Should you learn Elixir in 2024?

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Elixir has been consistently in the most loved languages for the past few years, but is that reason enough for you to consider learning it in 2024?
With the new year coming soon, it's time to start thinking about goals and achievements for 2024. Will Elixir be one of them for you?
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00:00 Intro
00:25 Get paid
01:20 It's fun...ctional
02:11 Erlang
02:51 Sponsor
04:03 Web Development
05:00 Developer Experience

[@dreamsofcode]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/DreamsofCode/ . The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

[@redhood7105]

Nice viceo as always! I have unlocked premium offer but cannot find 30 days free trial :(

[@dreamsofcode]

@@redhood7105 should be a part of the unlocking! Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll reach out to them!

[@redhood7105]

@@dreamsofcode no, you are right. It lets me pick any course without requiring subscription to premium. Probably UX oversight to clearly indicate I am on a 30 day free trial.

[@Rovsau]

A hands-on example for comparison would be nice.

[@happy_thinking]

Just a note. The reason languages that are used less have higher salaries is probably due to a feature of statistics where small sample sizes give extreme results. Other reasons might include supply and demand and the skill level of developers. So yeah you get a higher salary, but there are also fewer jobs for that technology. Just look at job boards and compare how many ads there are for Java and C# and in contrast how many there are for languages like Go, Rust, and others. (This is normal since the former two are well-established and widely used) In my opinion, you should try out different stuff and try to invest in languages and technologies you think will be relevant in the long term. One other thing that is somewhat important and has been said by people who are probably smarter than me is to learn software engineering not just the syntax of a language. Being a good software engineer means a lot if not all of the skills acquired can be transferred to whatever language or technology you might switch to in the future. For example, if you are a good Javascript developer you will be a good React, but also Vue and Angular developer which is not true vice versa. Also knowing stuff like clean code, data structures, and language patterns will be applicable to most if not all languages/technologies.

[@ultrapoci]

Yeah, I found Zig in that list quite strange in fact. I know nothing about Zig, but it's very niche as far as I know (more than, say, Rust). So I was kinda surprised but its presence on that list.

[@danvilela]

Good reasoning except for clean code part 💀

[@happy_thinking]

@@danvilela Clean code is applicable to any languages so I don't see a reason to disagree. Also by Clean code I mean the concept not a specific book with specific rules. Writing readable code, using proper names, creating proper structure and formatting and a few other things are universally applicable.

[@sufyan56]

I think this is heavily overstated: " learn software engineering not just the syntax of a language." Imo this just comes naturally as you solve problems. I've yet to see somebody deliberately only learn language syntax and somehow fail to pick up good software engineering skills in the process. Meanwhile, knowing a specific language/framework in-and-out actually does make a pretty big difference.

[@orterves]

It'd be great to dig into the elixir actor model and message passing, and why that brings the benefits of fault tolerance and scalability without the nearly as much complexity as other languages

[@dreamsofcode]

This is a great idea!

[@AnthonyBullard]

Please do this. Elixir and other languages on the BEAM(Erlang, Gleam, LFE, etc) are so powerful because of this.

[@AnthonyBullard]

Actually not discussing it is like talking about Go and not goroutines and channels

[@madlep]

I learnt Elixir, and now I am cool, and handsome, and well paid just like Jose Valim.

[@dreamsofcode]

Just gotta create your own language to be mega rich.

[@danb6339]

I started elixir like 3 weeks back, just because I was bored. Awesome language especially with the Phoenix framework

[@EgorGavrilov]

More Elixir content, please. Struggling with web dev stack choices, and your videos make it easier. Thanks.

[@amirhoseinbagheri1999]

1 up. same here. you actually made me wanna learn Go and i'm learning that now, but i've also been wanting to learn Elixir + Phoenix as a side skill. would be cool if we got some material on that (like that Go course of yours). thanks for the awesome stuff.

[@dreamsofcode]

Absolutely!

[@charlesbilbo3822]

Don't learn elixir if you want to get a job in web dev learn Node , React, TS if you go on indeed elixir has like 80 jobs while react has 3400 its not viable in 2024.

[@maxfrischdev]

​@@charlesbilbo3822 Sorry but that is the wrong way of seeing it. Because? Because of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people applying for those thousands of JS/Node jobs..... It's really not (just) about the number of available jobs.

