Just bought it!
newpain01
lindem
sergio
Thank you just purchased a copy with the code ElixirForum. I’m looking foward to this, I still feel like a lot of us are still writing Elixir code but not really OTP code. Maybe it’s just me.
Hopefully this book unlocks a way of thinking about Elixir and OTP apps and gives us more leverage over this beast of a tool that is Erlang and OTP.
5
Ciboulette
redrapids
Author of Adopting Elixir
Fl4m3Ph03n1x
I bought the book and thus far I am enjoying it a lot.
There are a couple of things I would like to point out however.
Types
On page 49, the authors define the quizzes structure. One of the examples is as follows:
templates (%{ "category" => [Template.t]})
However, in the code used in the book, the notation most prevalent is the . notation (template.category instead of template["category"] for example).
Why did the authors choose this approach instead of using atoms?
templates (%{ category: [Template.t]})
Dialyzer
I know the authors address this by saying this is not a book about Dialyzer and that using it would add to the code.
However they do good job specifying types for the Data layer. As a reader, I would have been delighted to have more Dialyzer into the book. But this is just a personal opinion !
Loving the book thus far !
0
JEG2
Author of Designing Elixir Systems with OTP
Strings vs. Atoms
Categories need to be strings, because they are eventually going to be entered by teachers creating content. Large amount of dynamic atom creation could crash the BEAM.
Typespecs
In some early versions of the book, we had the typespecs in the code. Sadly, it made things worse. It really added to the weight of an already code heavy book and it raised the mental overhead needed to get through it, in our opinion.
4
mindriot
With regards to the type specs, if the only issue at hand is clutter within the book would possibly another way to address this be to have a repo with the example which had type specs? I understand this is more work to maintain and may have other issues, I mainly mean that there may be ways of adding that information without making the code directly in the book harder to get through.
On the whole I have been enjoying the book, need to get back into it as I put it down when waiting on new chapters and have been sucked into other things, the part I have read though has been extremely valuable.
0
JEG2
Author of Designing Elixir Systems with OTP
Yes, what you are asking for is possible, of course.
We did try to think of other ways to handle this issue which is why we have the section describing all the data structs for the quiz project.
3
mindriot
To be honest I’m not really asking for this, as I said I’ve not even completed the book and found It has added a lot of value day to day, so I am certainly a happy customer anyway. It was only something that popped into my head when reading the thread and might not even be a good idea. Personally I think the book did the right thing in order to keep focus on the topics at hand in terms of the main content. I’m somewhat inclined to think that types and dialyzer would be best served overall elsewhere, as far as I am aware there seems to be a bit of a lack of a easy to digest tutorial text for people just moving beyond the elixir basics who are looking to add static analysis which might be part of why it has been brought up?
1