THE GREENER GRASS
Stefan Wintermeyer - @wintermeyer
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Ruby or Elixir?
Spoiler alert:
It’s not a technical decision.
The 5 most active programming languages on GitHub:
JavaScript, Python, Java, Rust, PHP
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http://www.website.com
My First Commercial Webpage (1997)
https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
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http://www.website.com
My First Online Shop (1997)
http://www.website.com
https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
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My First Online Shop was written in Delphi (1997)
http://www.website.com
https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
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Programming Languages I’ve Used For Online Shops Since
Language Server OS Development OS Framework
Delphi Win 3.11 Win 3.11 -
Perl Linux Linux -
PHP Linux Linux and macOS -
Ruby Linux macOS Ruby on Rails
Elixir Linux macOS Phoenix Framework
Ruby was published in
1995 by Yukihiro
Matsumoto for
developer’s happiness.
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Elixir was created in
2011 by José Valim to
be a real concurrent
language.
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Titlelize Code Example
"ExMachina Hits 1.0 - More Flexible, More Useful and Support for Ecto 2.0"
=> "exmachina-hits-1-0-more-flexible-more-useful-and-support-for-ecto-2-0!
Ruby Elixir
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/elixir-for-rubyists
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Don’t let the easy to read
Elixir syntax fool you into
believing it’s painless to learn.
Functional is a totally
different ball game!
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Regular Switching
Between Elixir And Ruby
Back And Forth Results In
Technical Jet Lag.
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We all know about Ruby.
But what do people do with Elixir?
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Nerves Is An Astonishing Elixir Project
Craft and deploy bulletproof embedded software in Elixir.
• Raspberry Pi
• BeagleBone
• Generic x86_64
https://www.nerves-project.org
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Nerves Example: FarmBot https://farm.bot
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vs
But 99% Of The Discussion is Rails vs. Phoenix
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Fun fact: All players have a solid Ruby on Rails background.
@josevalim @dhh @chris_mccord
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Ruby on Rails Doctrine
"Optimize for programmer happiness"
Me thinking: But I have been very unhappy with
some gems and very happy with Phoenix.
https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine/
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Phoenix Framework
"Build rich, interactive web applications quickly, with
less code and fewer moving parts"
Me thinking: But I have done rich interactive web applications with Rails too.
https://www.phoenixframework.org
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How does the 15 Minute Blog example hold on in 2020?
DHH’s 2005 grandfather screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY
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Ruby on Rails
@dhh
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$ rails new my_blog
$ cd my_blog
$ rails g scaffold post title body:text
$ rails db:migrate
$ rails server
# Open http://0.0.0.0:3000/posts
Fun fact:
$ my_blog:> tree | wc -l
19572
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Phoenix Framework
@chris_mccord
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$ mix phx.new my_blog
$ cd my_blog
# configure database in config/dev.exs (no SQLite )
$ mix ecto.create
$ mix phx.gen.html Blog Post posts title body:text
# add "resources "/posts", PostController" to router.ex
$ mix ecto.migrate
$ mix phx.server
# Open http://0.0.0.0:4000/posts
Phoenix USPs
Performance/Speed Scalability
High-Availability Systems
Hot Deployment
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"… Phoenix has delivered
15x better performance
than Rails …"
https://medium.com/@elviovicosa/phoenix-vs-rails-benchmark-2019-f0e68336d557
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What should I use?
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Use Elixir/Phoenix if performance is paramount.
Technically it is the best choice!
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Use Elixir/Phoenix if your
team doesn’t have (much) Ruby knowledge yet.
Technically it is the best choice!
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Use Ruby/Rails for all other cases.
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A bad programmer can write a slow program in Assembler.
A good programmer can write a fast program in Visual Basic.
Jon von Tetzchner told me that some 20 years ago.
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Do or do not.
There is no try.
Stefan Wintermeyer
sw@wintermeyer-consulting.de
@wintermeyer