[@amirhoseinbagheri1999]

@@charlesbilbo3822 i know that, and i have some experience with those (and some js frameworks)... the thing is, i don't do this for the money, gave up on that long ago. i don't really like the js ecosystem (no offense, it just doesn't feel good for me). i learn things like go and elixir as food for my soul (plus i'm really bad at them! but it feels nice). any ways... where i live, even those js stuff are hard to get a job at... thanks anyway, i appreciate this

[@nevokrien95]

I am an ML gal but I still learned elixir for playing with making a chatbot online. it was very fun I am happy with it , would love pipes in python

[@alencaru]

If you loved functional paradigm in elixer you should try R or Julia , python is too much OO for data science and ML but It has more tooling for ML than other languages.

[@nevokrien95]

@alencaru I am doing the llm type stuff so sadly python is the only real option. Hardware vendors and hpc libs target python I rarely get to decide which libarary I am even using... the preformance consideration of the specific package usually trump most stuff.

[@viniciusmorgado9722]

Coming from C++ and C# learn Elixir and Python feel very refreshing to me, Elixir in special with it's functional paradigm, for those people that came from static languages I suggest you give a try, is not the end of the world. More content in Elixir please.

[@pedroa.oliveira2323]

BR? Não vejo muitas vagas de Elixir por aqui...

[@Redyf]

Não existe mesmo, mas tem no exterior e são bem melhores do que quaisquer vagas que poderiam existir aqui. O pinterest e discord usam elixir por exemplo.@@pedroa.oliveira2323

[@_Mackan]

Absolutely do more on elixir! It looks fun!

[@cassildaandcarcosa294]

Elixir is one of the few eco systems that you only need to learn one language to do "Deep Stack" work. (Front-end, back-end + Machine learning and AI.) I would love to see more videos on that entire process

[@williambuckley5601]

That's not true at all. To do anything non-trivial in the browser, you need JS/TS. To do anything with ML/AI, you need to look elsewhere.

[@cassildaandcarcosa294]

@@williambuckley5601 tell me you know nothing about elixir with out saying you know nothing about Nx or Liveview

[@cassildaandcarcosa294]

@@williambuckley5601 I'm sorry but Liveview really does 98% what a SPA does, and with Broadway, livebook, and the Nx libs you can do a lot in the ML/AI space. Do you actually use elixir in production? I do.

[@lb1823]

Elixir is just great, beautiful syntax, powerful languange and overall a very worht experience

[@rando521]

i was planning on learning elixer this week couldnt have better timing on the upload .

[@andredasilva6807]

Really enjoyed learning elixir. Its a really nice language. Great video. Keep up the elixir content :)

[@user-fb3vw7kl1t]

Thanks for the intro. More content would be great!

[@WhiteRickRoss]

Great content ! These animations are pleasure for the eyes. Keep going man !

[@DeuxisWasTaken]

Erlang absolutely does not have a dot at the end of each line, it's at the end of an entire statement, rarer than semicolons in the C family. I actually really like its approach to this portion of grammar which is closer to human (or at least latin-esque) grammar with commas separating instructions within a statement, semicolons separating components of a compound statement and periods ending a statement. A lot of Erlang grammar is ancient and weird for many of us and doesn't offer a good QoL, but the periods are probably one of the least offensive parts. The main problem with both Erlang and Elixir is that they're relatively niche in both their primary use cases and level of adoption. Sure, you'll probably get a job that pays well, but it will be harder to find and acquire. Though you did inspire me to move Elixir up my languages bucket list right to the second place, after Rust. Can't wait to know another very interesting language and not be able to find an opportunity to use it, just like with Erlang currently xD

[@zhigechen7318]

Maybe the game developer is an interesting choose?

[@agusdolard1943]

I've been trying to learn elixir but a something that bothers me a lot is how hard (at least for me) is to configure it on neovim with cmp/mason. I would love a "Elixir for nvim" from you (:

[@dreamsofcode]

I have one planned soon! I should be resuming the series again now that it looks like none-ls is the winner

[@antonbeer]

Seems interesting. Would love to see more elixir content :).

