Any resources on building an Elixir app without a Framework?

Hello,

I am looking for a tutorial on How I can build something in Elixir from scratch. No Phoenix or any other sort of framework. Strictly looking to build in Vanilla Elixir. It would be ideal if the resource is free, and a good follow along.

Thanks! :smiley:

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You might try this oneā€¦

Itā€™s a bit outdated, but You might probably adapt to the latest version of ecto without much trouble.

By @geo

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Try this one.

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Itā€™s not free but this course is very good. You basically build a very basic web framework by the end of the course:

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mix and otp section of the getting started guide has everything you need and a simple example of distributed KV store.

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This isnā€™t exactly what you are looking for, but since you are looking for learning resources, Iā€™d love your input.

Iā€™m in the process of doing the initial work for a video tutorial series that builds a game from scratch in Elixir. The initial versions of the app weā€™ll build in the series is built to be used in the command line or an IEx session. Eventually the logic will be used within Phoenix LiveView so that the game can be played in the browser.

Is that something youā€™d be interested in?

Beyond that, Iā€™d love your thoughts on the content. Most video tutorial series are taught from the standpoint that the teach knows everything from the beginning. This has benefitsā€”mainly in that no time is wasted in teaching you exactly what you need to know to get the project done. However, this also has drawbacks. Iā€™ve noticed that a lot of new developers donā€™t know what to do when problems arise during a project or the direction of the project changes.

Iā€™m weighing the idea of doing a sort of live-coding series for this project. Youā€™ll see me get errors that I have to figure out how to not only diagnose but also solve. Youā€™ll see me change my mind about architecture as the project grows! Iā€™ll discuss pros and cons of different approaches. Youā€™ll see me read and interpret documentation!

The potential downside of this is not all of the time will be spent building the app with correct code (since even I make mistakes; EVERYONE doesā€”event the best online teachers and best courses regardless of how polished the presentation). Iā€™m guessing that 80% of the time would be on ā€œcorrectā€ code and 20% would be refactoring, rethinking, or solving bugs.

What do you (or anyone else) think of that approach?

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Great to hear youā€™re working on this Geoffrey :023:

Iā€™m not the OP, but personally I would love to see a tutorial series of something other than a game - whether itā€™s something like a flickr clone, twitter, chat, Tiktok even :lol: basically something that people are likely to want to build using Phoenix (Iā€™m not sure many people will be using Phoenix for a game?)

Regarding the format, again this is just personal preference, but I prefer something that is structured, rather than something more like a stream - Iā€™m not good at watching long videos and so generally prefer something more succinct and with just the info I need. What you could do tho is make videos of you working through things/the problem available as well, in case people would like to go through them. I thought PragDave found a pretty good balance in his video course (elixir-for-programmers-course)

These are just my personal preferences tho and I expect there is probably enough people who would prefer either type :smiley:

Good luck and keep us posted!

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Thanks for the response, @AstonJ! I appreciate your perspective and will definitely take it into consideration when I finally decide on how Iā€™d like to move forward.

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Awesome. The other thing I would suggest is to give some thought on how youā€™ll be able to easily update it - Phoenix (or rather LiveView) is moving pretty fast atm and being able to easily update the course to stay current will be a huge plus.

Shall we move these posts into a dedicated thread? More people might see it then :smiley:

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