So, you're saying that, by choosing other functional programming languages, I'm giving up pragmatism/productivity/readability? Can you give me an example of such languages?
What that person means is that Elixir is a "practical" functional programming language. Of course, that's because Erlang is too.
Note that "practical" functional programming is something I just made up, but in general to me it means a language that provides immutable data, first class functions/higher order functions, and provides ways to minimize side effects. Elixir/Erlang do these. The language is geared towards functional programming, but it's impure.
But compare it to Haskell, a "pure" language: Elixir has no strong types, monads/functors/burritos, you can do side effects whenever you want with no penalty, there aren't many restrictions or things the compiler will yell you at about that aren't obvious mistakes.
I'm not saying either choice is better, but the average developer with little experience in both Elixir and Haskell can probably build a product faster in the former.
Note that "practical" functional programming is something I just made up, but in general to me it means a language that provides immutable data, first class functions/higher order functions, and provides ways to minimize side effects. Elixir/Erlang do these. The language is geared towards functional programming, but it's impure.
But compare it to Haskell, a "pure" language: Elixir has no strong types, monads/functors/burritos, you can do side effects whenever you want with no penalty, there aren't many restrictions or things the compiler will yell you at about that aren't obvious mistakes.
I'm not saying either choice is better, but the average developer with little experience in both Elixir and Haskell can probably build a product faster in the former.