Are these courses updated and suitable for Elixir/Phoenix beginners?

I don’t follow the Elixir video training since my preferred learning style is books and online tutorials. However, I will say that you may want to focus on your Elixir foundation before diving into Phoenix, especially if this is your first functional language.

I learned Elixir before Phoenix was developed, so I had a good foundation in Elixir by the time I started looking at Phoenix. Coming from Rails, Phoenix was pretty easy to learn after having developed a couple Elixir (non-web) apps.

When I learned Rails, I started with Rails, and picked up Ruby as I want. This worked pretty well for me, since I understood OO. Higher level functional constructs we the most difficult part of Ruby for me back then.

Personally, I feel trying to learn Phoenix, Elixir, and functional programming at the same time will be more difficult than learning Rails and Ruby at the same time if you have some OO experience.

Dave Thomas’s book Programming Elixir 1.3 is an excellent resource after working through the Elixir Guides.

Do you have any other programming experience?

If so why not read Programming Elixir 1.3 up to the end of chapter 14 (the language bits) then switch to Elixir in Action which will help reinforce what you’ve learnt but also give you a great insight into concurrency and OTP, and then back to the rest of PE when you’ve finished EIA. After that, go on to Programming Phoenix and any other books that interest you.

This is currently my own plan of action - the great thing about mixing things up is you get a different perspective from different authors and I am finding PE and EIA complement each other very well (they cover a lot of the same ground which helps reinforce what you’re learning - saves you having to make notes).

Generally Pragprog is known to keep their books as up-to-date as possible. Programming Elixir has gone from that, to PE 1.2 to the current version of PE 1.3. Programming Phoenix is also in the process of being updated

These threads might also interest you:

I’d like to put my vote towards this approach. Some novices will probably ask do I really need both?

There are people who personally prefer either and that’s OK. Dave Thomas’ perspective is important for adopting Elixir in the first place, Saša Jurić’s is important because of his Erlang background.

Programming Elixir is filled with the enthusiasm of somebody who’s “finally seen the way” while being careful to smooth over the sometimes frustrating transition from the imperative/OO world; meanwhile Elixir in Action benefits from the perspective of extensive experience with the Erlang ecosystem, guiding the reader to using Elixir towards optimal benefit.

Definitely both as the bare minimum IMO

PE has excellent coverage of the fundamentals and is written in a manner where you feel like Dave is there talking you through things - something I prefer much more than books that are written like a manual or glossary.

Sasâ takes a similar approach with EIA, though walks through the language a bit quicker - which works out perfectly as it helps reinforce what you have just learned in PE.

I’m loving both so far, and I’m very happy that this approach is saving me from writing extensive notes (I’m still using Kindle highlights for stuff I re-read before going on to the next chapter).

Personally I think all of the professionally published and edited books will be a must-read, I find being exposed to lots of different perspectives really really helpful (probably because I’m not quite as bright as most programmers ).

I found learnelixir.tv to be an excellent companion course to Programming Elixir. I’m halfway through both and both share a similiar content structure, watching the short videos has proven to make the chapter easier to digest to me.

This actually sounds like a great idea. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks guy.

Yeah, I have done programming in python/flask (back then was a C#/ASP.NET developer). Pretty much OOP. While I may not code so much these days, more to management. But I am really keen to see how much I can dive into the functional world, and change the paradigm here planning to do some fun apps (self satisfaction).

However, really struggled to understand functional and elixir .. as sometimes some developers would relate to Ruby on Rails (which I have never done that before, confused to be honest). The pattern matching .. the %{} .. oh gosh, not to complain

Alright, then I will inevst in Programming Elixir 1.3 first and then Elixir in Action next. But I think Elixir in Action was dated back in 2015, the concepts still workable? I saw a comment here where HashDict was deprecated
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3O99KTY4DR48Z/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=161729201X

Since I am recommended to learn Elixir first and not touch Phoenix, what kind of app will work or suitable for Elixir? Any tips? Thinking to work on hobby projects to skill up my Elixir. Sorry my head is fully of python, where i can do machine learning, deep learning, big data via spark, web scraper, web api, etc.. not sure elixir can do all this?

Wonder to what extend should I know how to use elixir before I can touch Pheonix, as I am more keen to build web app (SPA) and API

As for @chouzar , do you know that video course .. is it based on Elixir 1.4? But I seriously doubt it’s updated.

Any tips? Thanks guys again.

Yes EIA is perfectly fine. I think Sasâ (or it might have been Dave) mentions that there is talk about it (HasDict) being deprecated once the performance of Map is tweaked.

Try the free first three lessons of Technical skills assessments before reading PE, the bit on pattern matching is very good

Don’t forget you can get 25% off both PE and EIA via your forum discount (see the competition sites for more info)

Thanks so much @AstonJ

I found the functional aspect of elixir to not be too prevalent, my code sometimes ends up appearing “too procedural”. In what elixir shines for me is that there are just a handful data structures that let you code in certain way. After a few exercises you will likely start to grok both the syntax and purpose.

I have not done any serious apps with Elixir but I just finished a chapter on where it teaches on how to create your own command line apps so you can process data for your own means.