I’m learning Elixir while I learn Phoenix. I’m thrilled and really want to get better. I have experience with Javascript (mostly frontend).
The most challenging part is the lack of up to date and beginner friendly resources. 
Thanks!
alejandronanez
chrismccord
Creator of Phoenix
Welcome aboard! Have you been thru the Phoenix getting started guides? Were there gaps that left you behind, or did they not go far enough? Would love to know how we can improve <3
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Zesky665
Just an FYI, most of the older tutorials and guides are still compatible with the current version of phoenix.
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kennethuy
Yeah, I have all the books except for Ecto Cookbook. It’s been awhile since I looked at it because I tried emailing the author about a problem that I had and never got back an answer so I kind of rage quit after that. It was about the acceptance tests not working with Hound but this was awhile back and I’m willing to bet something has stabilized by then so I’ll try looking over everything again while it’s the weekend.
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federico
@kennethuy Interesting. I recall that I was getting some kind of error with Hound, and it went away when I installed phantomjs via npm, instead of apt-get, because apt-get was installing version 1.9, at the time (about a year ago). Using npm installed version 2.1. So you might try using npm -g install phantomjs-prebuilt (you might need sudo), instead of sudo apt-get install phantomjs (if you’re on Ubuntu), as instructed in the book. However, like you said, things might have stabilized, by now, and either command might be fine, now.
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alejandronanez
Hello @chrismccord, thanks for chiming in!
Yes, I’ve read the guides on the official site, they are well written and well structured (thank you for that) - I’m also complementing my learning with Programming Phoenix 1.4 (currently in Beta in PragProg).
The information I’m specifically looking for is related to how to build REST APIs; I know that I could use most of what’s in the official documentation, but sometimes it feels like it’s too much information to digest if I only need to build APIs - Also, I don’t have plans to build a complete site (backend + frontend) using Phoenix at the moment.
Thank you very much, and let me know if I can help with something else!
Looking forward to your response 
Update
Also, I consider that I learn more by doing, so having a small project around building something close to real world with best practices will be golden.
I know that building that kind of tutorial is quite difficult and time consuming - please don’t feel like I’m demanding it or something like that 
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jimmycoyne
+1. I could be wrong but I don’t see any Phoenix samples included. I was looking at the Iris framework recently and the collection of examples is really impressive (still prefer Phoenix though 
) . iris/_examples at main · kataras/iris · GitHub
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nexar
My background is with JS, Rails, MySQL for medium sized projects. (Clients with approx GBP 50M turnover)
Moving from the above to Elixir the biggest challenge for me has been getting my head around Functional Programming. I’ve read a lot of stuff on the subject and every time I think I’ve ‘got it’ and then try putting it into practice I’m struggling.
I think what help me would be a guide which showed various software patterns in a procedural (pseudo) language and then an equivalent FP version. That would help immensely.
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peerreynders
In my view it simply doesn’t work that way
- the core of procedural/imperative programming embraces mutability and iteration
- the core of functional programming embraces immutability and recursion
So the constraints are quite different which means that a different way of doing things is required - so the mindset for the functional way needs to be built from the ground up - typically starting with tuples, lists, how to operate on them and how to compose them. Ultimately I suspect that is what Learn Functional Programming with Elixir (Pragprog) is for.
Every once in a while there seems to be an equivalency like that the strategy pattern is the OO equivalent of higher order functions - but those are few and far between.
Scott Wlaschin’s Functional Programming Design Patterns is a great talk the should be regularly revisited.
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nexar
@peerreynders Many thanks for your response. I already have the Pragprog book that you mention. As I said, each time I read this stuff it makes sense but when I try to put it into practice I struggle.
Perhaps I’m too far gone done the imperative route to change tracks. I do hope not.
I do understand what you are saying about there not being easy x-refs between FP and imperative.
Oh well I’ll just struggle until it falls into place.
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