Elixir book recommendation for a Javascript dev

Hi, you might want to check out this thread on reddit - Good book for experienced dev?

Don’t forget our monthly giveaways and that you can get 25% off any Pragprog ebook with your code via the comp site

This is the order I am intending to read my first five books:

Programming Elixir
Elixir in Action
Little Elixir &OTP
Programming Phoenix
Metaprogramming Elixir

Full list here:

Get Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook, read it, and understand it. Then just code your own projects or read source code of others and read the docs a lot (they are good)—no need for more books.

@sotojuan, that was pretty straightforward
I recommend to start with Programming Elixir 1.3.

I personally think a lot of developers waste too much reading books and watching videos to feel “prepared” and do not spend enough time actually coding real things. Just my opinion though.

[quote=“jsnoble, post:1, topic:3815”]
I went through the basic tutorials but I want something deeper. … but I am a little tight on cash.
[/quote]Have you actually worked through Introduction to Mix? Did you get What’s new in Ecto 2.0? The idea being to keep yourself busy until the next 50% off sale at Manning or 40% off sale at PragProg (last year there was one in April).

Right now at Manning code wm022317lt will take off 40% for Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook and Elixir in Action until Feb 28, 2017.

I like books as references or for tricks, but I do not learn via books, rather I learn by ‘doing’, with the reference manual available. ^.^

Consequently I have a ‘programming’ directory in my home directory that has subdirectories of about 300 different languages, inside of each are more sub directories of projects that I made while learning those languages. This is the way I learn. ^.^

I think books are awesome - especially from respected tech publishers like Pragprog. The professional editing alone is priceless.

I probably fall into @sotojuan’s group who reads a lot before getting stuck in, and although I haven’t finished learning Elixir yet, I can honestly say that going through all the books and learning material that I did when learning Ruby, was definitely not a mistake.

In fact I think my first app was actually one of my best - because all the best practises and all the knowledge was fresh in my mind

Having said that, I am thinking of learning Elixir by getting stuck in more purely because I have to ‘unlearn’ much of what I know and I need to get into the habit of doing things differently, and I think that might be better cemented through practise. I’m still going to read lots before I get stuck in to my first app, but I am not going to make handwritten notes like I did when I was learning Ruby which would increase my learning time by 50% or more (I didn’t just take notes, but reviewed them before each reading session).

I think it’s great that some people can learn by doing or reading through code, but I’ve also seen downsides to that - sometimes an explanatory sentence or two can shed so much more light.

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” - maybe move to a “terse note system” (that you can support with your smart phone). While cheat sheets compiled by others are readily available I often find that certain tidbits are missing. The “what was that again?” and “where did I come across that?” feeling is really, really annoying.

I did actually start off by just copying and pasting bits from the PDF into a notes file, but found I was copying a bit too much

The reason I am leaning towards not writing notes this time, is because at least 4 of my Elixir books cover the language basics itself - so that more or less emulates note taking as I will be reading that stuff 4 times. I did consider reading the books in parts in succession, i.e. reading the basics of Elixir covered in each book first, then moving on to the next part of each book… but I’m not convinced - it makes sense, but may not work in practise. What do you think?