[@dreamsofcode]

Absolutely!

[@GenkiTheMuffin]

Please do a The perfect Neovim setup for Elixir!

[@Rtzoor]

in depth elixir content will be awesome!

[@gooniesdev8860]

Elixir is a language that I have wanted to learn for quite some time but until I get a job and become a great developer with Python, I will postpone it (due to work issues) jsjs. Thank you very much for your videos, they are great, greetings from Chile.

[@blackdereker4023]

The salary is not just because of Elixir benefits, it's mostly because there are far too few people specialized in it. Fewer Elixir developers means you need to pay more to find one.

[@aleksd286]

That’s partially true. Elixir is very scalable, it’s like Golang in that sense. Meaning if you have an application written in Node and thousands of users using it every minute AWS will charge you tens of thousands monthly, if you migrate the same logic to Elixir you will significantly reduce these costs.

[@Pariah902]

Yeaaah, more Elixir content 🙂

[@ThePC007]

0:54 I’m very much surprised to see Zig this high up. The language isn’t even finished, yet, lol.

[@dreamsofcode]

I imagine some companies adopted a little too early 😅

[@rj7250a]

Since ZIG is new and is not teached in colleges, i assume most of ZIG jobs are for very experienced system programmers. C/C++ programmers with 10 years of experience also earn a LOT. (Except if it is a gamedev position.)

[@shimadabr]

That's because there are very few Zig developers, and companies that are hiring for that are early adopters hiring senior developers. Also, these developers would not leave their good paying jobs if these companies would not pay well. So these 3 factors makes the average go up. The same rationale is applicable to Elixir, so this metric is basically useless to judge what's the language one should learn.

[@luisfeliperodrigues7831]

bring more content, like building a real scalabe API using phoenix, should be awesome.

[@deathlife2414]

How to making os specific binary in elixir

[@tcdnbm]

what would be a good showcase project to work on using elixir?

[@samandarco]

discord

[@Gaivs]

I worked with elixir for a distributed system a few years back, it can be extremely powerful! It also just feel right to me, especially how functions are define, recursion, lists etc., would love to work with it again some day

[@HikarusVibrator]

anyone know what font is used in the code snippets?

[@chrishabgood8900]

elixir is the only time I have ever seen a 1 microsecond response time.

[@surtrootsurtroot3360]

Could you please make video about Scala in 2024?

[@user-hr8iz9lb3g]

I am interested. Definitely.

[@brownsense1]

Would you guys recommend learning this as a starter into software development? I been on my job for 21 years, looking to move up from warehouse to IT. They have a position for full stack engineer that uses Elixir. I already have an Aws cert. So i figure maybe if i learn this, i can apply for that role

[@m1ambie]

More content on Elixir please :)

[@ricardor8044]

Waiting for the Neovim for Elixir setup video, plsssssssssssss

[@EightNineOne]

MOAR ELIXIR VIDEOS. But seriously, yes please.

[@anon-fz2bo]

1:55 ahh i see whats going on there, thats cool, i actually was confused at first since usually when u define a function in traditional languages, ur expected to create an identifier for the arg(s) ur passing. but it looks like in elixirs case u can define a function to do something based on the VALUE of the arg. so its basically the same thing as comparing the value of the arg passed in the body of the function in a simple if else or match/switch block in other languages.

[@dreamsofcode]

You got it :)

[@AU-hs6zw]

Yes, more elixir content.

[@ongayijohnian8787]

Mahn, please do the dadbod plugins for NvChad

[@nbo304]

I tried to learn Elixir but there are so few materials for it. It seems very esoteric. I wish there were more resources, not just basic stuff.

[@dmmeteo]

1:06 you said “horizontal scalability” but in fact the animation shows vertical scalability😅

[@Voidstroyer]

Elixir is both horizontally and vertically scalable.

[@dreamsofcode]

You got me 🤣

[@Thomas-je5rj]

Would love to see more elixir erlang zig etc. Really not familiar with all of them

[@kinipk3608]

What about a video on ash?

[@aislanarislou]

Would be good a comparison between Gleam and Elixir.

[@elixirfun]

Statically vs dynamically typed languages.

[@devabdul]

Dev what is your suggestion for learn kotlin in 2024?

