Jun 06 2017

Elixir Toolkit

It's no secret that we here at MojoTech are big advocates of Elixir. We're using it on client projects, talking about it at conferences, Elixir meetups, and we're even involved in an incredible conference this fall, Elixir with Love.

We've spent a fair amount of time getting to know the ins and outs, so we decided to share some of our Mojos favorite Elixir links and resources.

Feel free to add some of your own favorites in the comments!

Elixir toolkit

Omid Bachari Developer

Plataformatec Blog: This blog is valuable because one of its regular contributors is the creator of the Elixir language, José Valim. Critical questions in software design and language-usage are answered in his widely read posts, but other contributors produce great content, too.

Elixir Radar: This newsletter is a curated collection of high-quality writing, delivered by email weekly. The Radar often selects blogs that help the reader use the language, libraries, and ecosystem properly, which is not always obvious for a relatively new language.

Elixir Fountain: This podcast provides solid listening for new and experienced users of the language. By attracting language and library authors, conference planners, founders of startups, and other interesting figures, every episode is worth listening to.

r/elixir: Or just drink from the firehose! User up-voted content rises to the top, which biases the top links to a degree, but it's nevertheless worth keeping up with what's trending.

Adam Steel Developer

Official getting started docs: In addition to being a solid intro to the broad array of primary concepts in Elixir, this resource is notable for the work Jose Valim and the Elixir team are putting in to making the language friendly to newcomers.

The Little Elixir OTP Guidebook: Elixir, and the set of tools known as OTP in particular is unusually powerful and reliable. This book takes you on a tour of OTP, all the way through distributed Elixir. It's my go-to recommendation for people who want an intro to the more advanced concepts Elixir has to offer. This is the kind of book that will expand the way you think about programming.

The code base itself: Whether figuring out expected behavior or just trying to better understand what's going on in your code, Elixir's code base is well annotated and organized. And it's (mostly) written in Elixir! I often find myself rummaging about, learning about a new corner or trying to figure out the correct structure for my type specs.

Learn you some Erlang: The more you know about Elixir, the more you want to know about Erlang. This is a highly recommended resource to that end. If you're more of the interactive type of learner, I've also enjoyed tryerlang.org as a quick way to start understanding the language.

Rob Kaminsky Developer

Exercism.io Elixir exercises: Exercism is a great way to dip your toes in the water before diving into any language. It was great when I was just starting out so I could work with problems that were presented and the testing suite was already built for me. It also has peer review and allows for iterations over a given problem.

Awesome Elixir Newsletter: A great newsletter for staying up to date on new Elixir packages, articles, or even jobs that work with Elixir... Ahem ... MojoTech has some jobs.

Little Alchemist blog: This might be supporting the blog a little too much considering it just started. He has a 'write like you talk' style, so it's straight forward to understand. Since it's a new blog, it only covers beginning concepts for the time being.

Elixir roundup

In case you missed it, here is a roundup of our favorite Elixir posts, authored by our own Mojos.

The Elixir way of operational reasoning

Safeguard web service failures in Elixir with Fuse

Bonus: Confreaks Elixir Daze talk by Omid Houston - Observer Driven Design

PS: Do you have an Elixir project in the pipeline? Check out our Elixir development services to learn more about our development engagements.

Courtney Fanning

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