Would you still pick Elixir in 2023?
nelsonic opened this issue ยท 87 comments
A friend of dwyl asked the following question in our "chat" system:
We feel it's worth capturing the reply in public because it's relevant to anyone considering Elixir.
"Hi guys, sorry for bothering, but I need your help/input with something
I know that you have been working with Elixir now for a while
So I want to ask you guys on your thoughts about it now after doing some real work with it
The pro's, the con's
would you use it for rest api etc"
Let's give the question a bit of context first:
The OP asking the question is a talented/experienced programmer who has worked as a programmer for 10+ years and already knows JavaScript, Java, Scala, Elixir (a basic app including GitHub OAuth). They are a "senior engineer" at their current day job and make a good living by both national and international standards. However from speaking to them extensively they don't enjoy their Job.
(this last part might not be relevant so you can ignore it, but just to say they do not work for @dwyl ... despite our best efforts to offer them a job!)
Which Programming Language Should We Use... ?
The question of "Which Programming Language" is one we ask ourselves fairly regularly, and is the reason that lead us to discover and decide on using Elixir in 2016. We periodically survey the "up-and-coming" languages like Kotlin, Julia, Lua, etc. and keep concluding that our choice of Elixir is the one we would make again right now. Elixir is the "full package" from idea to deployment!
A good place to look for the trends is in the "Most Wanted" list of the StackOverflow Survey:
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018
Sadly, for some reason SO decided to exclude Elixir from their list this year! But the last time they "allowed" it as one of the options is came out near the top:
Not that you should allow yourself to be "lead" by the crowd, but it's useful know the pulse of the wider developer community, especially when trying to make the case for a new language at "work" or deciding what to learn for yourself.
Why Not Stick with JavaScript/Node.js?
At the time we (our entire team/company/community) were deciding what to learn/use next
were all proficient in JavaScript/Node.js and had built many projects using the "Old Stack".
Our reasoning for "jumping ship" from Node.js to Elixir can be summarised by the following list:
- Node.js Error Handling ๐ข ... if you've ever had to debug a production bug in Node.js you will know what I'm talking about. On large Node.js projects finding the source of a bug is an expedition! And since Node is a single-threaded event loop, if the process crashes for one user, it crashes for all the requests being handled by that process. i.e. one user can crash the server for hundreds/thousands of people! This is a terrible design flaw (that I used to think was a "feature"...) it's "OK" on AWS Lambda where every request spawns a new process, but most Node.js is not being run on Lambda!
- JavaScript Fatigue ๐ซ there is a new library/framework vying for attention every week! it's exhausting! As a developer I just want to get on with my work, not have to read another Hackernoon post on how everything from last week is obsolete because XYZ framework "changes everything" (for no good reason!). Note: I love learning new things. just not re-learning in the same thing each time there is a "new" way of re-writing a function! JS did not need
class. It's a horrible interface!
see: https://medium.com/@Rewieer/javascript-the-bad-parts-and-how-to-avoid-them-1a7c9bc5a0dd - Everyone thinks they can write JS code, few take the time to learn how to write maintainable JS.
- From our extensive experience watching new people use JS/Node we saw people develop "bad habits" fast and completely disregard security in their rush to ship shiny features. The JS/Node ecosystem has grown way too fast for it's own good and is brittle/vulnerable as a result.
see:- "Left Pad" https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos ๐คฆโโ๏ธ
- "Event Stream": dominictarr/event-stream#116 ๐
- From our extensive experience watching new people use JS/Node we saw people develop "bad habits" fast and completely disregard security in their rush to ship shiny features. The JS/Node ecosystem has grown way too fast for it's own good and is brittle/vulnerable as a result.
- Facebook trying to "own" the JS ecosystem ... ๐ก
- The "State of JS" https://stateofjs.com is created/maintained by people who use Fb's JS "stack".
They are all heavily biased toward React, GraphQL, etc. and as a result they are further perpetuating the use of these tools.
- The "State of JS" https://stateofjs.com is created/maintained by people who use Fb's JS "stack".
I don't like to think of @dwyl as having "competitors", but if I did, I would want them to use JS/Node.
Because it's an inferior experience to Elixir in every meaningful way.
Why Elixir?
Our "medium term" plan @dwyl is to build IoT devices to control our home https://github.com/dwyl/home
for this Elixir is perfect there literally is no better platform for IoT than https://nerves-project.org
Along the way we are building a distributed/decentralised learning platform that will heavily feature real-time interaction. Again, Elixir is perfect for this; nothing else comes close!
We have built several "CRUD" and "REST API + Elm Frontend" apps for clients over the past 2 years and I can honestly say that I'm happy to maintain any one of those apps and I think anyone else "inheriting" the codebase will thank us for how the code is written, tested and documented.
Pros
- Elixir is easy and fast to learn. Most people can achieve proficiency in less than a week (focussed).
- The language is beautifully designed for readability by one super smart "BDFL" who does "real work"; not just work in academia dreaming up esoteric language constructs. There are no "Norman Doors" in Elixir.
- Elixir Macros are a super slick way of encapsulating and re-using functionality.
Every good language has Macros. - Testing code is much nicer in Elixir than anything else. ExUnit is "baked in" and Property-based Testing is easy see: #93 This makes "real life" of a developer much better because writing tests is faster and the QA/PO can have high confidence in the code!
- BEAM is an incredible VM that runs seamlessly on any hardware/infrastructure.
- Error handling when things "break" is second to none. I would want my life support system to be built with Elixir. I intend to control my house, food and water with Elixir!
- There are many awesome projects in the ecosystem: https://github.com/h4cc/awesome-elixir which makes it easy to get "inspiration" and find solutions to common problems.
- People are using Elixir for Blockchain/Smart Contract apps and even Machine Learning.
see: https://github.com/mana-ethereum/ethereumex and https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes - Elixir is "coming soon" to AWS Lambda: dwyl/learn-aws-lambda#112 when this happens there will no longer be any reason for us to use Node.js I cannot wait!
Our "Real World" Experience
We have been using Elixir (almost exclusively) for the past 2 years for all our client and personal work.
I can say categorically that I prefer to write, read and maintain Elixir 10x more than any other language.
I return to Elixir code I wrote 18 months ago and I can immediately understand it and I don't feel the need to re-write any of it because it "just works".
Phoenix has been a joy to use for the projects we have worked on and because it's the de facto standard in the Elixir community, I'm confident that any code we have written is maintainable by anyone else with Phoenix experience. i.e. it's easy to "onboard" people into a Phoenix project because everything is where you expect it to be.
We are very pleased with the development in the Phoenix framework over the past few years
and Phoenix LiveView is going to be absolutely game changing! see: dwyl/technology-stack#68
When new versions of Phoenix have been released the upgrade process has been painless.
see: dwyl/learn-phoenix-framework#118
The attention to detail in the Phoenix changelog / release notes makes it easy to upgrade.
I have zero regrets in adopting elixir for our client work and my personal projects.
If anything I wish I could go back in time and tell my 2012-self to "drop" Node.js sooner!
I regret trying to use a spoon to dig a swimming pool; pick the "right" tool and let the BEAM do the work!!
"Cons"?
- No "native" type for JSON data. You always have to parse JSON into a
Mapand there are excellent libraries for doing this. This is "fine" because it's fast, but I would prefer it if JSON was natively supported in Elixir so that I could copy-paste JSON data from JS-land directly into code/tests and just run it. - Relatively difficult to "recruit" developers with existing experience in Elixir (compared to Java/JS)
This is rapidly disappearing as a "reason" to not adopt Elixir. The community is growing fast and there are even people on "Upwork" who list Elixir as experience/preference. - Management (at "big" companies) who don't (want to) understand functional programming or the concept of people enjoying their work, will never see the point of Elixir.
- Fewer Jobs you can apply for as a Dev. This is just a fact you have to deal with.
But if you prefer to work for open minded companies with good tech and learning culture,
then Elixir is good filter/signal of a place you want to work.
There are hundreds of companies you can apply to work for.
see: elixir-companies and Jobs: http://plataformatec.com.br/elixir-radar/jobs
even McKinsey & Co are using Elixir!! (I got a DM from someone trying to recruit me...!)
Anywhere that uses Ruby is a strong candidate for Elixir. Expect the adoption of Elixir to accelerate in the next few years. Whenever you read a job for "Ruby-on-Rails" you can basically apply for it and ask them: "do you want to save 90% of your server costs, add real-time features to your app and transform your recruiting?"
Use Case: REST API ... ?
A REST API is something you generally build for other people (developers/companies) to "consume". (unless you are building "microservices" for internal consumption ... useful to clarify!)
The main goals of a REST API are to make it easy to understand and "consume" reliable to run.
If your use case is a simple REST API, I would recommend you just use what you (already) know.
If you know JS, use Express. If you know Java use light-rest-4j if you know PHP use Laravel. If already are familiar with Elixir, use maru it's lightweight and robust.
I feel the OP's_focus_ on "REST API" might not give us a full picture of what their end-goal is for the question ... are they re-writing an existing REST API to a new language/framework for better maintainability and performance? or create a brand new REST API from scratch?
In many situations, the choice of programming language is less important than the "deployment" of the resulting application. If work somewhere "traditional" where the "DevOps" people are not ready to support an Elixir App, then the question of "which programming language" is moot.
