Elixir
Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications. Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.
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About Elixir
Elixir, initially released in 2012, extends upon the already robust features of Erlang while also being easier for beginners to access, read, test, and write.
José Valim, the creator of Elixir, explains in his 2012 conference talk how he built the language for applications to be:
- Distributed
- Fault-Tolerant
- Soft-Real-Time
- Hot-Code-Swapped (can introduce new code without stopping the server)
Elixir actually compiles down to bytecode and then runs on the BEAM Erlang Virtual Machine.
There is no "conversion cost" for calling Erlang, meaning you can run Erlang code right next to Elixir code.
Being a functional language, everything in Elixir is an expression.
Elixir has "First Class Documentation" meaning comments can be attached to a function, making it easier to retrieve.
Regular expressions are also given first class treatment, removing awkward escaping within strings.
Elixir's asynchronous communication implementation allows the code to be lightweight, yet incorporate high-volume concurrency.
Programmers use Elixir to handle thousands of requests and responses concurrently on a single server node.
It has been used successfully for microservices that need to consume and serve a multitude of APIs rapidly.
The Phoenix framework helps structure Elixir applications for the web.
Key Features of Elixir
General-purpose
Elixir is used for web development, embedded software, data ingestion, and multimedia processing.
Functional
Multi-clause functions with pattern matching and guards are the building blocks of Elixir code.
Dynamically typed
Elixir has no compile-time type checks, favoring run-time pattern matching.
Immutable
All data in Elixir is immutable, allowing for safer and easier-to-reason-about concurrency.
Concurrent
Elixir uses the actor model - shared-nothing concurrency via message passing.
Fault tolerant
Elixir runs on the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems.
General-purpose
Elixir is used for web development, embedded software, data ingestion, and multimedia processing.
Functional
Multi-clause functions with pattern matching and guards are the building blocks of Elixir code.
Dynamically typed
Elixir has no compile-time type checks, favoring run-time pattern matching.
Immutable
All data in Elixir is immutable, allowing for safer and easier-to-reason-about concurrency.
Concurrent
Elixir uses the actor model - shared-nothing concurrency via message passing.
Fault tolerant
Elixir runs on the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems.
