Seeking Elixir Mentorship

Hey Elixir Community, :wave:

I joined this forum a few months ago and just started learning Elixir. I’m currently reading “Elixir in Action” Saša Jurić and working through David Thomas “Elixir for Programmers” course. Eventually I’d also like to dive into the world of Phoenix, Ecto, etc.

I know these resources will teach me a lot, but I would still like to get some perspective, tips, code review, etc. from those currently using these languages in real production environments. If anyone wouldn’t mind a noob picking their brain once or twice a month, I’d love to connect.

Just as an FYI, I’m not new to programming and currently work professionally as a frontend/javascript developer, so I do have existing programming knowledge. I also live in the United States (Texas) for those curious about time difference.

Thanks in advance for your time and support.

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I am fairly busy lately – with job hunt and frantically finishing several big tasks in my future former employer – but I wouldn’t refuse you if it’s for a few times a month. Feel free to PM me or add me as a reviewer in PRs.

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That’d be great. Once I work through some my preliminary I’ll reach out for some code reviews. Thanks!

I’m in the same position as you !

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I would highly recommend posting questions and queries on the forum… not only will you (hopefully) get the help and guidance you need, but your threads could potentially go on to help hundreds, possibly thousands of people in the future :smiley:

Have a look at the format members such as @Fl4m3Ph03n1x use, which I think are a good format to follow:

Connection parameters in Ecto

Functional Architecture in Elixir

London school TDD books?

Good luck :023:

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Nice. If you ever want to connect, feel free to reach out.

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Good to know and will do. I still would like to find a mentor for growth monitoring and accountability reasons, but don’t mind sharing more general/generic questions here too. Great references too! :+1:

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I had a similar background to you. I have stronger front-end/JavaScript skills than Elixir at this moment but I’m switching. I’d like to share some of my experiences:

According to the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, skills are acquired by training.

Training is not just learning. It means cycles:

  1. One or more mentors (which is what you are seeking in this forum, what a good start!)
  2. A skill map, and a list of your weakness from mentors, with priorities, so that you know where to go and can follow your own path of acquiring
  3. Practices, targeting the weaknesses
  4. Feedbacks on practices helping you know how you’re doing and going through difficult parts.
  5. Go to step 1

Mentors have not to be human, as long as they can help you see weaknesses and make plans of practicing. For example, you can make some small projects such as a Todo list then compared to others.

I found exercism.io especially a great place to harp my Elixir language skill. It has a lot of pre-created practices. But the most exciting part is it provides a LOT of mentors, not only the real human mentors of the track, but also the experts doing the same practices as you and you can learn SO MUCH from their codes. When I finished the Elixir Track, I acquired a lot of patterns in my brain.

Besides to language practices, you also need other practices for engineering, e.g deployment, to be familiar to tool sets and the ecosystem. This depends on what you want to build though.

Also, I’m free off work for the next months and willing to help, if you are interested. :slight_smile:

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Appreciate you taking the time to reply! I’d love to connect and will reach out in the near future.

I haven’t read that book, but a lot of the tips you mention from it are similar to what I learned during my boot camp years ago and resemble my approach to learning.

I definitely have a few projects up my sleeve, that I’ve been waiting to build because I want to do it within the Elixir ecosystem and not my usual stack.

Exercism is also a great resource. I haven’t used it yet, but another developer has mentioned it in a previous thread of mine. I love coding challenges and puzzles, so it’s right up my alley. :+1:

Great. Currently I’m learning and seeking a job of Elixir, we can share a lot.

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im new to elixir maybe 2 week ago i start so far i love the elixir from the syntax to the performance but so much i dont know good if we can connect in dicord or something

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There is a slack group you can join elixir-lang.slack.com

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Absolutely seconding Exercism! When I had to duplicate a lot of Enum's functions I literally spent several days (1-2h a day) until I finally succeeded. It changed the way I was thinking about FP and programming in general and has been of enormous help ever since.

As with @justinjunodev, feel free to start GitHub exercise repos, open a feature/bug PR and add me as a reviewer. We can collaborate and I’ll help you with anything that my experience can do for you.

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Thank you so much !

Hey @justinjunodev,

I’m an experienced developer like you (many years working with C/C++, Java, Ruby, etc). Here is the path I followed to learn (and still learn more) Elixir. I think you can make good use if I share my path with you.

  1. It’s a good start reading all guides available on Elixir’s official website (https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html). The guides are straight to the point and will give you a nice idea of the main features of Elixir to complete the next step.

  2. After that, I recommend you to follow our colleague @qhwa advice. Practice what you learned in official guides using exercism.io. If you prefer, you can also begin in step 2 and try to complete the exercises and study the guides when you are stuck. This is a good way to learn because you create a practical need for what you are reading. Your brain will retain more knowledge. When you complete this step I think you’ll be capable code in Elixir and collaborate to open source projects (or start your own, which would be even a better idea in my opinion).

  3. Start dive deeper on topics you studied on official guides, reading the great book Elixir in Action. The author does a great job explaining details you won’t see on official guides but necessary to make you a better Elixir developer. I don’t recommend you to start by this book because it’ll slow you down explaining too much details at first. It’s a better strateg,y in my opinion, to know the whole ocean with 1 meter of deep and after explore deeper.

Also, be aways free to ask :slight_smile:

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I’ve keen interest in the subject and I would like to be a mentee.
I’ve struggled all through my programming life to find a mentor, one I can seek advise and direction.

I depend mostly on forums and books, sometimes asking the wrong questions etc. Elixirforum has been great I must admit, people ready to assist.

I’ve an application in production backed by Elixir and wished I had a mentor to guide and occasionally do code review.

Occasionally I PM programmers I admire for advise but seldomly get a response and if I do it’s generic like keep on coding.

I’ve bought most of the Elixir books from pragprog and manning.

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Yeah, I like your really like your approach here. I’m mainly reading the book to get a larger grasp on the bigger picture, BEAM, Erlang, and OTP. As that is really the heart of Elixir and most content I’ve found doesn’t dive deep into these areas. However, I’m sure I’ll reach out in the future with question and appreciate the response. :+1:

Hello there! I am, too, seeking a mentor for Elixir/Phoenix! I have been working with Ruby and Rails for 3 years, and since one year I’m learning Elixir, although not with a continuous pace. I have been studying so far with books, online courses, reading your forum, but, it is hard for me to assess the real improvement of my study without a) coding reviews b) pair programming/getting mentored by an expert one. If I found a kind soul available as Elixir mentor, I think I’ll be one of the happiest developers out there :slight_smile: :hugs:

P.S: I’ll try exercism, as you all advise, in the meanwhile :slight_smile:

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Going as far as duplicating part of the Enum module in Exercism will make you understand Elixir and functional programming in general much better.

Did you also go through the official tutorials on elixir-lang.org?