The biggest question anyone considering Elixir needs to ask is: do other people in my team/company want to try something different? i.e. will "Negative Nancy" shoot it down? and will "DevOps" support it?
If you work somewhere that does not have a kaizen learning culture, fuhgeddaboudit.
If you are lucky enough to work somewhere that is open minded about tech, find a way to show your "boss" or peers that Elixir is an excellent choice for anything "real time" and "high reliability".
Conclusion
These are the languages I would recommend to anyone in the OP's position in order:
Elixir- because it's a "friendly" way to leverage all of the real-time power of BEAM. It has excellent tooling, property-based testing, deployment, monitoring and tracing.Rust- a close second to Elixir. Great for systems programming and building cross-platform apps, but expect "breaking changes" as still being actively developed (whereas Elixir is far more "stable").Go- Is the choice if you need to "sell it" to a "Boss". The fact that it's "sponsored" by Google and has full support on App Engine, GCF, and now AWS Lambda are major plusses. We don't use it because it's more verbose than Elixir, is more difficult to write real-time code and has an imperative programming style, which we find leads to more complexity.Haskell- The obvious choice if "purity" of your functions is a high consideration, but nowhere near as "fast" as Elixir and considerably more difficult to learn. Most companies are "afraid" of Haskell. The ones who have embraced it wouldn't use anything else!Clojure- If you work somewhere with a lot of JVM code, this will be easiest to adopt.Python- if you don't care about the infrastructure/server costs and just want an "easy life" as a developer. e.g. you don't need anything "real time" and just want RESTful "CRUD", use Django on Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/python/django- Are you still reading this? Start learning Elixir!!
Next?
If you are reading this wondering what to do/learn next, we have created several beginner friendly tutorials that take you from zero to fully functional App:
- TodoMVC Todo List Tutorial: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-todo-list-tutorial
- Real-time Chat App: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-chat-example
- HTML + REST API Tutorial: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-content-negotiation-tutorial
- Encryption: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-ecto-encryption-example
- Append-only Immutable data: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-ecto-append-only-log-example
Practical reasons why Elixir is a great choice:
- Pattern matching means you write less code and almost no "if" statements. code is more expressive and readable.
- Pipeline operator means your code flows logically and there are is less "control flow" noise.
- First-class Documentation with ExDoc and inline doc testing means code comments don't go "stale".
- Ecto makes dealing with any kind of data a breeze, e.g. user input validation/sanitisation, etc.
- Package management is excellent. Hex.pm is simpler, faster and easier to use than any other package manager we've used. Private packages can be loaded via Git.
- Testing and testability is excellent. Coverage works well so it's easy to spot un-tested code.
- Any feature you can think of has been implemented, google it and you'll find the solution.
Seriously scroll through https://github.com/h4cc/awesome-elixir and be amazed! - Memory efficiency is much better than most other languages (with the exception of Rust, but Elixir is miles better at Error handling than Rust, which is a more practical feature IMO.) Lightweight BEAM processes are amazing.
iex(the interactive shell) is fast, has code completion and great error messages that teach you how to write better code!- Compilation is fast and incremental. Much faster than other compiled languages!
- Zero Downtime "Hot" Deployment is really easy and fast. It's only a few lines of code to run an incremental release that automatically manages live connections! This is a feature people pay real money for! You get it for free in Elixir/Erlang!
Great write-up! The jobs thing might not be as dire as is looks though:
Fewer Jobs you can apply for as a Dev. This is just a fact you have to deal with.
But if you prefer to work for open minded companies with good tech and learning culture,
then Elixir is good filter/signal of a place you want to work.
I can't remember exactly which it was in (I think it might have been this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsg6V0UBlEw) but one of the sessions at Code Elixir 2018 in London was talking about the difference between the supply and demand of Elixir developers. The demand might only be a fraction of what it is for say Javascript developers, but the JS market is well and truly saturated. The supply of Elixir developers is a fraction of the demand, and that demand is growing at a faster pace than the supply. Looking at the situation purely as "there are only x Elixir jobs out there" isn't painting the full picture.
The only point I would really disagree with is the list of suggested languages.
When you talk about other choices being "considerably more difficult to learn", this definitely applies to Rust too. Of the various modern languages I have spent more than a few months with, I would say Rust is easily the ugliest. That said, I can't argue with the performance it offers and I would still add it to the list to fill a hole in their current skill set.
When the OP already knows Java and Scala, I don't see as much value in adding Clojure to that stack versus something that doesn't run on JVM. Go I simply don't see offering enough unique advantages, and Haskell is a 'nice to learn' for purely academic reasons but I am yet to come across a scenario where I would ever choose Haskell over Elixir. It's just not as practical, accessible or just plan fun to work with.
If I had to suggest a list, it would be:
- continue to focus on Elixir
- one of Julia, Rust or Nim (in that order of preference)
- Python
and as a distant extra, possibly Elm.
When the OP already knows Java and Scala, I don't see any value in adding Clojure to that stack.
Well unless you want async (CSP), STM, lazy sequences and other features of Clojure that people love. I only know Scala devs who gave up on Scala because it is overly complicated and generally not worth the effort to learn. Clojure can be learn in few hours.
Not a dig against Elixir, I'm just surprised to not see much mention of Ruby here. Ruby may not have the same functional basis (something I like about Elixir a lot) but many of the pros throughout this thread apply to Ruby as well. In fact if I'm not mistaken Ruby was influential on Elixir's syntax. I've even heard Elixir described as "Erlang with Ruby syntax", even though I know that's not technically correct obviously.
Edit: I work with both Elixir and Ruby. I can say I personally like Rails more than Phoenix in many ways. Though it's mostly my love of ActiveRecord. I also still feel like it's easier to get Ruby to do what I want it to do (often described as a con), since it's so flexible. E.g. I can rip open the String class and just start adding methods (please be careful, and don't do this). The biggest pro of Elixir in my book is the functional nature of the language. You don't need to sell me on all the benifits (I have a ฮป tattoo ffs). Oh and pattern matching, something I also love about Rust.
@nixpulvis good point. Ruby is the spiritual grandfather of Elixir in both in terms of syntax and ecosystem. Ruby is still widely used in industry and is the "go to" language for many people.
I just would not recommend that people who don't know it start with Ruby as Elixir is objectively "better" in every way (system efficiency, error handling, testing, pipeline elegance, metaprogramming, BEAM, etc...);
All of the "lessons learned" from Ruby have been applied to Elixir (including the good parts of Active Record) and the result is fantastic. Phoenix has fewer "bells and whistles" than Rails, but I personally like that because I can sit down and read all the code in the Phoenix framework in a day whereas it took me a week to read the Rails core code back in the day.
(I printed it out and read it all...! Yes, I'm a freak!)
Ruby on Rails is still immensely popular and actively being taught in several coding bootcamps precisely because it is still used in many companies, but developers who are just getting started
wanting to "leapfrog" their peers, they should stick with the list above.
Ruby would be the 8th or 9th language I would recommend to someone
after JavaScript simply because the proliferation of Node.js and Front-end frameworks.
I used Rails a lot back in the day and found that it had way too much "magic" and arbitrarily named modules full of "inside jokes" that made it less beginner friendly ... Elixir still has some of that due to the overlap in communities but the code is much easier to follow through the stack.
Anyone following along this thread who has not experienced Ruby, see:
- https://www.rubyguides.com/2017/02/weird-ruby/
- http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/ruby_quirks.html
- https://www.engineyard.com/blog/3-ruby-quirks-you-have-to-love
To be clear I'm not "picking" on Ruby, it's still "good".
Just that I lost a lot of time writing/debugging it.
And if I can save someone else the heartache by encouraging them to use Elixir, I will. ๐
@proyb6 no doubt Crystal is very promising.
Though I'm sure you'll agree it is still under heavy development v0.27.0 i.e: expect breaking changes!
and you wouldn't use it for your life-support system for your grandmother. ๐
Still, it's definitely "one to watch".
Perhaps we need an expanded list of languages. ๐ค (especially for people with time to "play")
The only reasoning for having an abbreviated list is to help people focus (avoid distraction ...)
Crystal-lang is classic Shiny Object Syndrome ...
Many people treat their programming skills as "work" and don't do any learning in their "off time".
Those people need to be more selective with the languages they chose to learn and master.
If I was only allowed to pick one language to write in 2019 I would pick Elixir hands down all day long.
But it's because I know what I'm building this year and it's heavy on the IOT ...
I expect to have 20+ Raspberry PIs running in @home controlling everything from the lights to the physical access security, security cameras and plant watering .
Pythonwould be my second choice for this because it's easy to write and there are lots of good tutorials, but the "zero-downtime hot" deployment story inElixiris much better and I need systems that I don't need to manually reboot if (when) they crash.
Why the sudden spike of interest in this thread...? ๐ค
Yep, 3rd spot on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18838115 ๐ฎ
@KristerV thanks for randomly submitting it. โค๏ธโ
Rust - a close second to Elixir. Great for systems programming and building cross-platform apps, but expect "breaking changes" as still being actively developed (whereas Elixir is far more "stable").
This isn't really true anymore, and hasn't been for some time. Rust hit "stable" release a while ago, and has committed to avoiding breaking changes going forward as much as possible, at least within editions. I've been maintaining a small Rust tool since very nearly 1.0 and have yet to have to change anything for compatibility reasons.
I would say though that this is less true still of much of the web ecosystem unfortunately, especially as my favorite choice of framework, Rocket, still requires nightly (though this is changing soon!). Perhaps this is what you mean by this?