[@KJV_Philip]

Elixir 💜

[@danielkeefer1901]

Yes please more elixer

[@jackgisel3211]

It reminds of me of Kotlin. Elixir is to Erland what Kotlin is to Java.

[@danvilela]

That the thing. I don’t do kotlin cause i know ill have to venture with java sometimes.. heck i dont wanna deal with erland. No way

[@OneMillionDollars-tu9ur]

Is it meaningful at all to look at average pay by language? I mean the language in use is probably the least impactful factor to a job’s salary.

[@dreamsofcode]

You bring up a great point! Skill level is by far more important, but there are languages, usually driven by the type of work that is done, that pay more than others due to supply and demand. I imagine the type of work that Elixir is used for is probably the driving factor behind the higher salaries.

[@Kabodanki]

Not because many people do something, you should do it to

[@torvic99]

Elixir is fantastic, better than many langs. But it is not popular, getting a job there is extremely difficult.

[@quantos9169]

More ^^

[@doce3609]

please Please PLEASE make a OCaml video

[@neoplumes]

Wait Ruby syntax is a good thing?

[@dreamsofcode]

😭 One of my favorites.

[@user-co5bp8nq7e]

easy to write, easy to read, impossible to reason about

[@greendsnow]

Elixir vs Go please.

[@elixirfun]

If it's one thing, it's macros

[@Jakozk]

Elixir is nice, but no typesystem is a no go.

[@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeee]

i smell a java/c# dev

[@kristun216]

Dialyzer does a pretty good job at catching errors

[@HydroTheWise]

​​@@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeI code in python for my job and never again will work with a non typed language. It makes the code so hard to understand and update.

[@kyuss789]

They are exploring one at the moment.

[@mustafazakiassagaf1757]

try gleam

[@PhilKingstonByron]

Concurrency dive please

[@dreamsofcode]

I'm very excited to do one!

[@vcool]

Pro tip: Learn it if you have a personal concurrency project to implement in it that you intend to maintain for years to come. Do not learn it to get a new job in it, as the jobs are extremely rare, and moreover they require years of experience.

[@annoorange123]

Getting paid is a bad argument, its a skewed statistic, because you can get the same high pay doing a different language, but there are way less erl/elixir jobs and very few entry level positions. There are tons of JS entry jobs, so the average will be lower than Erlang, but that doesnt mean what you presented here.

[@kaiuri6194]

OTP is bad for crunching numbers

[@elixirfun]

Easily integrates with Rust and Zig.

[@norbertocammayo2334]

Neovim for Elixir

[@dreamsofcode]

Yes! Great idea

[@coderentity2079]

More elixir wanted.

[@theblckbird]

Elixir isn’t a pure functional language like Haskell is, right?

[@qizott6442]

Correct

[@elixirfun]

No, functions can have side effects.

[@Shad0wMonkey5]

You triggered my "alexa" every time you said elixr

[@dreamsofcode]

Oh no! I'm sorry 😅 That must have been annoying haha.

[@danvilela]

I tried elixir.. seemed nice at first, but then pipe operator is just dot syntax more complicated. I also hated phoenix folder structure. Makes no sense at all. Adding js to the web part? Seemed like hell to me.. maybe use it as an api, but still didn’t make sense to me. Auth generator? 🤢🤮 hated it

[@Sel178]

And there is gleam!

[@DevlogBill]

Sounds like an excellent hobby language!

[@MrRandomgamerdkHD]

With that logic, JavaScript is a toy language😂

[@DevlogBill]

@@MrRandomgamerdkHD no, sounds interesting but I don't see a market for elixir around my area but sounds cool for my next project!

[@Dev-Siri]

I am still triggered by that dot at the end of each line. in erlang.

[@Malix_off]

Gleam ftw now

[@dreamsofcode]

I've got some videos planned :)

[@batuhanaydn4592]

Sometimes i see Elixir jobs but they require Elixir experience, it's like chicken and egg problem.

[@dreamsofcode]

Alas, it is. Fortunately, I think software development tends to be more forgiving about what is considered experience.

