[mercer]

I'm a big fan of the 'let it crash' approach. A lot of code I write is hacker-ish stuff where I just want to get something done and I don't need it to be pretty. I've been amazed at how many of my projects in Elixir just kind of keep chugging along despite the fact that I mostly bothered coding only the 'happy path'.

A while ago I wrote some code that retrieves data from various online sources (cryptocurrency exchanges) at regular intervals. A friend of mine wrote essentially the same code in Python. His code was littered with try/catch statements and even with those the app would often crash because these API's sucked ass. As a result, there'd be gaps in the data, or he'd have to restart the app or set up whatever restart mechanism one uses in the python ecosystem.

Meanwhile my elixir project just kind of kept running and retrieving data, and barring permanent changes in the various API's, it would keep collecting data even in every once in a while the endpoints would misbehave.

My typical approach to projects is to tinker and cobble things together but then also overly worry about all the things that can go wrong. I know I'm not alone in being this way; I've met plenty of developers who seem to be a combination of just wanting to get results but then worrying excessively about everything that could go wrong.

Elixir is singular in how it allows me to approach projects in this manner while still feeling confident that it'll work well enough. And while that might not be the most common use-case, it's really helped reinvigorate my enjoyment of programming.