I’m planning on purchasing Elixir in action second edition, and I was wondering if anyone could tell me based off the first edition, does it cover the following topics:
- try, catch, and rescue
- case, cond, and if
- IO (Reading and Writing to a file)
These topics would be covered in any introductory elixir book or guide, I think. You might as well try
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Quoting the book from @sasajuric , notable changes between 1st and 2nd edition are:
- HashDict -> Map
- new Supervisor child specifications
- Registry
- DynamicSupervisor
- exrm -> distillery
- intro to testing
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- Branching constructs (case, cond, if) are explored in chapter 3.
-
tryis briefly mentioned but not explored in details. - File I/O is mostly not discussed. The example which is developed throughout the book uses
File.readandFile.write, and there’s a brief example ofFile.stream!in chapter 3, and that’s all.
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Further to what has been said already, I highly recommend the book 
It really helped me understand what is going on with GenServers and Supervisors since you build them from scratch in the book. It’s an excellent book all round.
I wrote a small review about the first edition here 
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Is hexdocs a good resource to learn from? When it comes to online resources I’m a little more cautious, because some sites don’t teach proper practices for example WC3schools or TutorialsPoint.
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This might go a little off topic, but seeing as your the author Elixir in Action, could you recommend a good introduction textbook, one that covers try, and IO(file reading and writing)?
Also, when is the second edition of EiA coming out? Some stores says September 30th but Amazon says November 6th.
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Getting Started and Introduction to Mix are definitely worth your time.
Hexdocs quality depends on the package providers - and as valuable and high quality the hexdocs for Phoenix and Ecto are, I feel that going through Programming Phoenix 1.4 and Programming Ecto first helps you to get more out the hexdocs (and makes them easier to understand).
Elixir in Action 2e is an excellent guide to learning how to develop Elixir applications (the Elixir/BEAM way). That being said some people may benefit from some additional help from Learn Functional Programming in Elixir to get more used to the functional way of doing things.
Also, when is the second edition of EiA coming out? Some stores says September 30th but Amazon says November 6th.
You can get the eBook right now 35% off with your forum discount - code ‘elixirforum18’ at manning.com
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Is hexdocs a good resource to learn from?
Other than reading the source code and tests directly, hexdocs are the most relevant source of information, in my opinion, since they are mostly written by the developers themselves.
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The official language docs on hexdocs are IMO a great reference resource. This is also why I don’t provide a detailed coverage of some of the topics you mentioned.
The thing is that most Elixir books are around 300-400 pages, and you can’t expect to have every aspect of the language covered in details in such space. This is where the official docs step in, as they provide a reference info of the language and stdlib, and they are more up to date with the recent language changes.
could you recommend a good introduction textbook, one that covers try, and IO(file reading and writing)?
Not really sure. Perhaps Programming Elixir or Learn Functional Programming with Elixir, but it’s been a while since I’ve read the former, and I haven’t read the latter yet (though I’ve heard it’s pretty good).
As far as the online docs, you can find reference on try here. For working with files, check out the File module docs.
Also, when is the second edition of EiA coming out? Some stores says September 30th but Amazon says November 6th.
This now depends on Manning, they’re in the finalizing process. Their current estimate is October. Note though that you can get the MEAP (early access) version in the ebook form today on the Manning site. Currently the content is complete, so the upcoming changes are mostly spelling and grammar fixes.
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Dave Thomas’ Programming Elixir 1.6 book has an appendix about handling exceptions which includes information about try.
Learn Functional Programming with Elixir also has a section on it but it’s possibly not quite as detailed.
File reading and writing does come up in both as far as I remember but generally in passing rather than being detailed guides. You might be better asking specific questions here about it rather than trying to find a book covering it.
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The book is great but I have one complaint about the formatting of code snippets: font size is very small and without syntax highlighting - it’s necessary to zoom in all the time (
