Fans of this forum thread might also like this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/elixir/comments/avni73/talk_me_out_of_elixir/
gausby
dogweather
A big reason I’ve slowed down my Elixir use is because of the library designs which try to reduce compilation on code changes. Personally, I like the opposite: to make my compiler and tools do more work, not less. E.g., I’d like the compiler/linker to tell me if I misspelled a Phoenix route, but it can’t. The framework was designed to avoid the implementation issue of compilation speed at the expense of safety. Plus, I’ve heard that this “late linking” is desirable when you want to hot-swap updated modules into a running system.
But that’s a feature I don’t need. All of my Elixir (and /Phoenix) apps are traditional applications: I code and deploy. Then I repeat: make changes, then redeploy. In the case of a web app, my environment (like Heroku) handles smooth rollovers. In other words, I don’t need the extreme runtime flexibility of hot swapping code, yet I pay the “price” for it when using Elixir. I suspect that a lot of other general purpose developers are in the same boat. See, e.g., https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/how-to-get-a-warning-on-undefined-module-use/16332
So I’m feeling like the systems aren’t a good cultural or technical fit for me.
This actually makes me sad! Because I appreciate so many other aspects of the technology and the community.
jung-hunsoo
Here’s my thoughts of Elixir based on personal experiences. (Priority ordered)
Pros.
1. Coding is exciting, really.
At first, Elixir syntax was a bit strange to learn. I really like Functional programming over OOP or JS style; not too much complicated and more intuitive. Pattern matching: useful, Immutability: useful, Process: handy. Syntax is easier than JS, Java. Nodes and clustering: don’t know.
- Backend all-in-one.
I have a doubt the current service styles of cloud computing IaaS. They’re getting more complex and segregated. Elixir, on the other hand, can make one packed backend. Trends in backend is thin and separated like lego blocks. Elixir isn’t a good fit for that structures I think. But they’ll be merged at last. Separated and connected structures make another complication problem.
Cons.
1. Poor IDE.
This is the frustrating weakness I think. I’ve been using Atom on client and cloud IDE for Elixir. On the other hand, Android Studio makes me so happy to programming. Java, actually Kotlin I’m using, is complicated unnecessarily than Elixir. But the IDE makes it to use them quite comfortable.
If the Elixir can provide an advanced IDE, then I’m pretty sure the popularity will be increased.
2. Performance isn’t proven.
There’s a belief the Elixir is powerful since it’s using BEAM VM based on Erlang. I have the same feeling for that. Problem is that’s not proven. I just expect that Elixir is faster than Ruby, Python, but not sure for Node and Go.
I’m curious about the throughput benchmark among backend JSON server; standalone Elixir, Elixir on Docker/K8s, standalone and containerized Node.js/Python/Ruby/Go.
3. Requires more investment; time.
“Should any other developers choose to learn Elixir?” I don’t think so. Python is more easy to start. Node is getting a de-facto lang for backend and eary to get used to it if one has JS experiences. Go is growing rapidly and fit to use micro devices, which is exploding in IoT world.
Elixir is like a raw foods, but the field requires instant foods. Fields need productivity, not curiosity.
4. Docs mingled with codes are not good at all.
Docs should be separated from working codes. It harms code maintainability, readability. I prefer to leave documentations and remarks, but the Elixir isn’t kind enough to this.
And Elixir codes are hard to refactor and style. This produces a poor maintainability. Common code styles and structures aren’t established yet, I think.
Thoughts
1. Python, Node, Go, Ruby aren’t elixir’s competitor. Docker, K8s, AWS are.
I think Elixir is not like a backend lang; Python, Node, Go, Ruby. Elixir is more like a container and PaaS. I don’t use docker deploying my pet project. Of course it was the preferred method. but after finding some features of Elixir, it has similar features already. It was interesting.
2. Elixir has a great potential.
Elixir is unusual for some criteria. Process feature is useful, handy, and integrated seamlessly. FP is better suitable than OOP for small medium services, personally. Elixir isn’t a good fit for general purposes, but maybe a good answer for some sophisticated requirements.
As we all know, the scaling in the cloud computing is crucial. But I have no idea about Horizontal scaling; spawning multiple processes or nodes and/or containerize, which is efficient and handy?
I’ll keep practicing and build my pet projects in Elixir.
wanton7
I just started to learn Elixir, but Elixir is NOT more performant than Go. Go and probably NodeJS as will beat it in CPU bound tasks. Because Go is compiled to assembly and NodeJS has JIT but it’s single threaded. Also functional languages like Elixir usually come with performance costs.
But where Elixir shines is fault tolerance, stable low latency, better concurrency model, easier to reason about multi-theading model (no locks because it uses message passing and no hard to find bugs because of it), per process GC, immutability and it’s easier to split between servers because message passing is already used. Probably forgot some other awesome things.
If you really need something for high performance CPU bound tasks I’ve read that example Discord uses Rustler to write them in Rust language. Similar what Python does with Tensorflow machine learning stuff. But I bet most apps don’t need it.
gausby
2. Performance isn’t proven.
What kind of performance are you looking for, and for what task ?
jung-hunsoo
I agree with your comment.
I just presume a raw performance like this: Go > Node/Elixir > Python/Kotlin > rest of.. But no records I have.
“Fault tolerant” is not a brilliant feature I think. Containers and Node provides too.
Rust/Rustler, TF : sorry I have no idea.
jung-hunsoo
Great.
I wonder how fast and concurrent throughput Elixir can provide among other languages.
- JSON request → (String conversion) → JSON response
- HTML request → (String conversion) → HTML response
- WebSocket pingpong
No DB query, since DB query is a way from the backend core lang’s job.
wanton7
Raw performance probably goes something like this Assembler > C > C++ > Rust > C# (.NET Core) > Kotlin / Java (JVM) > Go > NodeJS > Elixir > Python > PHP, Ruby
But performances differ depending based on compiler and runtime used. Also lot of languages have most internal functions implemented in C or C++. So it’s not so easy compare performance between languages.
wanton7
And to add NodeJS doesn’t provide any fault tolerance. Containers don’t provide fault tolerance directly but other with apps build top of them do. Elixir/Erlang provides fault tolerance inside an app, so that badly behaved part of the app can be restarted and not the whole app. I don"t know any other platform that has fault tolerance support like it. So yes it’s special.
adrianrl
What if your service goes down by night and remains down until you realize? Your users wouldn’t be happy, they will probably try to find an alternative more reliable and you’ll lose money. Bad experiences taught me that a robust service is much more important than a fast one, performance is relative, useless benchmarks with a plain text response doesn’t imitate the result in a real-world scenario. Of course there are solutions for those kind of problems, but with Elixir you get all of this out of the box. You’ll appreciate fault tolerance when your service has those stability problems.