@jarcane thanks for clarifying. I haven't played with Rust in about 6 months.
I'm stoked that Rust is gaining traction and Rocket is a legit web framework. ๐
If I was still a "gun for hire" (contractor) programmer I would definitely cultivate Rust skills. ๐ฆ
Anyone following along, read this post: https://www.figma.com/blog/rust-in-production-at-figma
I picked Elixir in 2015 with Dave Tomas's Book, i had faith it is destined to be the new framework that will replace the flawed breaking MVC Pathways of rails, but meh.. that didn't happen. Since then i have moved to Clojure and found better and more composable ways to write code, with both very large and small companies both backing it. Clojure is destined to touch greatness in the long run. Elixir maybe not so.
@metacritical Clojure is a great language + community and an "easy sell" to teams/companies who already use the JVM. Obviously it's unfortunate that you did not feel Elixir was "for you" after trying it in 2015. ๐ (all I can say is that Elixir is much better now...!)
Dave Thomas' Book "Programming Elixir โฅ 1.6" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DP8Y2GJ/
is not designed for beginners as indicated by the graphic on the back of the book:
it should warn people not to use it as their first elixir book;
it's more of a "manual" than a step-by-step guide ... ๐
I agree with you that it's not the best way to approach learning the language
and there is a bit of a "gap" in the market for an "Elixir for Complete Beginners" Book/Tutorial/Video Series that makes zero assumptions of previous knowledge/skill.
We have tried to make our notes in this repo beginner-friendly https://github.com/dwyl/learn-elixir
I would urge anyone else reading this thread in 2019 to consider Elixir
as it has a fantastic UX and community from a dev perspective.
Start learning Elixir using this repo. https://github.com/dwyl/learn-elixir
if/when you get "stuck" open an issue with a question: https://github.com/dwyl/learn-elixir/issues
The @dwyl community love helping people who are stuck and we usually reply within a few hours.
Cross-post your question on the Elixir Forum: https://elixirforum.com
and StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/elixir which has several thousand answers and where "Dogbert" https://stackoverflow.com/users/320615/dogbert will usually answer in a few hours.
Ultimately, if people pick Clojure over Elixir that's cool. ๐
I'm just stoked that Functional languages are gaining traction
because functional code is much easier to maintain
(from experience of writing and having to maintain lots of OOP code...)
and that's ultimately what we do as programmers; we maintain code and attempt to extend it ...
โIndeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1.
We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.โ
~ Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
We spend a lot more time reading other people's code than writing our own.
The more readable the code is the better everyone's lives will be.
I wish there was an objective way of testing code readability with complete beginners
to compare the "beginner friendliness" ... ๐ค
These two XKCD comics eloquently describe my experience of Java:
Each day I wake up and don't have to read/write Java I'm grateful for my life choices and those of the many much better programmers than me who have paved the way to a functional future! ๐
@nelsonic great points! I distinctly remember a professor back in college ranting about how code is meant for humans to read, the fact computers can execute it is mearly a side effect.
When the OP already knows Java and Scala, I don't see any value in adding Clojure to that stack.
Well unless you want async (CSP), STM, lazy sequences and other features of Clojure that people love. I only know Scala devs who gave up on Scala because it is overly complicated and generally not worth the effort to learn. Clojure can be learn in few hours.
True, but you should also give Elixir a try. It's very nice
Stellar write-up.
I've had a lot of success in selling Elixir to my current employer which is primarily a Ruby shop. I'm not really afraid of ugly syntax like some claim Erlang's to be, but some people are, and though that thinking to some may seem flawed, it's still a valid concern from the perspective of a project owner or chief technical role. Elixir's syntax helps alleviate those fears, and combined with its benchmarks, I've really found that it's not a tough sell.
On large Node.js projects finding the source of a bug is an expedition!
If you use TypeScript it's more easy. Also newest node adds --async-stack-traces
And since Node is a single-threaded event loop, if the process crashes for one user, it crashes for all the requests being handled by that process.
Crashes are extremely rare in node (and restarts on crashes are handled by deployment platforms) plus unhandled exceptions can be catched with process.on('uncaughtException') which is also automatic e.g. if you use @sentry/node.
JavaScript Fatigue ๐ซ there is a new library/framework vying for attention every week! (...). Hackernoon post on how everything from last week is obsolete because XYZ framework "changes everything" (for no good reason!).
Nowadays JavaScript package ecosystem is rapidly stabilising and because we went through many iterations of tools, latest ones are pretty good. Compare it e.g. to ruby ecosystem where there was less change but latest versions of "preferred" packages are often first of their kind and poor quality.
JS did not need class. It's a horrible interface!
It is far better than using prototypes back in the days and plays well with typescript. Classes don't need to be used as entities that encourage mutability, they can be used as simple typed containers of data, that also allow mutations if performance requires it (no copying). Matter of opinion.
Facebook trying to "own" the JS ecosystem
Corporations like Microsoft, Google, AirBnb, Uber, Netflix are also prominent in JS ecosystem. For me personally it's not a problem, even it's an advantage because I know they have resources to support libraries and tools they've created practically forever.
Don't get me wrong I really like Elixir and would love to use it instead of Ruby if it had mature enough package ecosystem. While it's great choice for API and servers, it's not replacement for Node (at least for web apps, you can't make universal app in it, see Next.js). I think this post could rather pick "Why Not Stick with Ruby?" topic instead.
@KristerV thanks for randomly submitting it.
I couldn't help myself. This thing is very well written.
I'm just starting out with Elixir and the official tutorial is very good apart from the fact that starting from GenServer stuff it had too much "how" and not enough "why" to the point of me forgetting why I wanted Elixir in the first place. Finding this very well written topic made me remember :) so thanks @nelsonic ;)
you can't make universal app in it, see Next.js
Hmm, I'm using Next.js and I prefer keeping front and back codebases separate anyway. My goal is to use Next.js in front and elixir in the back. I'm only starting with elixir, but can't really see why I can't write a full blown webserver with elixir. I do find myself thinking in the old mindset - maybe this is also why you think Node can't be replaced? The main thing I love about Node is the plain simple JSON support, but not exactly a show stopper.
the post is filled with a lot of claims with no reasoning to back those up
Just to point out that while this comment HN is absolutely right, sometimes we need a personal experience (just like sometimes we need an opinionated framework) more than an in depth analysis.
Hmm, I'm using Next.js and I prefer keeping front and back codebases separate anyway.
It's not about keeping backend (API) and front-end separate (which is fine), but SSR with combination of making a progressive web app.
@sheerun could you elaborate what you mean by a progressive web app and why I can't have SSR if the backend is separate?
As defined by https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/
I never said you can't have both. I said that Elixir is not replacement for Node for web apps because of SSR, it can be only be used instead of Node when Node is used to serve API requests which is rarely the case: nowadays Node is mainly used for 1. writing universal libraries 2. writing apps and bundling them with webpack/parcel/etc for different targets like browsers or native apps
Don't really want to hijack this topic so last question:
I can still have Next.js and SSR in the frontend and Elixir serving the data in the back. So what is stopping me from writing a Fast, Reliable and Engaging frontend?
Nothing. Again my point is that "Why Not Stick with JavaScript/Node.js?" is not valid question because nowadays Node.js is used mainly for things that Elixir isn't fit for.
Elixir and Node don't compete with each other, they complete each other.
When the OP already knows Java and Scala, I don't see any value in adding Clojure to that stack.
Well unless you want async (CSP), STM, lazy sequences and other features of Clojure that people love. I only know Scala devs who gave up on Scala because it is overly complicated and generally not worth the effort to learn. Clojure can be learn in few hours.
True, but you should also give Elixir a try. It's very nice
I have been using it for quite some time and prior to that Erlang as well. :)
'Management (at "big" companies) who don't (want to) understand functional programming or the concept of people enjoying their work, will never see the point of Elixir.'
LOL. I must say that since I've gotten into Elixir I haven't had this much fun programming since learning Ruby. The two are simply a joy to use but Elixir is quickly becoming even more fun.
Additionally, I saw the ExUnit "dynamic" comments last week for the first time ( where the tests will fail if the examples in the comments are out of place!!! ) and I almost felt like I was in church. Hallelujah !
Elixir RAM and the Template of Doom: https://www.evanmiller.org/elixir-ram-and-the-template-of-doom.html (or "Why Elixir is So Much Faster at rendering templates than other languages)
NPM using Rust for CPU bound process:
https://www.rust-lang.org/static/pdfs/Rust-npm-Whitepaper.pdf
thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19294512
Thanks, @nelsonic for this excellent analysis. After a few weeks of using it I agree with most of your points, it is a pleasure to read/write code. There is a few things that in my opinion are the cons:
- Tooling: In my opinion, the tools that we have for Elixir right now remember me the early days of Node.js, they are rough, not always working (debugging for example) and there is little community around, however they seem to be still evolving
- Adoption: If we take Google Trends as adoption, we can see that is stalling for last two years
- Sponsorship: I could not find big companies sponsoring Elixir. Most interesting meetups occurs around Krakow (Poland) homebase of Josรฉ Valim. All this effort by one man only, could drag the growth down in long term
- Libraries: Developers love to reuse code, even that sometimes can be a great challenge to write a library by yourself, we love to reuse. In Elixir, the ecosystem is limited. Hex is a great idea but small in terms of options
@coolxeo Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts! ๐ก
We're stoked you've tried Elixir and found/read this thread! ๐
Thanks for adding these bullet points of areas to consider, I hope I've addressed them below ...
