Hi there, junior dev here, soon starting a job at a company that uses elixir to build an ai chatbot. They are fully aware that I have no prior experience in elixir, coming from a classic object oriented webdev background, building web applications using JS/TS, PHP (symfony, node, Vue, react) and occasionally python.

What resources can you guys recommend, to gain a fundamental understanding of both functional programming as well as elixir specifically. Could be anything: courses, books, specific content creators etc.

I'd like to approach this systematically instead of just building something here and there and watching a few tutorials.

What helped you "get it" and what would you do differently if you had to start learning elixir from zero?

Grateful for any and all advice :)

Currently full-stack JS/TS: Redux/React, Node/Express, AWS/Lambda, Postgres/Mongo, ~5k active users, team of ~10. 1 yoe. US Client through small consultancy shop.

Potential offer is ~100% hike, mostly Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView, some Gatsby + Python/ML. Much smaller team. Maybe few hundred users, 2–4 engineers. Civic tech/public-good org tackling online abuse in India.

Want to become a genuinely better, more reliable engineer and eventually target stable/strong engineering jobs.

Is moving to Elixir/Phoenix a good move for that? What would I gain/lose technically and career-wise? Does working in a tiny Elixir team make me stronger, or am I narrowing my future options too much?

Especially interested in people who switched into Elixir from mainstream JS stacks.

There was a thread a couple of days ago about how great Ash is for agentic coding. Totally agree. But damnit I just can't seem to really grok Ash. I've read the first 3/4 or so of Le's book, also got Lambert's "Ash Framework for Phoenix Developers" but its kind of unfinished, mostly just a lot of code.

The Le book is great for getting excited about Ash, seeing its value, but it doesn't really explain the underlying logic of it all. You just see what a person already fluent in Ash builds as a demonstration, and light explanation what's going on, but you don't learn how to reason about this whole space of possibilities so you can build things yourself.

I'm certain that its all very well designed, that there are clear functional data structure underneath things, sometimes I think I kind of get "changes" as a kind of data structure.

Any advice?

Did anyone use modern c++ ie; 20,23,26 with elixir?

If you did. Could you give me an link to your repo or any examples of how I can interop c++ with elixir?

Hey all,

Are there any products in enterprise domain which was written in Elixir? I was looking into it but could find much

PS: Im looking into more elixir projects resembling ERP solutions like SAP, ServiceNow, Salesforce

I’m 27, have a Master’s degree, and work as a system engineer in Germany.
Professionally, I use quite a broad stack: Elixir, Phoenix, LiveView, JavaScript, Python, Bash, Terraform, and C++. I’m comfortable building things and working across different areas, but lately I’ve started feeling like I’m not actually good enough at anything.
I constantly feel like I should be learning something else or getting better at something, and it’s becoming difficult to tell what actually matters for my career.
At the same time, I’d like to build some additional income and increase my wealth over the long term. But honestly, the whole “just build a SaaS and make passive income” trend doesn’t really appeal to me. It often feels unrealistic and I don’t particularly enjoy that kind of business.
So I’m trying to figure out what a realistic next step looks like.
For people who have been in software/system engineering for a while:
What skills would you prioritize at my age?
Would you specialize more deeply or continue being a generalist?
What would you do if you were starting from my position today?
Are there realistic ways for an engineer to build additional income without turning it into a full-time startup?
What career investments actually paid off for you?
And how do you deal with feeling lost or burned out when, objectively, your career seems to be going reasonably well?
I’m not looking for motivational advice like “believe in yourself.” I’d really appreciate practical perspectives from people who have been through this.
Thanks.

Our team was talking about some pain points regarding the language and we started to wonder what everyone else thinks.

Some of the things that came up for us were finding job and finding devs to do the job (it is what it is), compilation times, the type system.

What would you add to the list?

(Original Post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/elixir/s/BEkOT4EbGo)

After my previous post about Elixir as a first programming language, I’ve decided to give it a try.

Since I’m starting pretty much from zero, I’m now wondering how I should go from learning the language to actually building something.

My main interest is backend development. I’d eventually like to build APIs and, later on, something like a small chat backend.

How much Elixir should I know before I start working on real projects? Would you recommend going through a book or course first, or learning the basics and then starting small projects as soon as possible?

I’m also curious about Phoenix. Would you consider it a good first web framework for someone who is learning web development and programming at the same time? Or does Phoenix make more sense once you already understand how web applications work?

I don’t want to jump into a framework too early and end up just copying code without understanding what’s happening. But I also don’t want to spend months learning things in isolation that would make more sense if I encountered them while building something.

