Yes. Totally.
tiagodavi
kokolegorille
Opinions are immutable in the Functional world, but they can be transformed into something new 
3
rvirding
Creator of Erlang
Having things more complicated means that there are more rules and restrictions you have to know and follow. For example why do I have to put the first thing on the same line as the with, there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for it but you must do it. Yes, I know why, but it would be nice to have the with on its own line.
Btw it’s the same reason as for if and function calls.
5
lucaong
Clojure is in my opinion a wonderful language (like many LISPs), that shares quite a few things with Elixir: both are functional without being pure, both are dynamically typed but support some tooling around enforcing types, both rely on immutable data structures, both have powerful meta programming in the form of macros written in the language itself, and both are compiled into an intermediate form, making them especially powerful for long-running programs, less so for scripting.
Apart from the differences related to the JVM versus the ERTS, that others have mentioned, I would also mention some differences in the focus and practices of the community:
-
Elixir and Erlang are designed from the ground up to allow for concurrency through the actor model (Erlang processes). While it is completely possible to write concurrent software with Clojure (for example with channels), concurrency in the Elixir and Erlang world is a core value that permeates the design of the language and its libraries.
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The Clojure community tends to promote small composable tools over frameworks. While Elixir also places a lot of value in small composable modules, its community also provides high quality frameworks like Phoenix and Ecto. This is totally subjective, but I personally like Elixir on this aspect.
At the end of the day, there is virtually nothing practical that one language can do and the other cannot, and they have many similarities, but they do have slightly different “core values”.
On the point of syntax, apart from the old jokes about parentheses, I learned to be mindful of familiarity bias: what looks strange and difficult to understand is not necessarily objectively worse or less readable. If a syntax is consistent and minimizes special exceptions (and that is certainly the case with LISP), it’s often just a matter of getting used to it. After learning and loving very different languages, I now consider “syntax looks strange to me” not a good reason for dismissing a language.
20
slifin
I’d advise asking this same question in https://clojureverse.org/
Some of these replies are not entirely accurate
1
dakora
I find Elixir’s syntax to be quite fluid and forgiving, making it less complicated. There are less rules than JavaScript for example.
The compiler is also very good at telling you if something is ambiguous and how to correct it, further simplifying things.
As for with and if the first argument doesn’t need to be on the first line if you add \ after the function call. Even the built in formatter will do this if the line is too long.
There is also nothing stopping you from using parentheses everywhere if it’s easier for you to read, so it can really appeal to programmers from many backgrounds.
2
alice
kokolegorille
You can learn LFE if You want to become better at both
Anyway, if You want to become better at Elixir, learn Elixir…
1
Fietske
tiagodavi
I think is always good to learn new languages because you can have different points of view on how solving problems.
1