Completely new to programming and Elixir

Nopp

Hey guys and girls,

i am completely “new” to programming, recently played a bit with Python, Ruby and PureBasic, but i want to try something different (PureBasic was a lot different too, though…), so i came across different slant suggestions for Elixir and i want to give it a try.

I am a system administrator and have a small startup myself located in germany, so please beware that my english will have some errors
In the future i want to be able to offer more than just System administration and consulting in this topics.
I want to have the knowledge to build “small” or even bigger (web-)applications myself or in a small team and i think Elixir as the backend can help me with that.

My questions are:

What yould you think is the best way to get me started through funtcional programming and Elixir as the language?
Regarding Elixir itself: How can i imagine that Elixir need to have BEAM installed? Is this like the Java Runtime Environment most clients have installed?
So if i have a client Software written in Elixir, the client has to install BEAM with it?
And if i have a Webapplication the webserver has to run BEAM i suppose?

I hope i made everything clear!
Greetings from germany,

Nopp

18 comments

#learning-elixir

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2018-08-28 07:45:12 UTC

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leifericf

Hi, @Nopp and welcome to the community!

I won’t be able to give you a specific answer for your questions about learning functional programming in general and your questions about BEAM, but I can share some of my thoughts on learning Elixir.

My approach to learning Elixir has been to read books and do practical exercises. I can recommend Programming Elixir and Programming Phoenix to get a flying start.

If you are completely new to programming (depending on your current level), you might want to check out Learn Functional Programming with Elixir before you move on to Programming Elixir. I have not read this book myself, so I cannot personally vouch for it, but I have heard good things about it.

Since The Pragmatic Bookshelf is one of our community sponsors, you can get a generous 35% discount on those books and others by using the coupon code: ElixirForum

I also listen to these three podcasts: ElixirTalk, Elixir Outlaws and Elixir Mix. I have found that listening to experienced developers talk about their way of thinking when solving problems is very beneficial to my learning process, as it help me to “think like an Elixir developer.”

Other than that, I like to share my thoughts and experiments on this forum to get feedback.

Different people learn more effectively by different methods, so I’m not sure whether this approach would work for you. This is just my preferred approach to learning.

Post #6

stefanchrobot

Welcome to Elixir!

I’d suggest you go through Elixir for Programmers or Programming Elixir. The latter has a lot of exercises which is a great thing to do if your programming experience is limited. After that, I’d suggest Elixir in Action to understand the power of BEAM.
Yes, BEAM is the VM required for Elixir (Elixir+BEAM is like Scala+JVM, just better!). When you’re going to release your software, you’d probably use something like Distillery that will package BEAM and your code as one deployment unit. Or you might want to use PaaS like Gigalixir where everything is taken care for you.

Post #1

benwilson512

Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe

Hey @Nopp welcome!

Let me see if I can address your questions:

I personally feel like Search is the best introduction to the language for folks who are newer to programming. It has a very gentle learning curve, and has lots of little examples to work with.
The vast majority of programs written in Elixir / Erlang run on something like a server, they are not generally programs that people install and run on their individual computers. That said, there are basically two ways you can run Elixir programs: compiled and run on the same computer, and as a packaged release.

Compiled / Run in the same computer: For development work, you’ll want to have erlang and Elixir installed on your computer in full so that you can compile and run the code that you write. Personally I’m a fan of using GitHub - asdf-vm/asdf: Extendable version manager with support for Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang & more · GitHub to get these installed.
As a release: Once you’ve got a working program you can build what’s called a release. A release is a self contained package that includes your compiled code AND the BEAM. This means that if you go put this on your server you can execute it even if the server does not have the BEAM installed at all! Here’s the catch: The operating system that you run the package on needs to match the operating system it was built on.

Post #2