Preface
Elixir offers developers the functional power and concurrent resilience of Erlang, with friendlier syntax, libraries, and metaprogramming. Elixir compiles to Erlang byte code, and you can mix and match it with Erlang and Erlang tools. Despite a shared foundation, however, Elixir feels very different, perhaps more similar to Ruby than to Erlang’s ancestor Prolog.
Introducing Elixir will give you a gentle guide to this powerful language.
Note
This release of Introducing Elixir covers version 1.0.0. We will update it as the language evolves. If you find mistakes or things that have broken, please let us know through the errata system.
Who This Book Is For
This book is mostly for people who’ve been programming in other languages but want to look around. Maybe you’re being very practical, and a distributed model, with its resulting scale and resilience advantages, appeals to you. Maybe you want to see what this “functional programming” stuff is all about. Or maybe you’re just going for a hike, taking your mind to a new place.
I suspect that functional programming is more approachable as a first language, before you’ve learned to program in other paradigms. However, getting started in Elixir—sometimes even just installing it—requires a fair amount of computing skill. If you’re a complete newcomer to programming, welcome, but there will be a few challenges along the way.
Who This Book Is Not For
This book is not for people in a hurry to get things done.
If you already know ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access