[erlang-questions] Any Erlang Devs Contemplating Elixir?

[Kevin Montuori]

>>>>> "gs" == Garrett Smith <g@REDACTED> writes:

    gs> I strongly prefer the Erlang syntax over Elixir, especially for
    gs> actual functional programming.

This!

But also: the Elixir crowd seems overawed by the pipe operator.  It's
pretty handy in some circumstances but the community's desire to glom
additional functionality onto the thing is unnerving.  I can't wait to
try to maintain code that's overloaded the meaning of |>.

And this is just hideous: arg1 |> fun(arg2).

I'd also posit that the convention of not using -import() in Erlang is a
good thing.  Lots of Elixir code I've read goes nuts with import() and
use().  Faster, perhaps, to type than fully qualified functions but I
honestly think it leads to maintenance issues.  Especially use() which
can have side effects.

I worked (briefly!) on a codebase that had a "use MyStuff" at the top of
every module. The MyStuff module comprised one autoexecuted __using__/1
function that was merely a list of import statements.  It was a
miserable experience.

I don't mean to conflate the community with the language though.  Elixir
the language has some nice bits.  String handling just works, macros
behave as you'd expect, mix and hex are fabulous tools, the
documentation's well written, tasks and agents are useful abstractions,
and this list continues.  I prefer Erlang to Elixir but would sure
prefer Elixir to Javascript, Ruby, or Java.


k.

-- 
  Kevin Montuori
  montuori@REDACTED