Elixir Helsinki Meetup March 26th 2015 - Introduction to Elixir

The very 1st Helsinki Elixir Meetup.

Transcript

1. TITLE (click Header/Footer to change) ELIXIR HELSINKI MEETUP MARCH 26TH 2015 
 ELIXIR INTRODUCTION Teemu Harju Lead Server Programmer Ministry Of Games @tsharju @MinistryGames @ElixirHelsinki
2. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 2 “Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications.” elixir-lang.org
3. YOU KNOW ERLANG? 3 • Made for building massively scalable, soft real-time, high-availability systems. • Dynamically typed functional language. • “Few languages have the mystique of Erlang, the concurrency language that makes hard things easy and easy things hard. ” Bruce Tate - Seven Languages in Seven Weeks • Lightweight processes. • Message passing concurrency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Erlang_(programming_language)
4. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 4 • Runs on BEAM.* • The Erlang virtual machine. • Lightweight, massive concurrency. • Soft real-time. • Pre-emptive scheduler (no futures, promises or callbacks). • Efficient garbage collector. • Functional language. • Immutable data. • Pattern matching. • Metaprogramming. • Polymorphism. *Bogdan/Björn's Erlang Abstract Machine
5. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 5
6. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 6 • Doesn’t suffer from NIH syndrome. • Syntax from Ruby. • Pipe operator from F#. • Nested data structure handling from Clojure. • Kernel.put_in, Kernel.get_in, Kernel.update_in • String sigils from Python. • The Elixir.Task from .NET Task Parallel Library. • The Elixir.Agent • Lowering the barriers to functional programming.
7. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 7 • OTP - the Open Telecom Platform. • The server application framework for Erlang. • Supervisors, FSMs, event handlers, logging, hot code loading etc… • Basically all you need for building a server application. • Very reliable (understatement). • Elixir benefits greatly from OTP. • Elixir compiles directly to Erlang BEAM byte code. • Interfacing Erlang code is very simple. • Many Elixir modules are built on top of OTP equivalents.
8. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR (META)PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 8
9. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 9 • Excellent documentation and tooling
10. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 10 • But Elixir is fairly new language. Is it reliable/stable/performant? • Erlang VM has been very thoroughly battle tested in real life situations. • Elixir 1.0 was released last summer. The APIs are stable and you can start building stuff. • Compiles to Erlang, so the difference to writing Erlang is close to zero. • Is Erlang performant? Depends on what you do with it. (WhatsApp)
11. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE 26-Mar-15 11 • What can I do with it? • Write awesome web apps. http://www.phoenixframework.org • How about your very own distributed key/value storage? http://elixir-lang.org/getting- started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix.html#our-first-project • A game server. That’s what we’re doing. • Where I can learn more? • Here. http://elixir-lang.org/learning.html
12. Elixir Introduction ELIXIR HELSINKI MEETUP 26-Mar-15 12 • Chance to meet other Elixir developers and share experiences. • Nothing too formal. • Always try to provide access to some Sauna and beer. We’re Finns after all.* • Would be cool to collaborate in projects and share learnings. That’s what this is all about. • Topics for future meetups: • Metaprogramming. • Release handling. • Your cool Elixir library? • I think Elixir is cool/not cool because? * Sauna might be a bit difficult to arrange at times and definitely is not mandatory to participate if you’re scared of naked guys running around.