

Elixir Release v1.0.0 - lidashuang
https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/commit/52ff7e96867c027745d29f5d3feb77f546f22c4f

======
emiller829
Really happy to see the 1.0 milestone reached. I've enjoyed my time with
Elixir. It's really approachable, and made a lot of Erlang/OTP concepts start
to click for me in ways that they just hadn't, before.

Syntactically, it's a pleasure to use as a long-time Ruby guy, which I suppose
is no surprise given José's presence in the Ruby community.

However, all of this aside, what makes me the most excited about Elixir is
José, himself. It's been my experience that when a language/framework has a
BDFL, something of that person gets infused into its community. Anyone who's
interacted with José will tell you he's an incredibly friendly, humble, and
downright _thankful_ person.

Elixir is set up for success in so many ways, but the community aspect is the
one we just can't afford to ignore.

~~~
turnip1979
Lack of jobs is a problem :( It is a nice language but has stiff competition
from Go.

~~~
hackerboos
I envision Erlang shops moving to Elixir.

~~~
nox_
Hah, yeah, let's port everything for no obvious reason.

~~~
rmgraham
Erlang and Elixir play very well together. I imagine Erlang shops "moving to
Elixir" will be in the form of Erlang shops hiring people with Ruby experience
and letting them use Elixir so they can get up to speed faster.

~~~
dragonwriter
I knew Ruby pretty well before trying Erlang and used Erlang before trying
Elixir -- I still find Erlang _easier_ to write in that Elixir.

Elixir is more visually similar to Ruby, sure, buts its substantively not very
similar, so the visual similarity is, if anything, a detriment, IMO.

~~~
coldtea
Perhaps the problem is you used Erlang before trying Elixir.

For the typical programmer coming outside the Erlang/Elixir environment,
Elixir is by far the more familiar and easier to pick up.

~~~
dragonwriter
May be. It also may be that I have a lot less attachment to superficial
syntactical similarity than lots of other people seem to -- I see lots of
objections to languages not based on substance but based on the lack of
familiar superficial structure, and that's not something that's really
bothered me (one advantage, perhaps, of having learned -- even if only at a
fairly superficial level in some cases -- several languages with radically
different syntax in grade school), so "it superficially looks familiar" isn't
bypassing, for me, a stumbling block lots of people seem to have.

In any case, yeah, I'm not saying that my personal Erlang vs. Elixir response
is anything _more_ than my personal response (or that Elixir isn't valuable;
its certainly something I'd like to find time to explore more deeply and I
think it has a lot to offer.)

------
bilalhusain
For the uninitiated, there was a fairly positive critique[1] of Elixir by Joe
Armstrong, the creator of Erlang, last year (at least that's what got me
hooked to Elixir).

[1] [http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-
elixir.html](http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html)

~~~
infinite8s
That's a great read! Were the warts he pointed out ever addressed?

~~~
bilalhusain
I'll try to cover couple of them. Hopefully, others can fill in:

\- funs have an extra dot in the name: not fixed because that will lead to
inconsistency [1]

\- send operator: removed earlier this year and the operator is reincarnated
as comprehension operator (comprehension being more ubiquitous [2]); although,
the proposed syntax wasn't adopted

Not sure about funs and def. It appears that not much was discussed about
versions in source file and docstrings inside function definition (module doc
is already inside); the later one can be dismissed being a common bikeshed in
PL design.

So, yeah, most of the proposals couldn't make it because of complications.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-
core/_kEBXO0NR...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elixir-lang-
core/_kEBXO0NRDY/discussion)

[2] [http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/18.html](http://elixir-
lang.org/getting_started/18.html)

------
samuell
For anyone wanting to know more about Elixir, all the videos from this year's
ElixirConf are available on the web [1]. The opening keynote by Dave Thomas is
an eye opening "must watch" [2].

[1]
[http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014](http://confreaks.com/events/elixirconf2014)

[2] [http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-
keyn...](http://confreaks.com/videos/4119-elixirconf2014-opening-keynote-
think-different)

------
felixgallo
Jose Valim is a pretty incredible person. Ships top-tier code at a high level
consistently, thinks thoughtfully and strategically, and engages with the
world in such a calm and positive way. The BEAM ecosystem is richer for his
presence.