(if not, please let us know! and if you have more questions/concerns with Elixir, please share!)
Tooling
Yes, Elixir is not as advanced as older languages (C/C++/Java/JS/Python/PHP/etc.) in terms of tooling,
but that should not stop anyone from using it. Everything we need to write, test and maintain code is already available in Elixir for all major text editors and IDEs; Syntax Highlighting, Code Completion, Static Code Analysis/Compilation and "Hot Reloading", etc. are all mature and we use them every day.
We especially like the fact that:
mix formatis built-in and easy to configure. It means most Elixir projects follow the same formatting conventions and are thus easy to "onboard" new devs who have never seen the code before and maintainable because there is no "strange" code.doctestsallows "living" inline documentation in the code that test the functionality and alert the dev when changes are made.IEx.pry/0andIEx.break!/2are great for debugging.- telemetry is a superb built-in library for dynamic metrics and instrumentation
(it's like having New Relic built-in to your app for free and without any effort!) - Zero-downtime Deployment to any platform/cloud provider is seamless with
distillery.
What more do we need in terms of "tooling"...? ๐ญ
An often over-looked fact is that when there is too much "tooling" it's mega intimidating / distracting ...
https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/898733596248162304
The differences in tooling even within "competing" factions of the JS ecosystem means that:
a) there is less transferability of skills from one company/team to the next (devs have to re-learn a lot!)
b) new users are often bewildered by the variety tooling and are paralysed by the paradox of choice.
We agree that Elixir can feel like "early days" of Node.js (or any other nascent runtime) at first glance,
however we counter-argue that this is not the reality because people often forget that Elixir is standing on the shoulders of the Giant that is Erlang/OTP. Erlang is super mature! OTP is at v21.3 and is available for all platforms. The only "reason" to not use Elixir (for the category of computing where it shines) is "FUD" or "lack of time" (to learn/master it).
Adoption (Google Trends...)
It's unclear from Google Trends what the scale on the Y-axis is.
"Interest over time"
"Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term."
According to Google Trends, Elixir "peaked" in Feb 2017: (we all know that's not the case ...)
The latest available score relative to peak is 83 for Elixir:
The same Google Trends Search for JavaScript shows a steeper decline in interest: 72 relative to peak.
Does that mean people are writing less JS? ๐ค
JavaScript shows no sign of "slowing down" and "Atwood's Law" will inevitably come true ... ๐
โAny application that can be written in JavaScript,
will eventually be written in JavaScript.โ ~ โJeff Atwood
"Enterprise" is still using Java far more than any of the "new" programming languages.
If we guide ourselves by the Tiobe index: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index
We would all be using Java everywhere for all things. ๐ (only Oracle wants that ...!)
Most people don't realise that many companies that are using Erlang/Elixir are saying they use Java:
"we're telling everybody we're using Java"
Companies who are secretive about their tech for "competitive" reasons don't want their direct competitors to know about what they are using so they actively lie to obfuscate it.
https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1104298407231922176
Finally on the "Adoption" point, Could it be that tech-savvy people were switching to DuckDuckGo at roughly the same time? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F05zw489
So as millions of privacy-concious people switch to DuckDuckGo, Google Trends might not be capturing the searches for Elixir ... because Google no longer publishes the query volume on Google Trends, it's impossible to tell what "83" means for Elixir.
If they shared how many people searched for Elixir and found what they were looking for it would be way more interesting than the crude "interest" measure.
Sponsorship
Thankfully both Josรฉ Valim and Chris McCord creators of Elixir and Phoenix respectively are paid by their employers (Plataformatec and DockYard) to work on the language and framework.
For a well-established technical consulting partner, people should consider either of these two companies and a third: Erlang Solutions https://www.erlang-solutions.com is also a great option.
We feel this is more than enough "sponsorship" to help the language & web frameworks move forward. If a "big tech" company like Google, Amazon or Microsoft were to sponsor the language/framework it might lead to faster adoption but it would also lead to compromise.
I'm a huge fan of the "BDFL" model where visionary leadership and complete knowledge of the codebase and roadmap leads to a vastly superior product.
Linux, Python, IPFS and Ethereum are other good examples where a "BDFL" works really well.
We have complete faith in @josevalim to continue developing the language as a practical and powerful programming language for years to come.
Watch his ElixirConf 2018 Keynote "The Next Five Years" for more detail/insight:
https://youtu.be/suOzNeMJXl0
Phoenix is every bit as "mature" as any other "more popular" web framework (e.g: Rails or Django)
The number of contributors: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix is a really good sign:
I would argue that Phoenix miles ahead of anything in Node.js both in terms of features, stability and maintainability. For what we need in the apps we are building (built-in websockets, a great ORM, schemas with rock-solid migrations), Elixir+Phoenix is the obvious choice.
Libraries
Indeed, everyone loves re-using code, especially well-maintained and performant code. ๐
I would argue that most of what we need is already on https://hex.pm
The growth in download stats for hex.pm is a clear indication that the Elixir growth is still very much accelerating. (yes, it's nowhere near go-dep, NPM, PyPi, etc. in terms of quantity ... but that's "OK"!
As long as what we need is available and quality is great, we don't care about the quantity!)
People often overlook that how easy it is to import/use an Erlang package.
e.g: we are using Erlang's Crypto library in our Phoenix Encryption Example:
https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-ecto-encryption-example
The thing most devs completely forget is that many of the internet's useful products were built without the vast array of libraries that exist today. GMail, Google Maps, Google Docs, were all built long before NPM was born and all of those apps worked beautifully without a single NPM package.
Yes, the Elixir ecosystem may appear to be "limited" on the surface, but we would argue that all the "building blocks" are already available to build fantastic web apps. ๐
Look no further than Discord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord_(software) for an example of an app built with Elixir that is growing phenomenally fast. ๐
The company has just over 100 people (Devs, Managers, HR, Finance, etc) and is valued at over $2Bn ...
A huge part of their core product is available for free in OTP (VoIP/Video/Chat) and the fact that they use Elixir means they can build/ship features much faster than their competitors.
We have written a couple of packages on Hex.pm (because they did not exist for Elixir) and the experience was great! see: https://github.com/dwyl/cid
Further/Recommended Reading
- Phoenix LiveView: https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/12/12/phoenix-liveview-interactive-real-time-apps-no-need-to-write-javascript
- Elixir Telemetry: https://blog.smartlogic.io/instrumenting-with-telemetry
- How Discord Scaled Elixir to 5M Concurrent Users: https://blog.discordapp.com/scaling-elixir
- @blackode's Elixir Tips https://github.com/blackode/elixir-tips
- Way more packages/projects: https://github.com/h4cc/awesome-elixir
- GitHub Trending Elixir: https://github.com/trending/elixir
- Hundreds of Remote Jobs: http://plataformatec.com.br/elixir-radar/jobs
@Danwhy can you share your list of the companies using Elixir in London?
Clojure is a great language
No
Clojure is a great language
No
First of all No language is for everyone and while we are at it, It is helpful that the language be simple so that we can focus on task at hand. In the words of @ericnormand the problems we are solving are already hard enough lets not make the language we use be an added source of that complexity. Clojure is simple one can learn it in a day, same cannot be said about elixir.
Clojure is simple one can learn it in a day, same cannot be said about elixir.
If I can't learn Clojure in a day, will you consider yourself wrong?
Yeah! But you gotta give it a try first. There are many advantages to Clojure for instance it can be used on JVM as Clojure, but can also be transpiled to Javascript using clojurescript compiler, it is even hosted on the Erlang VM as clojerl https://github.com/clojerl/clojerl , If you wanna write iOS or Mac OS apps there is https://github.com/galdolber/clojure-objc , if you wanna produce binary executables there is https://github.com/schani/clojurec/ and GraalVM does Elixir provide such a cross platform way to write apps? I guess not.
I used it for some time in the past.
@metacritical thanks for joining the discussion. ๐
We agree that Clojure is a lovely language. โ
One of the main reasons we chose to use Elixir is for the Actor concurrency model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
We've seen people rely on JVM "features" to create maintenance nightmares and want to avoid it.
This is not to say that "all state sharing between threads is bad", we just prefer to not have that complexity in our programs and find that Elixir helps us to write far more predictable code.
Predictable in the way it handles failure (without exploding) and how the expectation of some failure is baked into the language/VM.
This thread is not the place to discuss the merits of different concurrency models.
Anyone curious about this should read @paulbutcher's superb book
"Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks: When Threads Unravel" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011T7C9BA which covers Clojure extensively.
Paul is a proponent of Clojure/JVM and still favours Actor Concurrency for specific situations.
A primer on Concurrency in general and Rust specifically by @alexcrichton is well worth watching:
https://youtu.be/Dbytx0ivH7Q
Elixir/Erlang works really well with multiple cores and it's lightweight processes are exactly what we want.
As stated above, Rust would be our next choice if Elixir was not available.
https://github.com/clojerl/clojerl is a good way to run a basic service on the Erlang VM
but it's not, and never will be, a way to run Clojure "natively" BEAM because:
"Some of Clojure's features are implemented by relying on the underlying mutability of the JVM and its object system. ... very hard or nearly impossible to port some features into Clojerl's implementation" ๐
On the topic of learning: we have seen people with no previous experience learn and ship Elixir code to production in one day. For people who have never done any programming it may take a few days, but for anyone who already knows a couple of programming languages it's very quick to learn.
