Programmer Passport: Elixir

Chapter 6Processes and Concurrency

Though you might not know it yet, every Elixir program runs in a process. So far, we’ve not had to write any code to start our own process. In this chapter, we’ll change all of that. We’ll look at the functions and primitives for spawning processes, sending messages, and building connections between them.

Let’s plan our attack. First, we’re going to walk through what Elixir processes are and how you can work with them. We’ll explore them first in IEx.

Next, we’ll use processes to build a key-value store using primitives. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of our approach and also concepts like message passing and back pressure.

Finally, we’ll give you the chance to try some of these concepts yourself. The chapter ...