~~~
purephase
Agreed. Always pleasant to see his name attached to projects. Gives me reason
to look into them further.

------
knewter
Required self-promotion: If you're interested, I have produced over 12 hours
of content across 106+ videos around Elixir, at
[http://www.elixirsips.com](http://www.elixirsips.com)

I started when I was first learning Elixir. Was already a pro with Ruby and
had around 3 months of Erlang experience at the time. The first video was
nearly my first experience with Elixir ever. Some of the more fun projects
I've built with it have included synthesizers, API clients, and websites.

The release of 1.0 gives me goosebumps. José's done great work, and always
does.

------
johnzim
Congratulations! Great job getting to 1.0!

The Erlang VM is a beautiful piece of engineering - anything that brings
people into its orbit is good for programming.

------
tiffanyh
In case you are wonder why the excitement about Exilir ... Exilir allows you
to easily create DSL in Erlang.

Phoenix is a great example that has used Exilir to create a DSL that is
similar to Ruby on Rails.

[http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-
sh...](http://www.littlelines.com/blog/2014/07/08/elixir-vs-ruby-showdown-
phoenix-vs-rails/)

------
careersuicide
This release is doubly exciting for me because it means my copy of the
Programming Elixir book should be shipping very soon!

I think I can very closely relate to Dave Thomas when he expressed his
excitement about Elixir and how similar it was to what he felt when he first
encountered Ruby. Early last summer I took a fairly deep dive into Elixir and
discovered that it left me with the same feelings as when I started to explore
Ruby at the suggestion of my then boss many years ago. It just made sense.
From the structure of an application to the way pattern matching works and
even the larger ecosystem. I know a lot of people compare Ruby and Elixir
because of the superficial syntactical similarities but there's something
deeper there that makes me almost giddy: once you know the basics a lot of the
rest just sort of seems to fall into place. Unlike a lot of other languages
the learning process isn't filled with head-tilting moments of confusion, just
lots of nodding up and down while thinking "Of course that's how it works!"

------
sandGorgon
A genuine non-flamebait question - if one were to write a Whatsapp-like
messaging system _today_ , would you use Erlang, Elixir,Scala,Java 8 or Go?

I'm kind of wondering whether Go is not already eating into Erlang (and
Scala). I am not an expert, but I understand that Go is not at par with Erlang
_today_ , but I am wondering about a 3-year bet for a startup.

~~~
sh1ps
I (personally) would bet on Elixir, particularly if the team writing it would
be learning an alternative like Go anyway.

Go can try to reach parity with Erlang one day...but Elixir already _is_
Erlang...That combined with the fact that Elixir's package management already
feels light years ahead of Go's disaster and I think it's a winner. I'm sure
I'm wrong and the flames of Go lovers will engulf me in the responses, so take
this with a mountain of salt.

~~~
sandGorgon
Are you taking into account the recent efforts in the Go ecosystem to fix the
pkg management issue [1]

I may be short sighted, but I seeing the ecosystem around Go to be much more
... accelerated than Erlang.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7956078)

------
jpgvm
Awesome power and maturity of the Erlang VM + modern syntax and hygienic
macros... such beauty.

------
hderms
Elixir is an amazing language on top of a time-tested VM and incredible
concurrency model. It's been a while since I've been so excited about a
language.

It's an incredibly cohesive language that doesn't appear to have any serious
flaws, as far as I can see. It's impressive that it's come so far along in
such a short amount of time.

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rdtsc
Great work Valim, Eric and everyone else!

I was following their progress and there was a constant and steady stream of
changes over the last years.

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gcanti
I am very happy, I can not wait to get my hands on

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tieTYT
Is it recommended that you learn Erlang before you learn Elixir, or can you
jump straight into Elixir without Erlang knowledge?

~~~
alco
Erlang knowledge is not a requirement to start learning Elixir. You will end
up learning about Erlang programming model anyway because Elixir builds on top
of it.

By "programming model" I mean things like immutability, concurrency, fault-
tolerance, and the way you design systems with OTP.

------
kornakiewicz
Well done, guys.