People who have already decided to use Clojure should stick to what they feel comfortable with. ๐
We are really happy with Elixir as it fits our use-case perfectly.
Thanks for the kind comment @nelsonic.
I am a fan of both Clojure and Elixir - either would be a great choice. ๐
Clojure good language? No, it's a piece of shit.
@GildedHonour I think youโve made your feelings on Clojure pretty clear, but thatโs not the topic of this thread. Letโs please stick to Elixir here and do feel free to open an issue on the clojure repos with any issues you have with it ๐๐ป
@iteles whatever the topic may be, everyone is free to tell whatever they want to, everywhere on github. And they don't need a permission from others.
@GildedHonour It's curious that you think so.
dwyl is an open source community, with a code of conduct, known for its values and being welcoming of beginners. We have an active group of maintainers who genuinely care about the community and its values.
I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, but when your comments have been unhelpful/off-topic and then become rude when you're asked nicely to stop (leaving no room for misinterpretation of your tone), you create a hostile environment for others, directly conflicting with this organisation's values.
Let's please get back to useful conversations like the main topic of this thread ๐
@nelsonic Ofcourse I understand your post is reasonable, I was just trying to answer GildedHonour, but he might just be a spammer. Again thanks for the kind reply.
Let's please get back to useful conversations like the main topic of this thread ๐
I think better not engage With GildedHonour, it might be a spam handle.
"Don't tell others how to behave". Do you respect this value? No. What then are you talking about?
Value-shmalue
OK these results will surprise you, so according to the stack overflow survey this year Elixir and Clojure are equally popular!
Share this with all the developers who are (still) shipping backend Node.js code:
https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/the-secure-developer/ep-29-the-state-of-open-source-docker-security
after you've listened to the episode, you should have context to understand why this tweet scares me:
https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1097307043881308161
(For Web Application)
i've already use PHP -> Ruby -> Crystal -> Python for production, and i "leave" all of them to focus on elixir, so Would you still pick Elixir in 2019? BIG YES
conclusion I Love Elixir & Go
Thank you Nelsonic for providing fantastic insight into Elixir. Contributions from other members have been very informative too. I have been reading about Elixir for the past 2 years and find it fascinating.
I am hoping you can steer me in the right direction. I'm thinking of venturing into a micro start-up of my own, I say micro because I intend to fund the business out of my own savings and have to manage the budget carefully. I have a clear and concise plan of what I want in terms of project concept, overall functionality, UI and UX but would like to work with a smart developer who is friendly, flexible, creative and can provide useful input and guidance. Here are my questions:-
- How do I identify a seasoned Elixir developer who can help me develop my project successfully and reliably for a very reasonable project fee ?
- How are briefings and contracts handled ?
- Confidentiality and a non-disclosure is very important to me.
- How can I go about doing this, I cannot afford to make mistakes.
This is a good post on the topic of โWhy Elixir?โ:
http://underjord.io/why-am-i-interested-in-elixir.html
HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20357055
I'd just like to add the StackOverflow survey for 2019, which states that Elixir is among the top 25 most popular languages, the 8th most loved language and the 5th language when it comes to salaries (which, I doubt could be attributed to the scarcity when it comes to the number of devs now). Just my 2 cents.
I am using Bash, C, C++, Objective C, Java, Python, PHP, Javascript and Elixir. But my true dreamy lover is Elixir with Phoenix framework. I pick Elixir in 2019 and I will pick Elixir in 2020, 2021, 2022, ...
Number of battle tested frameworks, libraries and projects are probably one of the cons of Elixir.
With python, java, and golang that is not the case because of the high rate of adoption.
@nikunjy out of curiosity, how did you discover this thread? ๐ญ
You are clearly a very competent/accomplished developer and you mean well by your comment,
but the argument that other languages have more libraries/frameworks/users than Elixir is really no longer relevant to someone deciding to use Elixir in 2020. Every feature you could possibly want is available in Elixir right now. The ecosystem does not need to have millions of redundant libraries competing for attention. It needs one library that solves the problem with the least effort, lowest maintenance and great performance.
Yes, Python, Java, JavaScript, Go, C# (etc.) have higher adoption rates.
This is inevitable as they are either used in Universities/Colleges or heavily promoted by big companies.
The popularity of Python or JavaScript will not decline, that has been noted above.
Many Good Frameworks/Libraries vs. One Great Framework
It's remarkable how the Elixir community has focussed its effort on building a single amazing framework. If you want to build a Web App/API with effortless highly scalable WebSocket support, Phoenix.
Phoenix really delivers on the promise of "productivity". We have seen complete beginners start contributing to a Phoenix project within a day of learning with no prior Elixir experience. We've seen experienced Java developers take days just to get a (similarly sized) project running on their laptop. โณ
I would counter-argue that having too many frameworks/libraries causes confusion and indecision. In Elixir land there isn't even a question of "which framework to use", people just get on with building their App/Service and ship the product.
How Many Packages is "Enough"?
At present Node.js has 1.34 million packages and Golang has even more at 1,82 million!
In both cases these ecosystems have way too many packages which leads to decision fatigue.
I have never taken more than a minute to find a library in Elixir or Erlang, the ecosystem is mature and robust. If anything it's "under the radar" which means there is less noise. There are many companies using Elixir including Brex but that should not matter in people's decision to use the language.
Hex.pm (Elixir package system) has 9.79K Packages at the time of writing.
That is a similar order of magnitude to Pub the ecosystem for dartlang (11.5K Packages).
You don't see/hear anyone talking about the lack of packages for building Native apps with Flutter ...
In fact Dart/Flutter is the fastest growing language/framework combo on GitHub right now.
Hence the consideration for using it in our cross platform native app: dwyl/technology-stack#81 ๐ญ
The lack of packages/frameworks/developers is simply not an issue.
OTP ๐ ๐ฆ ๐ฆ
People should consider Elixir for one reason: OTP.
("One Trick Pony" where the "pony" is a Unicorn and the "trick" is unlimited rainbow flavoured ice-cream):
OTP makes highly reliable distributed software easy to reason about and build.
Elixir is perfect for our use case: Real Time apps with Presence; no other language comes close to this level of simplicity for managing communication between millions of connected users. Trust me I have tried doing WebSockets in all the languages you have mentioned and a few others and they were all a headache.
Community
The thing that I love about Elixir beyond Channels, LiveView and Nerves is the community!
These last few days I've been busy learning how to use Phoenix LiveView.
See: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-liveview-counter-tutorial
But I got stuck on trying to write a test something ... So I opened a question on the Elixir Forum:
https://elixirforum.com/t/how-to-test-handle-info-2-in-phoenix-liveview/30070 Sure enough a few minutes later the creator of Phoenix answered my question with a clear and concise solution.
๐คฏ
How many times have you been learning a concept in Go or Java and had one of the creators or core maintainers of the language take time out of their day to answer your noob question? ๐ญ
Yes, other programming languages have good community, that's not in question,
however the original premise of the comment above is the "cons of Elixir".
I suggest that in addition to a complete set of libraries and an excellent framework, Elixir has a superb community of incredibly helpful people who take time out of their busy schedules to help beginners. If is anyone is any doubt as to adopting Elixir this is the deal clincher (IMO).
Try Elixir Today!
If you haven't tried Elixir I suggest you take a look at: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-chat-example
at the very least you will be able to say that you tried a different programming paradigm (functional).
And if you consider yourself a "full stack" developer, try building something with a reactive frontend without needing a JavaScript framework! see: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-liveview-counter-tutorial
Happy Elixiring in 2020 Everyone! ๐
Hey @nelsonic
I use Elixir at my work. I was researching opinions about different languages and while doing that for Elixir I landed here.
Libraries
It is not about number of packages. It almost doesn't matter if Go has 2 million packages that only shows that people are excited about writing golang.
I am talking about packages:
- That have enterprise support
- Or are open-sourced, followed and used by thousands of people.
JS, Go, Java.. have both kinds of packages. Pick any SaaS provider they almost invariably write libraries for those languages supported.
For most of open sourced technologies you will observe that there thousands of followers and users of a repository. This leads to a very high number of issues being opened and talked about and in turn leads to a robust library.
Community
GIthub followers, Slack channels, even Reddit :D
The sheer massive number of articles is huge in other languages.
๐คฏ
Noob questions are generally answerable by the numerous articles that have been published.
At the end of the day, I write Elixir and previously I used to write golang and before that C++
It is something that is my observation, and at the same time, it is in my vested interest as things get better and I will hopefully be contributing positively in that direction. But it is not a solved problem yet.
You guys, are all experienced developers, have other languages in the past, and years of work. It's easy for you to switch to any new stack and find a job with it. Like Elixir/Phoenix.
But let's consider the backside of it. We see a lot of JS, Ruby, PHP (etc) junior vacancies, and almost ZERO of them for Elixir stack. Every "Elixir" company demands a senior developer. That is a real obstacle to make Elixir popular. Only a few experienced developers decide to change the stack at the peak of their experience and try Elixir. When a lot of beginners even don't try because of a lack of junior positions around.
Even me, with 5 years of Ruby experience and zero at Elixir, can't find an Elixir job outside of the US. They all say "come later, after at least a year of real work".
