I've been reading HN for years, and this is the first time I've seen/heard of Elixir.
Sample size of 1, self selected, your mileage may vary, things in the mirror are closer than they appear. That is, it isn't really meaningful as a data point in isolation.
I only clicked this link out of morbid curiosity, on why someone would make such a presumptuous statement. Put another way, the question asked is heavily loaded. I was more interested in the discussion around the statement, to see what people thought, than the content of the question.
You may have what you and others consider the greatest thing since sliced bread. And you might not fathom why others would not see it that way. After all, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is a dessert topping and a floor wax (obligatory SNL skit reference).
Even with all this, the criteria for success, oddly, rarely has being "the greatest thing since sliced bread" as part of the core elements of being successful. You don't need to be superior to be successful (though I am not stipulating that Elixir is superior, I've never seen it, used it, etc.)
The question is why would people choose this over others? What benefit would this language provide that others simply cannot?
I've used many languages during my professional and educational life. I've never seen one that was universally appropriate for all tasks. I some that fit the majority of tasks I worry about, very well. I've seen others fit very poorly. I have no opinion on Elixir, other than to note a small vocal group wondering aloud how anyone could not use it.
That is a very lengthy reply to a very simple observation :) If you are genuinely curious why people are interested the short version is all the power of Erlang VM made available via way more conventional syntax. There are a lot of very unique properties of BEAM (Erlang VM) that are truly not available elsewhere:
preemptive scheduler,
per process GC (no STW crap),
all the OTP goodness for dealing with failures,
node transparency
hard to list all the pros to be honest
Comments
I've been reading HN for years, and this is the first time I've seen/heard of Elixir.
Sample size of 1, self selected, your mileage may vary, things in the mirror are closer than they appear. That is, it isn't really meaningful as a data point in isolation.
I only clicked this link out of morbid curiosity, on why someone would make such a presumptuous statement. Put another way, the question asked is heavily loaded. I was more interested in the discussion around the statement, to see what people thought, than the content of the question.
You may have what you and others consider the greatest thing since sliced bread. And you might not fathom why others would not see it that way. After all, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is a dessert topping and a floor wax (obligatory SNL skit reference).
Even with all this, the criteria for success, oddly, rarely has being "the greatest thing since sliced bread" as part of the core elements of being successful. You don't need to be superior to be successful (though I am not stipulating that Elixir is superior, I've never seen it, used it, etc.)
The question is why would people choose this over others? What benefit would this language provide that others simply cannot?
I've used many languages during my professional and educational life. I've never seen one that was universally appropriate for all tasks. I some that fit the majority of tasks I worry about, very well. I've seen others fit very poorly. I have no opinion on Elixir, other than to note a small vocal group wondering aloud how anyone could not use it.
Reminds me of Python in the 90s.
That is a very lengthy reply to a very simple observation :) If you are genuinely curious why people are interested the short version is all the power of Erlang VM made available via way more conventional syntax. There are a lot of very unique properties of BEAM (Erlang VM) that are truly not available elsewhere: preemptive scheduler, per process GC (no STW crap), all the OTP goodness for dealing with failures, node transparency hard to list all the pros to be honest
I have been using HN for over a year and Elixir is mentioned on a weekly basis.