Elixir, initially released in 2012, extends upon the already robust features of Erlang while also being easier for beginners to access, read, test, and write.
José Valim, the creator of Elixir, explains here how he built the language for applications to be:
Elixir actually compiles down to bytecode and then runs on the BEAM Erlang Virtual Machine.
There is no "conversion cost" for calling Erlang, meaning you can run Erlang code right next to Elixir code.
Being a functional language, everything in Elixir is an expression.
Elixir has "First Class Documentation" meaning comments can be attached to a function, making it easier to retrieve.
Regular expressions are also given first class treatment, removing awkward escaping within strings.
Elixir's asynchronous communication implementation allows the code to be lightweight, yet incorporate high-volume concurrency.
Programmers use Elixir to handle thousands of requests and responses concurrently on a single server node.
It has been used successfully for microservices that need to consume and serve a multitude of APIs rapidly.
The Phoenix framework helps structure Elixir applications for the web.
Join the Elixir track
defmodule HelloWorld do
@doc """
Greets the user by name, or by saying
"Hello, World!" if no name is given
"""
def hello(name \\ "World") do
"Hello, #{name}!"
end
end
I have spent time with the Clojure, Elixir & Go tracks and all have been incredibly beneficial, providing self-contained finite problems with which to learn the language. The Go language track has been wonderful in introducing me to the language, what idiomatic code is, and the many different ways in which one can solve a problem.
Once you join the Elixir language track, you will receive support and feedback from our team of mentors. Here are the bios of a few of the mentors of this track.
These are a few of the 92 exercises on the Elixir track. You can see all the exercises here.