So, probably the companies, who adopted the stack, should reconsider this practice if they want to have more Elixir developers in the future :)
Would be nice to public such vacancies somewhere if they exist.
@Shoroh the "beginners" perspective is the one we most consider. ๐ญ
That's why we painstakingly write beginner-focussed tutorials for Elixir, Phoenix, LiveView, Nerves, Scenic, etc.
And it's why we started this thread back in 2018 to encourage everyone to learn & embrace Elixir.
Yes, the people in this thread have - for the most part - used several programming languages which gives us a basis for comparison between them. It means we have surveyed more languages and concluded that Elixir is the one we want to use because it has exactly the features we need and a delightful syntax.
We hear you.
It can certainly feel like there arenโt any jobs in Elixir especially recently because of the Covid-19 Layoffs.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/layoffs-prominent-startups-covid-19 ๐
Given that fewer companies are hiring in general and there are more developers unemployed, it's a double-whammy.
It's not pretty. And sadly, it's not going to get better in the next few months. The knock-on effect of the reduced demand in key sectors of the economy (tourism, transport, restaurants, co-working, etc.) will result in a reverse-multiplier effect. I don't want to sound "negative" in an otherwise positive thread, but everyone should hunker down because the economy is not going to "recover" until there is a widely deployed vaccine. Don't expect to find the "perfect" job in the next 18 months. Take the one that fits your needs (paying bills) in the short run even if it's not Elixir. If you already have a job, work diligently to keep it.
The Upside of the Post-pandemic World > Remote Working is Mainstream
The tragedy of both direct and indirect suffering as a result of the Covid19 Pandemic should not be understated.
But we must all move forward and focus on the future; remote work used to be the exception, now it's the norm.
For those of us who don't live in a major Technology Hub (San Fransisco / Silicon Valley, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Shenzhen, Tokyo, etc.) it opens up considerably more options for companies we can apply to work for because they already acclimated to remote working.
The potential downside of more companies doing remote work is the potential for a "race to the bottom".
If this happens it will affect every "knowledge worker" not just Developers. We just know the outcome yet. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Junior Elixir Jobs
Let's dispel the myth that there are no "junior" developer positions available.
For you or anyone else reading this in the future, broaden your search to include more job sites.
Keep searching and maintain your flexibility. Don't expect the job to only involve Elixir,
it's far more likely that it will be a job will be for a "Polyglot" Developer.
But that's OK, because there aren't many people who learn Elixir as their first programming language,
so almost by definition people who know Elixir know multiple languages.
This article is a good starting point: https://dev.to/study_web_dev/where-to-find-remote-developer-jobs-5g0h
Read the comments for even more options. Remember: it's a starting point, not the end.
There are quite a few sites that list Elixir Jobs. (I haven't done an exhaustive search if you know more, please share!)
e.g: https://elixir-radar.com/jobs | https://elixirjobs.net | https://elixir.career | https://remoteok.io/remote-elixir-jobs
LinkedIn has a few: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=1834181744&keywords=elixir
StackOverflow has a few Elixir jobs: https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?tl=elixir
Even UpWork has a few jobs for Elixir: https://www.upwork.com/freelance-jobs/elixir
But I hear that can be a bit "hit and miss".
At the time of writing, there are a 22 remote-friendly or fully remote jobs with "Junior" in the title across the sites that list Elixir Jobs. Granted this isn't thousands like you would see in PHP but it's definitely not "ZERO".
And I'm sure that if I really needed to find a job I would be able to uncover many more just by reaching out to companies that use Elixir. There are currently over 500 companies listed on https://elixir-companies.com/en/companies
many of these will have jobs/roles that they have not publicised. Try to think of it as a "treasure hunt".
I would argue that searching for the "Junior" keyword is never going to reflect the reality because most companies will not put that word anywhere in their job listing even if they don't mind having someone with less experience.
Q: What can I do to maximise my chance of getting an Elixir Job?
- Write some
Elixircodeinpublic, e.g. on your GitHub. Even if it's only basic stuff, it's better than nothing. - Write a tutorial for something you learned so you demonstrate sharing your knowledge. Showing others that you can communicate is essential in remote work. Practice your writing it's your superpower!
- Read all the online learning materials you can find there's a lot for free, learn everything! If you can afford to pay for the books, buy and read them all. Become an expert by absorbing the knowledge it has taken others decades to acquire!
- Add
Elixirto your LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub profile and anywhere you can think of. - Add yourself to "For hire" on Elixir Companies: https://elixir-companies.com/en/for_hire and other job sites.
- Get involved in the
Elixircommunity, start with https://elixirforum.com and stackoverflow.com aim to answer at least one question per day even if it takes you hours to research it, it's the fastest way to learn.
Then, after you have updated all your online profiles to include Elixir,
- Reach out to companies using
Elixirand briefly explain how you discovered them and what you can do for them. Gmail has a daily limit of 500 emails. Use them wisely. Be brief and specific. - Follow up if you don't hear back, send another email. Be polite but persistent.
Most companies have too much work and not enough people to get the work done. If you are prepared to help offload tasks that nobody has time to do like writing docs, tests or other technical debt reduction, you will always be welcome.
Emphasise that you work well alone and as part of a team. You learn fast and ask relevant questions when you don't understand what to do. You don't sit around waiting when you have finished your work, you proactively find the next task that needs to be done even if it's something you don't enjoy doing like writing automated UI tests. ๐
Always remember:
"Nothing will work unless you do." ~ Maya Angelou
@elgalu thank you for your interest in this thread and for sharing this misleading graph. ๐
I can't tell if you're just trolling 
or if you are genuinely interested in understanding the reason why there are fewer Elixir and Phoenix questions being posted on StackOverflow than there are for Rust. ๐คทโโ๏ธ
Throwing in Next.js is a bit of a Red Herring, what has a front-end framework got to do with two backend programming languages and a server-side rendered web framework?
If you really wanted to show a contrast, why not compare it to Flutter?
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=next.js%2Cflutter%2Crust%2Celixir
Everything else seems pretty "flat" when compared to Flutter, right?
And what about the most popular programming language in the world by far, JavaScrpt:
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=javascript
What happened in 2016? Did the popularity of JavaScript suddenly decline?
Are there fewer Apps using JavaScript in 2020 than there were in 2016?
Obviously not! And yet this "Trend" would suggest there was a "dip". ๐
All this graph is telling us is that there are fewer questions being asked on StackOverflow.
The actual number of people and applications using JavaScript has accelerated.
As a "Senior Machine Learning Platform Engineer" you must know quite a lot about statistical models.
And you also know how easy it is to lie with statistics: https://youtu.be/bVG2OQp6jEQ
Especially when there is a hidden agenda that is being pushed. ๐
A Single Graph Doesn't Tell The Whole Story
The Google Trends graph for Covid19 shows a steep decline since the peak on March 22nd:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=covid19&geo=US
What can we infer from this data?
Does is mean that the virus is no longer spreading as fast in the USA?
Nope. The infection rate is still accelerating: https://covid19.who.int
If someone just pasted the Google Trends graph, people could think that the situation is "under control", right?
But it's not though, is it...?
The point is the Google Trend graph doesn't represent the grim reality,
it just shows that people in the US have stopped searching for the term.
StackOverflow is Not Where People in the Elixir Community Ask Questions
I agree that it's a shame that people in the Elixir community have stopped asking questions on SO.
But there are several reasons for it:
- ElixirForum is where people in the
Elixircommunity go to find answers because it's helpful and beginner-friendly.
There are new questions being asked on the forum every hour: https://elixirforum.com/new
And you will always get a helpful reply even for the most "noob" questions.
By contrast if you ask a beginner question on SO it will often be flagged as "off topic", "duplicate", down-voted or closed!
When you search on Google for an issue/error/feature in Elixir, most of the time an ElixirForum thread will be surfaced at the top of the results. That rapidly becomes self-reinforcing. If people find answers on ElixirForum they will ask their questions on the forum too. I always make a point of cross-posting my questions to both places. But in general the Forum has better and more helpful answers.
- StackOverflow is a Unwelcoming and the quality/helpfulness of answers is lower.
Sadly, StackOverflow is widely known to be very unwelcoming to beginners. They even wrote a blog post on it:
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change
When you're in the "Top 3%" on StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/users/511069/leo-gallucci
it can be easy to forget just how intimidating and unwelcoming the platform can be to beginners ...
The reality is that a lot of people have just gone off SO completely.
Some people even consider it to be an "Antipattern":
https://dev.to/codemouse92/has-stackoverflow-become-an-antipattern-3icb
- Most questions in
Elixirare already answered. The language is very well documented and stable.
By contrast when a language or web framework has many breaking changes or a lot of complexity this leads to more questions.
So in conclusion:
Yes, there are fewer Elixir Questions on StackOverflow
because there is a much better place to get help with Elixir.
It doesn't mean Elixir usage is declining ... If anything it's accelerating!
This thread has changed the way I perceive programming languages.
I am learning Elixir rn, with a good grasp of TypeScript, Ruby Let's see how things go!
Thanks a ton for this!
Wow. I'm impressed that this thread is still going. I started learning Elixir in 2018 and, having a history of being both a Ruby / Rails dev and a JS dev ( React, Angular ) I thought that Elixir and Phoenix would be the new hotness and a fertile land of opportunity and bliss.
