alt Hacker NewsI think Elixir is interesting and there is real value but some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it
and to that point around typing feels like the same wish-washy hand waving from the community that is very off putting
BEAM has genuine use cases but its not as wide as its made to believe. There are very good places where that is a perfect fit but it simply cannot upend Typescript.
Elixir feels very similar to how Clojure started getting traction and then ultimately forgotten apart from its die hard fans, I'm not saying Elixir will go the same way but seems very hard for something new and bold to replace what is popular and boring.
I do want Elixir to succeed (also Clojure as well and I advocated for it for a bit) but the low number of jobs still puts it in similar proximity to Clojure but BEAM I think would still provide uplift where Clojure simply could not
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So you prefer language communities where libraries have a constant stream of fixes, new breaking change releases every six months and entirely new framework ecosystems ascending every three years?
You can buy it if you use discernment. Obviously you'll run into compatibility issues in certain situations - like you aren't going to be able to use a library coupled to Phoenix 1.3 functionality in a Phoenix 1.8 project, but I continue to be surprised at how I can add a package like https://hex.pm/packages/deep_merge, which is 6 years old and it works just fine.
Why would packages need to be updated?
> some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it
I maintain more than 20 packages and, except for the major ones, like Phoenix and Ecto, they haven't been updated in more than a year and yes, they are all fine.
The language has been extremely stable. There has been almost no breaking changes in over a decade. Case in point: we introduced a whole gradual type system without making any changes to the language surface! The language is still on v1.x!