Saša Jurić, author of Elixir in Action, talks about the Elixir programming language, language gaining in popularity. Topics include: Host Nate Black talks with Juric about: Elixir’s relationship to the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM); the advantages of the Erlang ecosystem; the “sweet spot” for Elixir programs; why a new language was needed for the Erlang VM; compatibility between Elixir and Erlang code; how to get some of the benefits of static typing in a dynamic, strongly typed language using type annotations and dialyzer; the difference between imports, requires, and aliases; how metaprogramming and macros are used to build libraries and the Elixir language itself; when to use metaprogramming; situations where Elixir is not the ideal choice; using Elixir for orchestration; techniques for integrating native code and external services; the dual nature of Elixir as a functional and concurrent language; breaking down programming problems into their concurrent and functional aspects; how Elixir can radically simplify a program’s architecture; the relationship between scalability and fault tolerance.
Show Notes
Related links
- Saša’s book, Elixir in Action
- Saša’s blog, The Erlangelist
- Related episodes:
- Getting started guides for Elixir and Phoenix
- Learning resources
- Saša’s talk explaining the BEAM runtime and why is it a great fit for software systems
- Saša’s example-driven post which explains functional and concurrent thinking in Elixir
- Integrating external code into Elixir
- Metaprogramming resources
- Some of Saša’s favorite Elixir/Erlang literature
- List of companies using Elixir
- Aircloak
- Aircloak’s Elixir architecture
Great episode. Thanks.