Problem-Solving in Elixir: Share Your Tips and Challenges

Just to put this on your radar: What Elixir related stuff are you doing? (800+ replies)

Additionally, maybe the algorithm tag would be of interest.

Also you might want to check out the Advent of Code threads, we have separate topics for each AoC day for several years now.

Finally, Exercism’s Elixir track was very interesting to me back then.

Just to piggy back the above, tehre’s also LeetCode which has support for Elixir solutions on many problems. It’s been fun to solve them in Elixir and other languages to see how the language influences the mindset.

This is the link to my GitHub repository where I’m solving the 99 problems in Elixir:
Elixir-99-Functional-Mastery.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to this repository!

What is the goal of that repo? I’ve took a look at a few problems and they are solved by skewing the language onto the imperative solution that was initially designed.

The repo is for learning purposes. I’m not really sure if my solutions work properly, but by tackling each problem, I will definitely learn something. Of course, if you see any implementation I did, it’s probably not the most optimized solution.

I am learning the language by solving data structure problems and would love to engage with others who are on a similar journey. I’m also interested in building new projects or contributing to open-source initiatives.

Engagement provided: I eye-balled your List_processing.ex and… using length and Enum.at are basically anti-patterns. They have O(n) complexity and should be avoided at all costs – which is possible most of the time. You could do the Exercism list exercises and you have mentors there; they can steer you in the right direction.

And why does your file have a capital letter in its name when f.ex. macOS makes no difference between List_processing.ex and list_processing.ex (or at least that used to be the case before, nowadays I am no longer sure) but Linux does make that difference – you are setting yourself up for a hard-to-track disaster. Just don’t. Always use lower-cased file names.

So, maybe those two tidbits could be a start.

Thank you very much for the observation, that was exactly my comment, but oriented towards professionals in the domain (maybe in the not most constructive way).

It could be a constructive way to engage IMO, because many people latch onto appeals to authority and they want to emulate what they perceive to be a better / bigger talent than theirs. Sometimes they are even right.

…But I personally would find that argument unconvincing; to me the highest levels in any creative / engineering profession are characterized by the simple saying of:

Learn all the rules so you can break them.

That’s why I said that length and Enum.at are an anti-pattern… most of the time.

From my very limited interactions with language and/or high-profile library maintainers, they actually respect people who are not dazzled by their work and engage better with you when you attack their decision in an informed and critically thinking manner.

I will follow your best practices, and thank you.