[troutwine]

It's interesting to see Elixir mentioned more and more. I don't _quite_ see the use-case for it, but I'm so content with Erlang I'm almost surely not the audience the language targets. Will be fun to see if Elixir builds its own community or if Elixir folks slowly filter into the Erlang community as a whole.

- - -

EDIT

It occurs to me that the HN crowd might like Lisp Flavored Erlang: http://lfe.github.io/ It's a lisp-2 written by Robert Virding, co-creator of Erlang, and is backed by a great group of folks.

[adamors]

Erlang is awesome, but the syntax is just so out there that it's hard to get used to it when you're usually hacking with Ruby/Python/PHP etc.

If I would be working with a functional language for 8 hours a day, perhaps Erlang wouldn't seem so alien, but I'm not so it is.

Elixir for this reason is truly a godsend, and perhaps with time I can see myself sipping more and more Erlang because of it.

[seiji]

usually hacking with Ruby/Python/PHP etc

Erlang is designed to create solid production systems. If someone is obsessed with quick hacks and fad-of-the-week programming, they will feel uncomfortable in a real development environment.

[troutwine]

This seems... harsh to me.

Yeah, so Erlang's syntax is prolog inspired and can seem a little peculiar if you're using Algol inspired languages a lot. I _vaguely_ recall a feeling unfamiliar in Erlang land because of syntax but now, six years in, I hardly care about the syntax of _any_ language. It's just the thing you get used to, like speaking in foreign languages. It's just the water in which you swim.

[gcb0]

i don't know from your high horse, but from down here, erlang satisfies my needs for badly written hacks just fine.

more so that all implementations have a in memory DB so i don't even have to bother with that as i would have with php... so yeah, installing yaws and writting <h1>hello world</h1><erl>...</erl> is as PHPish as it gets for quick web prototypes.

[gcb0]

the above said, the easy of use of yaws is what makes me reticent to even start to play with elixir. i'd be very pissed it i like it but had to go back to plain erl for web prototypes.

[banachtarski]

Try https://github.com/s1n4/leptus

[agilebyte]

I am not sure if it targets me either but one thing I like is the pretty website and docs... AND that is important to me when I am playing with something new.

[troutwine]

Agreed. Docs are fantastically important.