[@savire.ergheiz]

Sadly Elixir can go wrong very fast in the hand of less experienced devs. Rather than giving top performance it will ruined it instead 😅

[@dreamsofcode]

I think that's true for almost any language 😅

[@savire.ergheiz]

@@dreamsofcode Nope, Elixir has high learning curves and its concepts are foreign. It was around longer but less known due to how hard its. Its somewhat similar to Objective C which was archaic and want to be abandoned by Apple now. You can produces prototypes faster with almost any languages but not with Elixir since it has somewhat baggage like Java and the rigidity also will stick. Problem is you can't really teach junior devs fast enough to catches up with the elixir concept in a big project hence they will produces sub par codes even if they follows framework specifically for Elixir. If you says it otherwise then sadly you probably aren't involved in such project yet 😅

[@fdg-rt2rk]

Explain how it will ruin things? Like which specific part of elixir ruins performance? And there's always a code review that is done to improve the code quality doesn't matter who has written it.

[@savire.ergheiz]

@@fdg-rt2rk read more before typing a reply dude 😅 Code review 😂 Come on, if its large scale projects its just basically you want to rewrote them all if its garbage. Clearly you haven't involved with such project yet.

[@fdg-rt2rk]

@@savire.ergheiz bruh you're telling me your code never got reviewed? What kind of company you work that doesn't even validate a code before it's pushed to production? You're telling me that you're directly pushing the code written by your juniors/seniors to production? Also i asked how Elixir / what specific part of Elixir will make you lose/ruin performance?

[@CeezGeez]

1:58 l0000l

[@gladwinj3389]

So like Typescript for JavaScript but the exact opposite

[@doxologist]

Learn Gleam instead

[@allsunday1485]

There's not that much elixir content, so it'd be a good niche topic to explore for you as a content creator/educator if that's something you're interested in. A good fundamentals course for elixir and some Phoenix projects for example

[@dreamsofcode]

Great idea! I think Elixir/Erlang have some really unique features which I'd love to do more content on.

[@patsonical]

> Functional Woooo! > No Functors, Applicatives, or Monads Awwww :'(

[@rogergalindo7318]

functional is half the approach, half the type system, a lot is lost if one is not there (ofc i say this as a haskeller ;) lol)

[@dreamsofcode]

You're not wrong! Haskell has an amazing type system.

[@owlboom6458]

Dynamic typing - it`s a pain for large code bases!

[@Xantioss]

third

[@elvispalace]

no jobs

[@gcash49]

no jobs though 😂

[@tim_from_braid]

I tried to like Elixir but in thr end I found the syntax so attrocious

[@elixirfun]

Coming from what lang?

[@madlep]

Elixir devs have higher pay due to it being a more productive language. Capitalism is fair and equitable, and then equally shares the profits between…. NO. CAPITALISM DOES NOT! THE SHAREHOLDERS STILL KEEP ALL THE MONEY! But Elixir actually is very productive, and does only need smaller teams. This means they do tend to skew more senior, who happen to be higher paid. So it’s most likely due to that.

[@Redyf]

Second

[@khan8719]

But no job openings in elixir

[@dreamsofcode]

None in Rust either 😭. Most loved languages are cursed.

[@AnthonyBullard]

One could say people love these languages BECAUSE they don’t use them at work

[@ujulspins]

Use your language more and jobs will appear on the market.

[@apexashwin]

dynamically typed ew

[@elixirfun]

Try out Gleam

[@chenxiyi4710]

First

[@inf008shorts]

This comment is in 2023. Premature Uploading (Just a Joke. Everyone Does that. Plus only 5 days left in the next year)

[@dziltener]

Ruby syntax is more of a con than a pro, imo.

[@dreamsofcode]

One of the inspirations for Rust's syntax!

[@norude]

rust is better

[@leetsausage]

Go away cultist!

[@jofla]

No

[@gustavojoaquin_arch]

Rust>>>>>>>>>>elixir

[@bigsnacks913]

Exciting things are being done with using them together. Particularly going forward with the number crunching power required for ML

[@gustavojoaquin_arch]

@@bigsnacks913 zZzzzzz Rust will replace everything

[@ujulspins]

You should!

[@marketsmoto3180]

1 minute and 10 seconds of this 6 minute and 33 second video was advertisement.... or 18% (rounding up) of this video is advertisement

[@elixirfun]

Nice intro.