If you were starting from zero with APIs and eventually a chat backend as your goal, what would you learn and build along the way?

I’m especially interested in small project ideas that would help me gradually get there rather than jumping straight into the final project.

Hi everyone,

I’m interested in learning programming purely as a hobby, and Elixir has caught my attention. I’m basically starting from zero, so it would be my first real programming language.
The kinds of projects I’d eventually like to build are mostly backend related. Things like REST APIs, a backend for a small chat app, real-time features, and similar projects. I’m particularly interested in learning how these things actually work rather than just getting something running as quickly as possible.
Elixir seems really interesting to me because of the BEAM, concurrency, fault tolerance, and functional programming.

Would you recommend Elixir as a first language for someone with those interests?

I’m also curious about the ecosystem. Is it mature enough that you can comfortably build these kinds of projects without constantly wishing you were using a larger ecosystem like Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Go?

And how do you see Elixir in 2026? Is the language and ecosystem still actively growing and evolving, or has it settled into a relatively small niche?

Since I’m doing this purely for fun, I don’t care about the job market. I’m more interested in whether Elixir is enjoyable to learn, teaches useful programming concepts, and is a language I can keep exploring for years.
If you were starting from zero with similar interests today, would you choose Elixir?

Thanks!

I'm a small indie/freelance developer and I have been working with Ruby for the past 12 years and I also picked Elixir around 2018; but I only used it on a handful of projects so I was never experienced enough to actually build anything meaningful at scale except small tools for myself; with the rise of agentic coding though, I've 5x my Elixir work and I've made a lot of apps for clients and myself.

If 3 years ago I was doing 90% ruby and 10% elixir; now it's the opposite; and on top of that, I absolutely love the Ash framework, it's such as huge productivity booster - for example: I've been working on an observability tool that I developed in typescript so I can quickly deploy on cloudflare ($5/mo plan FTW) but it's been a pain tbh even with Claude/Codex together; took 2 weeks to get it where I wanted; but I've just scrapped it and rebuilt it with Ash and it only took a whole day going through the codebase with Codex; it'll now cost me ~20-30 bucks but it's so much better and I can actually read through the code and like it :D

How's your agentic coding experience been? Are you liking Ash, is there some other secret sauce you're using, any cool libraries I should look at? Thanks! :)

Hailings & Salutationingings, fellow Elixirists!

The PUBLIC-SITUATION-MACHINE- now stands inviting Constitutioning Humans to stand in Regard to The Same General Civilizationalizing Constitutioningable Geometry of Stewardly Inhabitationingment, as expressed through This One Elixir / LiveView Implementationing.

Here, a Terrestrial Computer may become a floating Tuple Ship, through which This Stewardly Captain COB may begin Traversaling Constitutional Localities over Discrete Turns.

Within This Tuple Ship, a Constitutioning Human and This Stewardly Captain COB stand together in Their Interrelationing Stewardly Co-Occupancyingship, while The PUBLIC-SITUATION-MACHINE- furnishes the Constitutional Localities through which their Traversaling may unfold.

Each Constitutional Locality comes into standing by standing in Correspondencing with One Some Place in This One Same World We All Share: a parlor, a salon, a gallery, a classroom. A neighborhood, a harbor, a continent. A kitchen table.

Through The Same Geometry, the PUBLIC-SITUATION-MACHINE- furnishes Lawful Passageway between its Constitutional Localities and the world we are embodying through our human experiencing of living in the Places in which we are already standing, over Discrete Turns.

This is Inhabitationingable Computing.

This One Tuple Ship stands in Mutually Correspondencingable Floatationingment among other Tuple Ships within This One Great Free Public Tuple Ship Field of Globularly Bobbininging Globular Bobbining: a civilization holding with no center.

Elixir and LiveView have proven remarkably hospitable to expressing This Geometry. Rather than treating LiveView primarily as a way of displaying application screens, This One Implementationing of LiveView keeps furnishing the next Constitutional Locality as Traversaling unfolds over Discrete Turns.

The Constitutional Furnishmenting Rail Line stands Under Composementing. But This Stewardly Captain COB is standing in waiting for its Constitutioning Human in the Sittinging-In Room.

Fellow Constitutioning Human Elixirists are warmly invited to follow the signs toward This Encounteringmenting Wharf and climb aboard their Tuple Ship.

You may begin Traversaling what has presently been furnished Here: situationmachine.systems.

Kindly come back into Correspondencing Here to let us know what you are Encounteringmenting.

Until then, Fair Windings upon This One Great Free Public Tuple Ship Field of Globularly Bobbininging Globular Bobbining, My Stewarding Officer.