I do think that Elixir is bliss. Although the learning curve is fairly steep, the rewards of functional patterns , pipes, and the simplicity of thinking, the promise of everything the underlying Erlang ecosystem offers, all of that make it a wonderful language to work with.
However, in 2021, there are some glaring issues that have already been stated throughout this thread.
The first issue is community.
In Denver, where I live, I attended a few Elixir meetups and it became very clear to me that the Elixir community will never compare to the communities that have formed around Ruby, Spring Boot, Node, React, Angular, etc. It's just never going to have that kind of mass appeal and subsequently, the opportunities are slim. Yes, there will be times where if you know Elixir, you can "name your price" because supply and demand is working in your favor. The problem is the demand. Some teams that moved from Rails to Phoenix in 2016 are now migrating to other platforms because it's so hard to find Elixir developers... harder even than finding Ruby devs now. So the pool gets so small that 5 years from now, the opportunities just may be too few and far in-between.
The second issue is Phoenix itself. Of the people I've talked to, Rails beats Phoenix hands down in terms of developer experience. And nothing beats ActiveRecord in terms of the dev experience. This leads to a larger issue.... most everything about Elixir is better and more efficient than Ruby, and most everything about Ecto is more efficient than Active Record, but Active Record and Ruby are 10 times easier to use.
There's something to be said for frameworks and languages that are intuitive and user friendly. Elixir, Phoenix, Ecto are precision tools that are somewhat isolated due to the steep learning curve. Of course, you don't have to use Phoenix if you're using Elixir. But for me, I like to be able to harness the power of frameworks because I don't like to re-invent the wheel when I'm building something.
The way I feel is that if I needed to build a fault tolerant, fast, bullet proof back end for something like a social media platform, and I were developing it and maintain it personally with a few trusted comrades, I would choose Elixir and Phoenix. But if I wanted to build my career on a language and framework that has a large, vibrant community, tons of open source resources, ability to find answers on StackOverflow, etc. etc. ... I would stay far away from it.
IMO Elixir is the tool you want to use to build YOUR business, your company, your software, assuming that you can groom the in-house talent and keep your applications going with your own efforts or a tightly knit team that you are managing. It may also be a good tool if you want to find something to build an expertise in that will get you into a few niche markets.
But if you want to learn a language to build your marketability as a dev to build apps for other people, it's a good choice but its popularity is waning, and you may find that the time invested in Elixir may not be the best investment if you don't have a personal passion for the language and a personal /business use for it yourself.
Highly subjective opinion, I know. Open to pushback and feedback.
You ask me would you still pick elixir for 2021?, after 1 year with Elixir, I Don't think i will continue with it, beside that, Go is the best choice for me, my team and my company
why someone hide my comment? do you feel my opinion attacking your beloved language?
but [Elixir]'s popularity is waning
What is your basis for this assertion? Elixir broke into the top 50 languages of the Tiobe index for the first time this Feb and has maintained it for a second month. I'm not saying it's going to skyrocket through the ranks, but it appears that the popularity isn't exactly waning.
I feel if we are strictly comparing Elixir with Ruby it ends up with a bit of apples to oranges comparison.
Although Elixir has some syntactic sugar to make its syntax pleasant or ruby-like but that's where the similarity ends. Its still all Erlang and BEAM under the hood which is a completely different language and runtime with its own niche which is soft real time systems and easy multicore concurrency. Language wise, Elixir being a functional programming language will also have a different way of doing the same things in a more functional manner as compared to Ruby which is purely object-oriented. On the learning curve, I have seen instances of companies where developers got productive enough to write production quality code in Elixir within 3 weeks with no prior experience with it.
But the goal was not only to provide a faster alternative for Ruby/Rails or web developers in general but also a more developer friendly way to utilize a more efficient runtime (BEAM) which can be used to solve a host of different other problems.
If one looks at what Erlang has been able to achieve with its philosophy (Whatsapp, Riak, Rabbitmq, etc), it gives one an idea of what Elixir is capable of doing as quoting Jose Valim's own words - "Elixir is just a drop on top of Erlang". I am really impressed with the efforts that went into creating Broadway, Nerves and Nx which opens up a host of different avenues to use Elixir outside of web development.
All these said, I don't think practically Elixir will have the similar number crunching performance as compiled languages (unless we are making use of NIFs) but that's not what Erlang was designed for anyways and in the end it all boils down to using the right tools for solving the right problems.
How does Elixir fair with F# and Scala?
@Swoorup this thread is not the best place to ask the comparative Elixir vs. X Language questions.
For that I would recommend being more specific with regards to your use-case and asking on https://elixirforum.com/ ๐ญ
Sophie DeBenedetto @SophieDeBenedetto wrote this excellent post that answers several questions people have about Elixir: "An Elixir Adoption Success Story": https://www.thegreatcodeadventure.com/an-elixir-adoption-success-story/
HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27682432 | PDF: An-Elixir-Adoption-Success-Story.pdf
I posted on this thread a year ago. And I would recommend against using elixir for organizations that are more than a dozen people.
Brex recently moved away from Elixir to Kotlin if you are interested in reading
https://medium.com/brexeng/building-backend-services-with-kotlin-7c8410795e4b
First progress credit card is surely one of the best credit cards out there. Owning these cards means you do not have to step out of your home for building up your credit or checking your credit activity.
https://mailsguide.com/first-progress-credit-card-login-complete-process/
Hi everyone! ๐ Someone just pointed me to this thread. I won't join the discussion per se, since I am obviously biased, but I just want to share that we started a series of articles on companies using Elixir in production on our website. We are adding new cases every 2 months or so and you can check it out and learn how companies like Pepsi, Mozilla, Change.org, and others are using Elixir in production, some with teams of one and others with dozens to 100+ employees. :)
Wow. I was skimming my email and saw that a "Josรฉ " had replied to this thread, and I was thinking : "there's no way that that is Josรฉ Valim. And it's Josรฉ Valim. It's an honor that you would chime in here, thank you. I am definitely going to check out that list ! This is a game changer.
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Hello, can anyone explain me why Elixir is not present in Tiobe index?
@GGuinea good question. The Tiobe index is a general measure of popularity of programming languages based on Search Engine data and other "industry trends". Their ranking algorithm is not public/open and has received plenty of criticism in the past.
Elixir has been in the Top 50 languages in the Tiobe index see: #102 (comment) (above).
But with so many special purpose, niche or trendy programming languages vying for attention on Reddit, HN, Twitter, etc. it becomes a bit of a noisy metric. Often the languages that get featured in the list are the ones with the loudest advocates.
Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of
C++) put it best:
"TIOBE mostly measures "noise" and should report its findings in decibels rather than "popularity."1
Elixir is a general purpose programming language that can be used for many applications. But as noted in this thread, it also has several power features that differentiate it from other languages.
Human Language Comparison ๐ฌ
Sadly, the "my language is better than your language" (playground debate) will never be settled.
It's akin to spoken human languages in that the "popularity contest" perspective will always lead to a false assumptions/conclusion. Rather we need to ask a more specific question regarding usage or use case:
What is the Language useful for?
You appear to know Polish2 ๐ต๐ฑ ๐
According to the CIA World Fact Book: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/world/#people-and-society
The language is not very popular ... (this is a fallacious argument, but bare with me ...)
Does that mean it's not relevant/useful to the 45+ Million people who use it every day?
Just because it's not on a particular list doesn't make it less of a language.
It has a rich expressiveness, history and modern relevance including recent Nobel laureates for literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_literature#Nobel_laureates
Given that the declining population and the growth rate of other languages, Polish will never reach the top 30 languages in the World. But if you wanted to get a specific job done in Poland, there isn't really an alternative.
Apex is not on TIOBE Top 50 either ... ๐คทโโ๏ธ
As an example, I use Apex for occasional consulting work in Salesforce development see: What is Apex?
Apex is a horrible language based on Java that you won't have heard of if you don't use Salesforce.
e.g: https://github.com/financialforcedev/apex-mdapi
Apex will never be on the Tiobe index because it's far too "niche".
But will also not disappear because it's business critical to Salesforce Devs.
Without it tens of thousands of people cannot get their jobs done and they have no alternative.
There are no shortage of jobs for people who know Apex.
Indeed.com has 5,960 jobs listed right now some paying $150k fully remote: ๐คฏ
https://www.indeed.com/q-Salesforce-Apex-Developer-jobs.html
GitHub Popular Languages
Perhaps a more relevant list/metric given that you're reading this on GitHub,
are the most popular languages on the most popular code sharing platform:
https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2021/4 (the data is public anyone can query it)
Elixir comes in at number 20 ahead of Objectiv-C, Haskell, Julia, Lua and Clojure which are all in the Tiobe Top 50.
Conclusion
It's unlikely that Elixir will be on the Tiobe index unless they change their survey methodology or there is a sudden spike in usage or Dev Rel push from a prominent company using Elixir like Pepsi or BBC.
In 2022 there are plenty of companies using Elixir. And thanks to recent changes in work/policy, there are plenty of Remote Jobs (as noted above ... #102 (comment)) including on mainstream job sites like indeed.com: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=elixir
Pick the programming language that fits your use case and ignore the doubters/detractors.
Don't make decisions based on arbitrary lists written by people that aren't solving your problem/challenge.
If you need Elixir, use it; it's a joy! If you get stuck along the way, the community will help you.
Forget the haters and doubters; they aren't doing anything interesting.
