Which course should I pick!

Learning Questions & Discussions Resources Chat/Questions
1

I am Asfandyar from Pakistan. This is my first time to the forum.
I develop PHP websites using CodeIgniter, which is super easy to learn. Then I also learnt Ruby on Rails. I have a working experience in RoR, even if I did not use it for some real project.

Now I want to learn Elixir and Phoenix, but it’s hard for me to learn. I learnt the pattern matching and other functional programmingn concepts from the official docs, but when it comes to processes, it’s a little hard for me to learn easily. Also when I tried to learn Phoenix, I was forgetting the ideas.

I asked friends, searched google, read different blog posts, and at last I found some courses which I think will be easier to get me up and running. Following are the 3 courses I shortlisted so far,

  1. Discover Elixir and Phoenix, Ludu.com
  2. Elixir for Programmers, Dave Thomas
  3. Developing with Elixir/OTP, Pragmatic Studio

Because I have only limited budget, so I can’t buy all of these courses, and from the free lessons I can’t decide which one is the best. But because hearing a lot about Pragmatic Studio’s RoR course, I think their course might be as easier and beneficial as their RoR course, so I am kind of inclined towards that, but then when I look at the genius Dave Thomas and his experience in Ruby world, I think may be his course is better, then I also read some good reviews about the course at Ludu, so I am not able to decide which course should I take.

Would you people help me in deciding which course should I take?

Also if there is another course which is easier, and only one time payment, and which can make me productive quicker, please send a link to that.

Also if someone have already used the above courses, what are the challenges in following each course?

Note: I got some nice links in the replies which lead to posts with more nice links. So it means I’ll spend some more time in those links. But I’ll still want to know if Pragmatic Studio course will be the best for me or the Dave Thomas one, when I return back from these links.

3

Have you tried official tutorials for elixir and phoenix?

4

Yes, somewhat, but I am a bit slow and weak in learning things from official docs.
To learn I need everything be explained as if you are explaining to a kid.

5

Have you tried http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content?

6

You mean learning Erlang first will help me learn Elixir and then Phoenix better? But that may take more time. I want to be productive in some months.

7

Erlang and elixir are mostly the same, except for some differences in syntax. Learning erlang syntax will not take much of your time (it’s like C, very simple). But every other concept explained in LYSE (like processes) is directly transferable to elixir.

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8

So in that case Learn you some Erlang is better or the second link you posted (from the official website) ?

9

look that link even there are free screencasts

10

If you haven’t finished tutorials on the official website yet, you should probably do it first. They are very good and probably kept up to date (unlike most blog posts).

Maybe also check out http://howistart.org/posts/elixir/1/.

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11

if i were you i choose that course. I have watched alot elixir phoenix releated videos. Most of them dive in otp too quickly. I was feeling overwhelming as you until i watch that course
https://www.udemy.com/the-complete-elixir-and-phoenix-bootcamp-and-tutorial/

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12

Thank You for the link!

I looked at the contents of that course and it didn’t look that deep to me, and it also teaches Phoenix 1.2 instead of Phoenix 1.3, after teaching the basics.
Dave Thomas and Clarks (Mike and Nicole Clark) look more experienced to me, and also their courses are based on Elixir 1.5+ and Phoenix 1.3+.

13

I think this course is very good for begginers. I myself learned elixir and phoenix through this course. It covers many basic things to get started. It’s not that big of deal that it’s phoenix 1.2. The biggest change was in the file tree. If I were you I would also get the pragmatic bookshelf books.

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14

Yes that is a problem, phoenix 1.2 but he added 1.3 section. There is just a few difference beetwen 1.3 and 1.2. For a beginner main problem is understanding core prensibles. Dave and progmatic studio’s courses focuse otp and elixir. Stephen grinder focuses phoenix.

15

Although I have a great respect for teacher, which taugh me a lot on React JS, I have to say I was not convinced by his course on Elixir/Phoenix bootcamp.

The main problem was the misuse of functional terminology, that showed he was more like discovering “at the same time”…

I watched PragDave course and for me he knows more about FP.

I didn’t watched the other courses, so I can’t tell…

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16

yes exactly that is
But that is the perfect thing about that course. I started elixir with josh adams’ videos. i chose josh adams because he is experienced and there are alot videos belong to him. But i felt overwhelming with his videos. He is experienced about fp but i wasnt. There was a barrier and i started stephen grinder’s course.

17

I know the author puts a lot of efforts preparing his course, but it’s not like learning a new JS lib. You can’t understand FP in 3 months, it’s just too big change. Well, it’s just a personal opinion, of course.

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18

Yes you are completely right. You are experienced developer you expect different things than a beginner from a course. In that course stephen didnt even touch OTP.

19

Of course I want the course to be easy, but again I want to learn all the pieces which makes Elixir better than any other language used for Web Development like Ruby, Python etc. So in that regard I’ll need something easier, but still offering advanced topics, like OTP, mnesia etc.
That’s why I was comparing Dave Thomas and Clarks’ courses. (I read some reviews about Ludu course, but I don’t know how easy/hard, basic/advanced that is).

20

I’m also planning to give the free lessons from both the courses a try, but Dave’s course doesn’t provide free lessons in an order, so I won’t be able to get an idea about how easier/harder the whole course is, although I got an idea from the free lessons and the titles of the paid lessons, that the course covers a lot of stuff.

21

We all have different technics and goals when learning. I started a year ago, but with a Rails background. And for me, it was important to understand the difference, because I didn’t wanted to redo in Phoenix what I could do with Rails.

So I started by learning OTP, much before Phoenix (and even Elixir) because it is (for me) the real promise I can get from the language.

And, as the best things are free, the videos that finally tilted me were Kent University Erlang master class. I know I mention these often, but it’s because I could understand the link between the code and the actor model.

Not to mention that teachers are great. And again, just my personal opinion :slight_smile:

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