I’m not “moving away” from Elixir but experimenting it, at the moment.
I’ve been learning and experimenting Clojure on a project last year.
I’m currently trying to write a client/server app to exchange files in a secured way with Elixir. As this is not a Web application, I don’t use Phoenix.
I’m not coming from the Ruby world nor from the Erlang world but from the Basic/Pascal/C/C++/LISP/SmallTalk/Python/Tcl/Java/JavaScript/Clojure worlds.
So, my 5 cts of Elixir newbie criticisms at first glance…
- Adoption: To be honest, no one knows Elixir around me and very few in my country (France). So, no recruiting in view…
- Learning curve: Beside its (misleading ?) clean syntax, Elixir is not an easy language to learn when you have to fully understand and correctly use all the OTP stuff (genservers, supervisors, …). And if you don’t use the OTP stuff, why choosing Elixir ?
- Erlang: If you want to do something a bit serious with Elixir then you ALSO HAVE TO LEARN Erlang and to juggle with both syntaxes. Not necessarily “for your great good” !
- Libraries: Some libraries are clearly oriented by the particulars needs of their authors and sometimes “forget” some parts of the domain covered. Sometimes too, some unwanted “scories” arise (such as polluting logger messages)
- Documentation: The Elixir official hexdoc is nice but some libraries hexdocs seriously lack exemples or explanations. And when you have to switch to erlang docs (point 2), that’s worst again: nearly unreadable by a neophyte like me and sometimes, incomplete (no ssh_sftpd_file_api doc for instance ?)
- Books: Some of them begin gently then, at the middle, a “big step” of complexity and… you are definitly lost ! For some others the “big step” comes directly at the beginning…
- Videos: I didn’t find so many free “technical” (ie courses, not conferences or presentations) and progressives videos (except Tensor Programming and Alchemist Camp) as I did with JavaScript. In french, only one (Grafikart).
In conclusion, I would say that compared to most others languages that I learned, Elixir has to be earned !
