From Ruby to Elixir

Implementing Data Structures

Data is the heart of programming. You need to be able to create clean data structures so that you can hold, read, and modify data easily. Doing this well will make it easier to read and maintain software applications.

Ruby is object-oriented. So, you write a class that has instance variables and public or private methods. You modify the data through these methods and build your program by implementing your application domain through classes. At runtime, classes are initialized as objects that hold a specific set of data.

But Elixir is functional. It doesn’t have classes, and data is immutable, so you might be scratching your head at how to go about implementing your data structures. We can take what we’ve learned ...