and paste machines.

You can only use the code in your own projects but can't blog about it or create courses with it. This really sounds odd and doesn't help anyone that really wants to learn.

When you write something you also gain a better understanding of what you learn, it is the natural way to develop your skills.

This is my honest opinion.

I also respect the authors from the Elixir community and consider that they have very useful knowledge to share, but this limitation really is making it hard to do something with that knowledge.