The First Few Sips

Haskell, Clojure, Scala, Scheme. We all have a laundry list of functional programming languages that we tried to have our functional programming epiphany with, but it just didn’t happen. Then along came Elixir. This exciting new programming language ripped the clothing off of functional programming (FP) and showed us that FP isn’t some esoteric paradigm reserved only for those with PhDs in Math Wizardry. Elixir showed us that FP is about the transformation of data -- and that it can be fun!

As a newcomer to Elixir and coming from an object-oriented background, join me as I share my thoughts and experiences from my journey learning Elixir. Other newcomers should be able to relate. The more experienced Elixir users will be able to see where new users are getting hung up at so that we can target pain points and increase the adoption of Elixir.

Transcript

1. THE FIRST FEW SIPS
2. Richard Bishop Software Developer/Consultant (you can hire me!)! I write (sometimes): rubiquity.com! I complain (frequently): @rbondev on Twitter
10. Why Elixir? 1.Curiosity! 2.Concurrency! 3.Maintainability
11. THE FIRST FEW SIPS
12. “Elixir is like Ruby on the Erlang VM” FIRST SIP
13. Functional Programming
14. Fauxnctional Programming
16. Pattern Matching
17. function talk(animal)! if animal.type == "cow"! puts "Moooooo"! elsif animal.type == "pig"! puts “Oink oink"! end! end
18. class Cow! def make_sound! "Moooooo"! end! end class Pig! def make_sound! “Oink, oink"! end! end class AnimalPresenter! def talk! puts @animal.make_sound! end! end
19. defmodule AnimalTalker do! def talk(%{type: “cow”}) do! ! “Mooooo”! ! end! ! def talk(%{type: “pig”}) do! !! “Oink oink”! ! end! end
20. RECURSION Useful for more than just! job interview questions
21. Imperative Problem Solving Sub-Problem Outliers Problem
22. Recursive Problem Solving Outliers Sub-Problem Problem
23. IMMUTABLE DATA STRUCTURES
24. class Orders! def initialize(orders = [])! @orders = orders! end! ! def by_price! ...! end! ! def by_user! ...! end! end! Duplicated! else where?
25. STATE “A specific value for an identity at a point in time.” - Rich Hickey
26. TIME
27. TIME
28. TIME
29. FIRST SIP RECAP Functional Programming! Pattern Matching! Recursion! Immutable Data Structures
30. SECOND SIP “Elixir is like CoffeeScript ! for Erlang”
31. Better Tooling
32. First-class Docs
33. Metaprogramming
34. “ Never use a macro when you can use a function ” Macro Mantra™
35. A LANGUAGE OF MACROS defmacro unless(clause, options) ...! if(unquote(clause), ! do: unquote(else_clause), ! else: unquote(do_clause))! end! defmacro if(condition, clauses) do! ...! end!
36. Build the language up toward your program Bottom-Up Programming
37. SECOND SIP RECAP Improved Tooling! First-class Documentation! Metaprogramming! Responsible Macros (hopefully)
38. “Actors are more object- oriented than objects” THIRD SIP
39. ACTORS
40. PROCESSES
41. OTP Hint: It isn’t a disease
42. THIRD SIP RECAP Lock free concurrency! What Alan Kay likely wanted! Processes encapsulate state! Supervision Trees
43. “Elixir is a language in its own right” FOURTH SIP
44. THE FOUR SIPS Elixir is like Ruby on the Erlang VM Elixir is like CoffeeScript for Erlang Actors are more OO than objects Elixir is a language in its own right
45. Productivity
46. Magic? When you don’t understand something yet
47. Elevator Pitch
48. Elixir Elixir is a functional, meta-programming aware language built on top of the Erlang VM. It is a dynamic language that focuses on tooling to leverage Erlang's abilities to build concurrent, distributed and fault-tolerant applications with hot code upgrades.
49. Ruby A dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.
50. Elixir Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications.
51. THANK YOU
52. Questions?
53. GIVING PEOPLE CREDIT Elixir color palette by user masyaf of colourlovers.com http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/3203120/Elixir ! State definition from Rich Hickey’s “Simple Made Easy” talk http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy ! Aristocrat posturing with his glass of wine image http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WineisClassy ! Woman sipping coffee while pondering something important image http://blog.febc.org/the-4-step-recipe-for-knowing-god/ ! Sly man enjoying his glass of whiskey a little too much image http://www.scoopwhoop.com/inothernews/whiskey-drinker/