Elixir is a functional programming language that’s gaining traction in the tech world. It runs on the Erlang virtual machine and has been used for building scalable, maintainable and reliable software for the past 20 years.
The Elixir programming language has a lot to offer developers who want to build apps faster than other languages. So if you’re considering using Elixir for your next project—or even just looking into it—here are some facts about this powerful programming language:
- Builds Scalable, Maintainable and Reliable Software
Elixir is a functional language, which means it’s built around functions. Elixir has a very powerful meta-programming system called GenServer, allowing developers to build highly concurrent applications easily. It also has a very good concurrency model and does not have null values, making it easier to write robust software.
- Elixir runs on BEAM
Elixir runs on BEAM, a virtual machine. It’s the Erlang virtual machine, which is a concurrent and garbage-collected runtime system. BEAM is the heart of Elixir, so it’s crucial to know what this means.
BEAM provides all of the features needed for running applications in Elixir: it provides memory management (heap), process management (fork/join), network communication (RSocket) and files I/O integration with C libraries like libuv
- BEAM uses Erlang VM
BEAM uses ErlangVM, which is a virtual machine that runs on top of the Linux kernel. The software that allows you to write Elixir and other programming languages using BEAM is called OTP (Erlang Term Process).
Erlang was created by Ericsson as part of their research into distributed computing back in 1986. It was originally designed for telephony applications but has since been used in many other areas, including e-commerce, banking, healthcare and manufacturing.
- Check out the Elements of a Process Model in Elixir
Elixir has a process model that is based on the actor model. The processes are lightweight and can be created and destroyed very quickly, which helps them to manage concurrency. This means that you can use Elixir programming language to build high-performance applications without worrying about how many threads or processes there are in your system.
The Elixir programming language also uses processes to handle side effects, which means that when something happens due to running one of these functions (for example, printing out some text). It won’t block other code from running until it’s done processing its own logic.
- Elixir syntax set closely resembles Ruby
Elixir syntax is similar to Ruby. It means that if you’re already familiar with the latter and want to learn Elixir programming, it might be easier than learning another new language.
Elixir is a functional language (like Haskell), whereas Ruby is dynamic and object-oriented. However, despite their differences in these categories of programming languages, both can be used for building apps: they have different purposes but share many commonalities regarding how they work behind the scenes when writing code.
- Elixir has community support from Github
Elixir programming language has a lot of community support.
Elixir has been around since 2007, and it’s still gaining popularity today. The language was created by Erlang creator Robert Virding, who wanted to create an alternative to C++ that would be easier for developers to use when building applications in large-scale settings (like cloud computing).
He envisioned Elixir as being able to handle the same tasks as Erlang but with greater ease due to its functional nature—so Elixir became very popular among programmers who wanted something simple yet powerful at their disposal!
Elixir is also great for building microservices because it has many built-in tools like OTP (the Orchestration Toolkit), which helps you quickly manage processes across multiple servers without too much overhead on each individual server itself. It makes things simpler overall since there is no need for additional frameworks or libraries added into your codebase just so they can work together properly!
If you’re looking into building APIs, then this might be another good reason why Elixir might interest you, too; not only does it allow users access to data stored locally within their own machine, but it also allows them full control over what happens next after making changes via RESTful interfaces built specifically within those APIs themselves.
- Phoenix allows you to create an API in just five minutes
Phoenix is a server-side web framework that allows you to create an API in just five minutes. To create a new project, use the phoenix.new command:
> $ mix phoenix.new my_project –no-brunch –no-ecto -g abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789abcdexyzxeyyzxeyyzxexyzxxyzxxaabbccddeeffgggbbbbbbaaabbpppqqrrrtzzzzzzzzz
- You can make your app with less code by using Ecto.
Ecto is a database wrapper library for the Elixir programming language. It provides a database abstraction layer, which allows you to switch between different databases.
Ecto is used by Phoenix, an Elixir web framework popular in developing modern applications. It’s also used by Revel, another popular Phoenix-based framework.
Conclusion
Elixir is a great alternative to other technologies. It’s easy to understand, fun to learn, and has many benefits compared to other languages like Java or Python. You don’t need any prior knowledge of Erlang or Elixir to start using it immediately—the language itself is designed so that it can be learned quickly!