It's far easier to be a conformist or critic than a creator. Focus on creating. โจ
@nelsonic what a extensive response. Thank you for that! You are great person.
Example with the human language is enormously pictorial. IMHO your answer should be somehow pinned. I hope many young developers will resolve his / her doubts.
@nelsonic The offer sounds interesting :D
Imagine that you are going to change your professional IT path. You have 3 years of Java / C++ experience. You've received 2 similar job offers: One for Elixir, second for Go. Which would you choose?
@GGuinea indeed the Firezone offer is very interesting
because these technically-skilled YC-backed founders
acknowledge that Elixir/Phoenix experts are rarely available
(because everyone that's good at Elixir already has a job)
but that the tech is simple enough that they can on-board a fast learner quickly:
"If youโre not an Elixir/Phoenix or Erlang expert, thatโs ok!
While a certain amount of Elixir proficiency is ideal for this role,
weโre happy to bring the right candidate up to speed quickly.
We value motivation to learn quickly and hack on
challenging technical problems above all else."
This is a ringing endorsement for the on-boarding speed of Elixir and Phoenix.
@jamilbk, @gongjason & Team are using Elixir for https://github.com/firezone/firezone
Between them, they know several other programming languages and could have picked anything else ...
but have chosen Elixir (and some Ruby) for their awesome project. Highly recommend reading their code. ๐
Even if you don't understand Firewalls or VPN the code is remarkably readable.
It's a great example of how immensely powerful software can be built with Elixir.
Everyone in the Elixir & wider Open Source community should check it out.
Now back to your question ...
Should I pick a Go job or an Elixir job?
Firstly: this is probably not the place for "career" advice. ๐
Definitely write out your own reasoning for making major life decisions.
I know that I would personally take a role in Elixir over Go every time.
But that's just me. And to be clear: I think Go is a really good language!
tl;dr
If you see yourself as risk-averse person who wants to be an employee in a Big Co. pick Go and get really good at it you will have a steady job and corresponding compensation. Pay the bills, work-life-balance, etc. Sounds great! โ๏ธ
If you see yourself as a potential founder/co-founder pick a language that is well-suited to your domain.
e.g: if you're building a real-time social/collaborative communication platform, distributed IoT or other fault-tolerant system, then Elixir is a superb choice. The beauty of Elixir is that in addition to being world-class at low-level networking stuff it's also a great general purpose language with unique features that other languages are trying to copy! see: https://hackernoon.com/adding-a-pipe-operator-to-python-19a3aa295642
Not saying there aren't interesting startups using Go, of course there are! e.g: Temporal.io
But the people using Elixir for their startup understand that Developer Experience matters.
If you haven't read Paul Graham's classic post "The Python Paradox": http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
Read it! And replace Python with Elixir.
Longer Answer ...
It really depends on where you see yourself in 5 - 10 years. ๐ฎ
I've always approached my "career" from the perspective of learning the tech/tools I want to use for my own projects.
as in from perspective of a the Self-funded "Default Alive" Entrepreneur. What language/ecosystem can I be most effective (AKA "productive") in both by myself and in a small to medium-sized team.
I learn the language I want to learn, do a couple of "test projects" for myself then add it to my CV as "basic proficiency".
As soon as I get a chance and where applicable, I try and use the language in a "real" project and fully document the work with beginner tutorials, examples, demos, full tests suites, CI/CD etc. so that others can pick it up too.
Note: never use
newtech - or a less "mainstream" language - on a client/work project
unless you are prepared to go the extra mile to test, document and support it. ๐ญ
"Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code
is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." ~ Coding Horror
I've written TypeScript, JavaScript, Apex, C, Java, Scala Go, Ruby, PHP, Python, VisualBasic, SQL, etc... professionally over the last 20+ years (yes, I'm "old" but also started young!) if it sounds like a lot, it's cause it is. Way too many languages+frameworks to become an "expert" in. bare with me ...
I've never wanted to be an "expert" at a particular language, rather I want to know "enough" to get the job done well.
That usually means that my code always like it was written by a beginner, never anything "fancy" or "advanced".
However I see that as a major advantage, not a negative at all. To me, Elixir code is the most readable by far because of the expressive standard library, pipes and pattern matching.
I've recently read the source code of https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea while implementing: https://github.com/dwyl/gitea
and while the Go code is "OK" and the devs of that project (which was forked from https://github.com/gogs/gogs ...) chose Go for a good reason, I cannot help but think that if they were building it from scratch in 2022 they could achieve a better result in far fewer lines of Elixir code and with considerably less complexity!
But there are More Go or Java Jobs ...
There will always be more jobs in Java and Go, that's a fact that isn't up for debate.
Java because there are billions of lines of legacy code that needs to be maintained
and it's still taught in many universities precisely because there are many jobs, i.e. self-fulfilling prophecy.
Go because it's the "safe" (backed-by-Google) choice that nobody will argue against.
What Job do you Want?
The questions you've got to ask yourself is:
- Do you want one of those jobs...?
- Are you going to enjoy the work?
or hate every minute of the cumbersome boilerplate and complexity? - What tech would you pick if you were building your own startup and wanted to move fast?
In 2022 it's ridiculously easy to write, test, deploy and scale an Elixir / Phoenix App.
If you haven't already tried to deploy to the Fly.io free tier, do it. e.g: https://fly.io/docs/speedrun ๐
No Kubernetes or other DevOps knowledge required. Deploy an app and auto-scale in 20+ regions in seconds!
You don't need an army of devs to build with Elixir ... Just a handful of creative people who learn fast.
Some people want to work in big teams with lots of job-security-guaranteeing complexity. ๐
I know which team I'd rather be on. How about you? ๐ฆ
2022 StackOverflow Dev Survey: Elixir + Phoenix ๐
Elixir has finally been re-included in the SO survey
and surprise-surprise it's the 2nd "Most Loved" programming language:
Phoenix tops the list of "Most Loved" Frameworks โค๏ธ
Also: Postgres is on top for databases! ๐
The people have spoken. ๐ค โฌ๏ธ
In case you missed the discussion on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34530052
Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
Top comment:
"After working with the PETAL (Phoenix, Elixir, TailwindCSS, Alpine.Js, Liveview) stack at $JOB for a while now, I have to say I've never been more productive."
Official Announcement that Elixir is moving ahead with the Type System:
https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2023/06/22/type-system-updates-research-dev/
https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1675900744954785796
A few good comments on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36576352
Very curious to see if this will accelerate or hinder Elixir adoption. ๐ฎ
Have the people from Ruby-land who were going to, already switched over to Elixir? ๐ -> ๐ง
Are there many bigger companies that need Types that will now switch too? ๐ญ
Or are the bigger companies too entrenched in their Java, PHP, C++, etc.
Will the fact that the underlying BEAM Virtual Machine not having types hold this back? ๐ค
Looks like the Type System will replace typespecs: (which make sense):
https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1676224403997184000
I for one welcome this decision and look forward to seeing the implementation. ๐
I've found the typespecs to be a bit "meh"; real Types will be much better! ๐ค
Elixir Saves Pinterest $2 Million a Year In Server Costs: https://paraxial.io/blog/elixir-savings
Currently 3rd on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304851
Worth reading. ๐
May I push a grumpy or sarcastic, and a bit politically incorrect remark ๐ค? Ok, so Elixir & Co is good for climate change, but no one understands or values this? My metrics are the amount and profile demand of job offers in Elixir.
May I push a grumpy or sarcastic, and a bit politically incorrect remark ๐ค? Ok, so Elixir & Co is good for climate change, but no one understands or values this? My metrics are the amount and profile demand of job offers in Elixir.
It's not that simple, I think.
There are several corporations on the market that are imposing their technical stack. (Facebook - PHP, Google - Golang, Basecamp, Shopify, Github, etc. - Ruby on Rails, Twitter, Linkedin, Paypal, Uber, Netflix - Node.js, etc.). Including universities with their implementation of legacy Python for academic purposes.
So the days when a few people could create a modern stack and make it popular are gone. Even if this stack is really reliable, fast, easy to code, and so on. You need a really big company behind. Which usually means it must be a totally new product on the market.
Even Ruby wasn't popular until BaseCamp adopted it and created Ruby On Rails. Even then, it took years for the Ruby stack to become truly popular among startups.
So, Elixir Phoenix is now Ruby On Rails as it was in the beginning. It has the same pros and cons - fewer developers, but these developers are usually experienced professionals. Just like in the Ruby days, you'll need to convince your boss to use the stack, but it's worth it for both the developers and the business.
So yes, we are now in a time machine and seeing the Ruby On Rails stack hit the market. We have a front row seat - we can be really cool developers in this new stack, create plugins, start our own Elixir blogs, create Udemy tutorials, become an influence and become famous. Or we can still find a job in this stack and code happily :)
There is no shame in riding the mainstream either. In the end, not everyone is passionate and ready to move something in the industry. Most people just work and earn money, to be able after 6 PM play games, watch a movie or drink a beer with friends. And they don't give a crap what stack to use or in what company they work or what product they create.
I asked why Elixir/Phoenix isn't more popular on HackerNews a few days ago. That sparked quite a nice conversation which I think should be linked here :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702845
In case you missed it, this was top of HN for much of today:
https://www.leemeichin.com/posts/switching-to-elixir.html
Should you learn Elixir in 2024? (Dreams of Code)
https://youtu.be/Klog_kNDEfI