[dpflan]

What language and programming style did you use prior to using Elixir the most? Have you been able to build systems of similar or even larger size as previous projects in other languages, and what was that experience like (i.e. how did Elixir make things better)?

[sph]

I've been doing this job for 20 years. I am fluent in C, Go, Rust, Python, as well as Elixir, and for my clients I have written concurrent systems running in production in all of these languages. I know how painful and complex the problem space is.

My opinion is not that rare, so instead of listing my credentials, you can search and find many others that have found this platform to be a great fit, simply because it has been designed to solve this very problem since 1986 when everybody else was focusing on single core, isolated systems.

[dpflan]

Sounds good, you make it sound like that Elixir is now your de-facto, even for non-distributed systems projects?

[sph]

Servers are 99% of the code I write, so yes I choose Elixir, though for very conservative clients and small projects I use Go.

For everything else, which is not a lot, there's Rust, Scheme, Lisp and many other fun languages to explore. My focus these days is on my business rather than consulting, so I have a lot of freedom.

[zelphirkalt]

How do you manage to convince employers of such language choices? (Do you need to convince?) And what kind of jobs or positions are that? I would love to use my skills like that, instead of building CRUD in Python, not really being able to apply my skillset, but employers are not ready to make the smallest leap it seems.

[cess11]

I've convinced the CEO that Elixir/BEAM/OTP is a good choice for a fairly large, multi-application project. It wasn't very hard, factors like high availability, the same programming language and runtime in the entire system, extremely fast prototyping, battle tested in absurdly demanding settings, sounds very nice to a business strategist able to understand at least some of the implications.

The drawbacks are basically in recruiting and a few other areas and quite manageable.

Edit: There's a book for this particular purpose, convincing the suits, https://pragprog.com/titles/tvmelixir/adopting-elixir/ .

[zelphirkalt]

Recruiting was exactly the one argument that I got to hear. That hiring people would be difficult and people demanding high wages and so on. I could not convince an employer to not weigh that heavily. At least that is the brought forward argument. There might also be an element of "don't know it myself, don't want it in my company".

[SwiftyBug]

Why specifically Elixir? Have you tried other languages that run on BEAM?