Best learning resources for a new programmer

If you already have done Elixir from other sources and you fill you are grasping the syntax, then you can go ahead and buy the book. To me was the only book that clicked to make the transition from Object Orientated code to Functional Programming.

You may also want to see the Elixir for Programmers video course from the same author:

You may enjoy more doing the video course, but only do it if you are already comfortable with the basics of Elixir. No need to know about OTP and all the advanced stuff, because the book will teach you that.

Got for it after you have done one of the above

Hello and welcome,

Learning Rails will teach You a lot about MVC pattern. Those are knowledge You can port them to Phoenix, because it’s similar.

Except for the language, the main difference is Ruby use Object Oriented Programming, Elixir Functional Programming.

It’s like night and day…

Yes fun, like fun in functional.

If You are new to programming, your plan is very suited. Maybe You might learn the latest Phoenix, because it brings new concept to the table, liveview in particular.

There are free introductions

Some free at

and book also, if You prefer to read.

I need the opposite, french to english

Years ago as a beginner I also started with Michael Hartl’s excellent Rails Tutorial. After finishing it and finding out about Elixir (which like you I found much more exciting and easier to understand than Rails), I read Programming Elixir followed by Programming Phoenix. I then reimplemented the Rails Tutorial using Phoenix instead. It was pretty straightforward… Ecto vs ActiveRecord was the biggest difference to learn at that point. Nowadays there are very good Ecto books available. I thought that was a great path to get started learning a standard server-side MVC-based webapp with very little JS.

Which Pragmatic Studio course did you do? They have excellent courses on Elixir, Phoenix, LiveView, SPAs with Vue/Elm/React coupled with choice of Phoenix backend (REST, channels, and Absinthe GraphQL). The amount of material and complexity can be staggering!

After exploring all of these I have simplified life (as a resource constrained solo developer) by limiting JS and just doing LiveView (PETAL stack). For this the new Pragmatic Studio LiveView course is outstanding!

Thanks for your replies :).

I think I will go with Programming Elixir and Programming Phoenix and try to recreate the Rails Tutorial app like @tme_317 suggests.

@tme_317 I did the Developing with Elixir/OTP course. I didn’t find it too difficult but stopped when they started talking about testing because I realized I lacked a basic knowledge of things like Git, command line and testing. That’s why I went with the Rails Tutorial courses first. I also want to work as a solo dev so the path you describe sounds like a great fit :).

The best is that you try by using git in an online environment:

https://www.katacoda.com/courses/git

More resources:

Glad to help… that is definitely the path that worked great for me. Everyone learns differently of course.

I will say I spent a lot of time mired in SPA/JS complexity land before Chris released LiveView… probably would have saved a whole year if he released it sooner!

Some of those basic things like Git, command line, text editor, etc are also addressed very well for beginners by Michael Hartl in his “Learn Enough” series… although I am sure you can find tons of material online everywhere also.

Yeah the SPA/JS complexity is exactly what I want to avoid as a solo dev.

Thanks. I actually did the Learn Enough Git and Learn Enough Command Line and Learn Enough Text Editor courses as well so I feel like I know enough on these topics to get started.

Excuse the aside, but how has this worked out for you in practise (ie. being productive with Elixir as a solo dev)? I ask because it’s my motive for starting to learn - I’m an experienced developer with some solo web/saas projects in mind, and Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView seems (this far, 2nd week of experimenting) quite promising.

Your programming journey is very similar to mine. Html, css, sass, rails, ruby, elixir, phoenix, erlang, javascript, jquery, react, nodejs, react-native etc… many specific tools and languages. For a new programmer language specific tutorials or books are like a trap.
My advice is learn how to design code before everything. Clean Code - Robert Martin is a good book for that.
This is a good article to read.

The Clean Code Book references a lot the first edition of the Pragamatic Programmer book, thus I would recommend to first read the Pragmatic Programmer Book, and they have now an updated version:

Both books changed my life as a Developer, therefore I also subscribe that it’s a MUST read for developers of any seniority level.

Also in my Todo list is:

Funny enough or not I was already using this type of architecture and I named it Resource Design Pattern, and even started a repo with the principles of it, but never finished it. A colleague of work would call it Resource Action Pattern each time it was referencing a project were I used it

This article does a good job of explain it:

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Better then the Uncle Bob own article:

The main difference to my architecture pattern is that I also split each entity by action:

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