[_acco]

Highlighting an important distinction Chris makes: there's a huge difference between needing to learn to read/understand the basic syntax of a language and needing to learn to write it.

When writing Elixir, yes, you'll be exposed to Erlang syntax/docs sooner or later. But you're not writing Erlang, so you never need to learn how to:

  - Compile more than a couple lines of Erlang into a function
  - Create an Erlang module/file
  - Learn Erlang's build tooling
  - Cold recall its syntax

Creating something functional from scratch in a language is 100x (1000x?) more challenging than learning how to roughly read it.

I've been programming full-time in Elixir for a couple years. All told, I think I spent 3-5 hours one afternoon learning the basics of Erlang's syntax so I could better read the docs. Haven't had to think about it consciously since.

[linkdd]

This.

I was able to read Erlang before knowing the name of the language. I discovered this language by looking at the source code of RabbitMQ, and I was surprised at how I could read it, knowing nothing about the language.

At first I thought atoms were variables defined somewhere (and I did not care where it was defined, the names were explicit). When I learned that they are in fact values, it blew my mind.

It's only 6 months later I started coding in Erlang. Then 3 years ago I started writing Elixir. I did not have to learn Elixir in fact, it was just another syntax for what I already knew.

I always recommend learning Erlang first with https://learnyousomeerlang.com/ and then learning Elixir. Simply because this book does a far better job at explaining OTP than the Elixir docs.

Maybe there is some value in writing learnyousomeelixir.com?

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I can read C++ pretty well, I know how to build, compile, and run C++, but I probably couldn't write very good C++. I think it's like reading a book about how a machine gun is used in action and constructing one vs. given a machine gun with no hands-on training and trying to use it myself.