Yeah, but how would that help them in any way? Google tried that with android and later they realized they have no idea what they are doing and they reverted back to following the upstream. If amount of money dictated innovation, then these corporations would be at least 10 years ahead of any competition when it comes to software, but alas I still look at the gmail web client that takes 4 seconds to load when I open it, that periodically sends popups when I close it that it didn’t manage to save my changes…
D4no0
Asd
Exactly my point! Google teams can afford solutions which require difficult maintenance, smaller teams with smaller budgets can’t
1
derek-zhou
True, but those languages are from at least 20 years ago. It is much harder to get a language off the ground now. I think what the OP was saying, which I agree with, is that Elixir is one of rare examples of new languages, not from a Big Tech, and has survived past the infant mortality period.
6
Onor.io
Whether it should or it shouldn’t be so, it’s hard to ignore that you may eventually need support on a product. If you buy a product backed by a big company (take MS for instance) then the chances are good that they are going to be around in 10 years to support the product. If you decide to go with open source–well there are lots of abandonware products all over the place aren’t there? Again, not that I necessarily agree with the logic but I think that’s a large part of the motivation for the “How big is the company selling this to us?” mentality.
2
dimitarvp
All true, though that raises the question about why is it so difficult to keep 1-2 Elixir guys / girls around in a big company to provide said support. Not like those big companies are effective and laser-focused on efficiency anyway.
1
D4no0
This is why we should be smarter and make better choices. What we see in the elixir world might be a movement that might change the future of how we think about software and funding of this kind of effort. It’s great to see all these new frameworks and technologies emerging from different team across the world lately in the elixir ecosystem.
Indeed but they think they are. The managers are filling their KPIs, to prove that they are useful and should be promoted. In any case the story with OSS goes back to GNU days and the truth is that companies will always wait for other companies to invest, there is simply no interest in a cooperation.
2
Onor.io
That’s a good point. I don’t know–there is a lot of herd mentality in big places. A lot of fear of being the one standing out from the herd because you’ll be the first one to be shown the door in times of economic difficulty.
1
Onor.io
I agree it’d be great if we could make better choices. But that doesn’t account for human nature. Many people are risk averse; they won’t try new technologies until someone else proves them out. They’re quite content to swim in the wake of others.
It’s also worth remembering that for most places their primary product isn’t software. A few years ago I was working on a contract at Ford. I was constantly annoyed about how little they cared about the quality of the software they had. A much smarter friend of mine said “Ford’s a car company. As long as cars are rolling off the assembly line, they’re making money.” And he was right of course. Most companies aren’t in the “try out new ideas in software” business.
Don’t get me wrong; I wish more people were willing to give new ideas a try. It’s just the reality we live with.
2
D4no0
Seems like this is an opposite to the argument before of being conservative. If nobody cared about the quality of software, you could as well plug in the whackiest language (as folk usually does, that is JS codebases with 0 written tests 
) there and nobody would care, no? That obviously is not the case, as there is a huge business interest for a company such as MS to get a slice of that pie for “support”, because that’s always how it works, especially in US.
Seems like a very pessimistic point of view. Remember that before these corporations came, the world of software development was a wild west that inspired some of the most innovative technologies. It kinda feels the same these days with these community driven ecosystems such as elixir, zig, etc.
I also think that the accessibility the LLMs are giving to individuals will critically shift the industry, as they won’t have to rely solely on stuck up developers that fight change, innovation and are completely averse to risk (AKA I work only for big companies, I don’t want to soil my CV with your startup).
0
egeersoz
I’m going to go against the grain here and say that I dislike that Elixir does not have any big corporate sponsors or backers. It has undeniably hurt adoption, which is a shame because it’s a great language. The low rate of adoption means fewer career opportunities, and also difficulty recruiting. These two problems obviously create a feedback loop.
4