The Greener Gras

Should a Ruby developer migrate into Elixir territory? I gave this talk at https://rubyconference.by 2020.

Transcript

1. THE GREENER GRASS Stefan Wintermeyer - @wintermeyer
2. Ruby or Elixir? Spoiler alert: It’s not a technical decision. The 5 most active programming languages on GitHub: JavaScript, Python, Java, Rust, PHP
3. http://www.website.com My First Commercial Webpage (1997) https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
4. 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/
5. My First Online Shop was written in Delphi (1997) http://www.website.com https://web.archive.org/web/19970413021718/http://www.swreisedienst.de/
6. 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
7. Biggest Pain = Paradigm Changes Language Programming paradigm Delphi Procedural Perl Procedural PHP Procedural Ruby Object-oriented Elixir Functional
8. Ruby Elixir vs
9. Ruby was published in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto for developer’s happiness.
10. Elixir was created in 2011 by José Valim to be a real concurrent language.
11. 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
12. 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!
13. Regular Switching Between Elixir And Ruby Back And Forth Results In Technical Jet Lag.
14. We all know about Ruby. But what do people do with Elixir?
15. 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
16. Nerves Example: FarmBot https://farm.bot
17. vs But 99% Of The Discussion is Rails vs. Phoenix
18. Fun fact: All players have a solid Ruby on Rails background. @josevalim @dhh @chris_mccord
19. 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/
20. 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
21. How does the 15 Minute Blog example hold on in 2020? DHH’s 2005 grandfather screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY
22. Ruby on Rails @dhh
23. $ 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
26. Phoenix Framework @chris_mccord
27. $ 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
31. How Big Is The Community/Visibility?
32. Twitter Followers 428 K 16 K @dhh @chris_mccord
33. Stackoverflow Questions GitHub Contributors Ruby on Rails 319,073 4,252 Phoenix Framework 3,436 877
34. Phoenix USPs Performance/Speed Scalability High-Availability Systems Hot Deployment
35. "… Phoenix has delivered 15x better performance than Rails …" https://medium.com/@elviovicosa/phoenix-vs-rails-benchmark-2019-f0e68336d557
36. What should I use?
37. Use Elixir/Phoenix if performance is paramount. Technically it is the best choice!
38. Use Elixir/Phoenix if your team doesn’t have (much) Ruby knowledge yet. Technically it is the best choice!
39. Use Ruby/Rails for all other cases.
40. 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.
41. Do or do not. There is no try. Stefan Wintermeyer sw@wintermeyer-consulting.de @wintermeyer