[freedomben]

I think it's important to differentiate between groups, because it is definitely possible (and normal) in some situations not to ever need to understand Erlang or know anything about it.

If you are building a Phoenix web app, you can go many years and never run into non-trivial/non-obvious Erlang (excepting perhaps a small thing here or there, although many of those have Elixir wrappers now). I've also heard similar regarding Nerves apps.

On the other hand if you're writing a non-trivial CLI or app that doesn't use any sort of "framework" and you have to dig into OTP more than just the standard well-documented-in-elixir functions, then you will most likely run into the problem described in the question.

I don't think it's "an albatross" but it's certainly not ideal. Now that real apps/companies are using Elixir and it's not just the hobbiest/early adopters, it's an important question to ask and I'm glad to see it!

I wonder how much we can solve this by improving the Elixir docs. If we better document the areas where people end up digging into Erlang, it seems like it would help. I'm hesitant to accept the "to be a Sr Elixir dev you might just need to learn a little Erlang" but that's also worth considering.

[jacquesm]

> I don't think it's "an albatross" but it's certainly not ideal.

I find the whole framing problematic. To call the foundation that you are building on and that you seek to displace an albatross is missing the option that it could easily be seen as being the other way around.

[freedomben]

> I find the whole framing problematic. To call the foundation that you are building on and that you seek to displace an albatross is missing the option that it could easily be seen as being the other way around.

well of course, if you're coming from an Erlang perspective, Elixir is a language that solved/solves a problem that doesn't exist. This is a valid view, but OP's thread is specifically asking as an Elixir dev with the perspective that Elixir solves a problem, rather than introduces one.

Recognizing that different perspectives exist isn't bad (and in many cases is very good), but it doesn't feel super constructive in a thread that precludes those perspectives. It seems a little like forum questions saying something like, "how do I do X on Windows?" and somebody replies, "Install OS X."

[pessimizer]

Except nobody is asking how to do anything, so every answer is equally unproductive.