Learning Elixir

Unveil many hidden gems of programming functionally by taking the foundational steps with Elixir

About This Book

• Explore the functional paradigms of programming with Elixir through use of helpful examples
• Concise step-by-step instructions to teach you difficult technical concepts
• Bridge the gap between functional programming and Elixir

Who This Book Is For

This book targets developers new to Elixir, as well as Erlang, in order to make them feel comfortable in functional programming with Elixir, thus enabling them to develop more scalable and fault-tolerant applications.

Although no knowledge of Elixir is assumed, some programming experience with mainstream Object-Oriented programming languages such a Ruby, Python, Java, C# would be beneficial.

What You Will Learn

• Explore Elixir to create resilient, scalable applications
• Create fault-tolerant applications
• Become better acquainted with Elixir code and see how it is structured to build and develop functional programs
• Learn the basics of functional programming
• Gain an understanding of effective OTP principles
• Design program-distributed applications and systems
• Write and create branching statements in Elixir
• Learn to do more with less using Elixir's metaprogramming
• Be familiar with the facilities Elixir provides for metaprogramming, macros, and extending the Elixir language

In Detail

Elixir, based on Erlang's virtual machine and ecosystem, makes it easier to achieve scalability, concurrency, fault tolerance, and high availability goals that are pursued by developers using any programming language or programming paradigm. Elixir is a modern programming language that utilizes the benefits offered by Erlang VM without really incorporating the complex syntaxes of Erlang.

Learning to program using Elixir will teach many things that are very beneficial to programming as a craft, even if at the end of the day, the programmer isn't using Elixir. This book will teach you concepts and principles important to any complex, scalable, and resilient application. Mostly, applications are historically difficult to reason about, but using the concepts in this book, they will become easy and enjoyable. It will teach you the functional programing ropes, to enable them to create better and more scalable applications, and you will explore how Elixir can help you achieve new programming heights. You will also glean a firm understanding of basics of OTP and the available generic, provided functionality for creating resilient complex systems. Furthermore, you will learn the basics of metaprogramming: modifying and extending Elixir to suite your needs.

Style and approach

An exploration of functional programming and Elixir with easy to follow examples using Elixir and the functional style. All the topics, concepts, and principles covered are clearly and concisely explained with either code examples or in depth discussions, or both!