tl;dr⌗

Elixir is pretty cool

web frameworks & productivity⌗

Recently I’ve been binge reading about all the different web frameworks: react, nuxt, next, django, ruby on rails, phoenix, go + htmx and many more.
And while I do enjoy learning new things and doing everything myself, I also realized that for true productivity I should stick to a single “productive” framework and not try the new shiny thing every few months.
Something that is stable, has a lot of features, is productive and is highly appreciated by developers using it. This made me settle on phoenix.
The only downside is that I know next to nothing about Phoenix and haven’t ever used elixir or any similar language ever.

elixir⌗

Elixir is dynamic language based on the erlang beam VM. And it is the most mind bending thing I have ever used since I started programming 20 years ago. So far, all the languages I have used are quite similar. Javascript, php, python and Go are all similar enough that you can read what is going on when you have used any of the others. But Elixir does not fit in that list, it is so different that it feels like I’m learning to program all over again, and it is awesome.
It is so humbling to having to “claude” (yes, it’s a verb now) every single step I’m taking. Even simple things like if statements, scoping and function arity feel completely alien. But I do feel like it is worth it.

Every new language you learn makes you realize things about other languages you already know.

awesome⌗

Some examples of why elixir is so alien, but also very powerful.

  • function arity
  • function clauses
  • function chaining
  • recursive functions
  • pattern matching

learning⌗

I highly recommend the course on exercism about elixir.
And as always, find a project you want to solve yourself and use that to learn something new!