And which has been your favourite so far?
Iāve got Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas, Programming Phoenix, Introduction to Elixir (havenāt read this one yet) and Little Elixir and OTP Guide (midway reading it).
Programming Elixir and Phoenix are definitely great. LEOG is coming along nicely but it is just useful for learning OTP, the Elixir part is very weak and not suitable to beginners.
What were your favourite parts of Programming Elixir @sashaafm (Iām currently reading it)
Iāve currently got:
-
Programming Elixir
-
Elixir in Action
-
The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook
-
Metaprogramming Elixir
-
Introducing Elixir
-
Programming Phoenix
I want to get:
Elixir Cookbook
Ćtudes for Elixir (Free!)
And Iāve readā¦
Just 10% of Programming Elixir, lol. Now that the Elixir Forum is up I can get stuck in tho
Iāve really enjoyed the Pattern Matching.
I forgot I also got Metaprogramming Elixir. I read two or three chapters from it. I found the learning curve to be really steep from one chapter to another so I decided to stop until I was more experienced with Elixir. Iām going to look into Ćtudes for Elixir
I am going to try and order the books in terms of complexity too.
My current thinking is:
Programming Elixir
Introducing Elixir (perhaps as an optional bonus - as I am guessing this is aimed more at those coming from Erlang)
Elixir in Action
The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook
Metaprogramming Elixir
Programming Phoenix
Or maybe reverse the last two. What do you think?
Definitely reverse the last two. Programming Phoenix is a wonderful book and great for beginners. I had zero knowledge and experience with Web Dev and Phoenix and that book were my first contact with it and now that Iām 4 months into a project with Phoenix, I have to say that it was a great foundation to understand and begin developing a web app with Elixir.
Do you think I should move it even higher up the list then?
Ideally I want to read at least one Elixir book to get the basics of the language down before jumping into Phoenix.
Thatās a great review btw - Iām excited to read it now!
Maybe after Elixir in Action you could start Phoenix. Although Phoenix is a web framework if you want to build any kind of decent app you will need to develop a lot of āvanillaā Elixir code so you will still get plenty of Elixir practice.
I would really like to get Programming Elixir and Programming Phoenixā¦ the problem is I am sort of old school in that I have not had much luck learning from eBooks and prefer hard copy. PE can be had as a āreal bookā but I am Canadian and with the current $USD-CAD conversion rate, itās really expensive and you are also getting the non-1.2 version (I think).
So I am probably going to try to get my head around eBook learning at some point. My local library has Intro to Elixir as a lending resource for the eBook so maybe I should start there?
My learning path:
- Programming Elixir (Best one for learning Elixir)
- Programming Phoenix (Best/only one for learning Phoenix)
- The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook (Learning more about OTP)
- Metaprogramming Elixir (By author of Phoenix, the core behind Phoenix framework )
- Elixir in Action
@mackenza Have you tried a Kindle? It is much more like a book than an eBook - in fact I do all of my reading on the Kindle and I wouldnāt be without one now. The big difference is the screen technology - which is not a retina-burning lcd-flickering e-reader like a tablet or computer screen. This actually has more of a profound effect than people realise. I would definitely recommend you check them out
@jexchan That sounds like a good path! Thanks for sharing
Is the monochromatic nature of the Kindle counterproductive to the use of colour in books like Programing Elixir? How is the Kindle for viewing code, diagrams, and illustrations?
AFAIR the colors donāt really matter. Of course they help to read the code but they are not really big snippets of code so youāll be fine. And you can also get the code online anyways.
There are definitely some downsides, such as the ones you mention - however I think the upsides outweigh them. But in answer to your questionsā¦
- Kindles are mono - so diagrams will usually be shades of grey (but theyāre there and you can āzoomā in)
- Code - obviously not ideal, but since most code snippets are small itās not usually a big problem because you can change the orientation to landscape which gives you some extra width.
Also, when you buy books from publishers like PragProg you get all digital versions - so when you want to, you can view the PDF version on your computer (ideal for longer code blocks).
Also, publishers like PragProg, Manning etc offer sales every now and again - I think all of the books I have bought have been with 40% off
It can yes @drb, but you donāt want to read PDFs on the Kindle, you want .mobiās which is the official Kindle format and what gives you the full benefit of it (such as dictionary look-up, bookmarks, underlines, the ability to change text size, beautiful crisp text etc). From what I remember PDFs have too much padding as you view them āby pageā - though things might have improved since I last looked at a PDF on it.
I have
Elixir in Action
The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook
Iām going to need to start reading up on Phoenix!
I have read:
- Programming Erlang
- Programming Elixir
- Programming Phoenix
- Introducing Elixir: Getting Started in Functional Programming
I have Metaprogramming Elixir, but need to come back to that one.
I want to get The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook.
Iāve had a good flow going with iBooks + Flexiglass to split my viewport between the books, spacemacs code and browser for learning.
I do only own a single book about Elixir: Introducing Elixir (Play Store eBook), which only read the first couple of pages. But I am more the guy who just tries and fiddles until it works as expected while googling and looking up reference manuals, instead of reading tutorials or step-by-step-books.