17 ms·

Elixir v0.5.0 released

89 points by loganlinn 14y ago

protomyth 14y ago
I really wish projects like this would put together a basic, downloadable document on their language. Something that tells the reason and acts as a tour of the language.
- makmanalp 14y ago
  As an example to this, I really like the xtend docs: http://www.eclipse.org/xtend/#extensionmethods http://www.eclipse.org/xtend/#extensionmethods
  - josevalim 14y ago
    This is a nice intro. It shows the language features followed by some code examples, sweet, thanks for the link!
homakov 14y ago
make try-elixir.org or something )
leo79 14y ago
Is it me or a release notes with a list of what changed is nowhere to be found?
- carlosgaldino 14y ago
  Although it doesn't have a complete list of changes you can check some changes in the blog. http://elixir-lang.org/blog/ http://elixir-lang.org/blog/ There are some posts with a little summary of what happened during the week.
- josevalim 14y ago
  Consider this the initial release. The previous alpha versions were designed completely different, so release notes don't apply for this release. We will maintain a CHANGELOG from now on: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/master/CHANGELOG....
vvpan 14y ago
I am quite excited about this project. When I was looking at Erlang the syntax totally turned me off, but the rest of it is awesome.
- ericmoritz 14y ago
  What didn't you like about it? I remember hating the syntax when I first start but forgot why. After I worked through the initial aversion, the syntax no longer feels worse than say, Python, it is just different. In fact, I wouldn't give up Erlang's pattern matching functionality for anything and I miss that feature in any other language I use.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    The one thing that really bothers me about its syntax is all the different line terminators. It makes moving around patterns painful. I sort of dislike other aspects too, but nowhere near as much.
- derefr 14y ago
  If you're talking about the comma-semicolon-period thing, it seemed strange and foreign to me as well--until I realized that , and ; are just && and || with different reactions under unification. Basically, Erlang's grammar is defined such that any expression works with all the spaces stripped out--so it has to have some other way to encode things that would normally use the juxtaposition or line-separatation "operators" of other languages, in a more explicit way. Erlang's case statement, for example--and by extension its multiple-function-definition-under-pattern-matching--is basically one long ternary operator chain: (a?b:(c?d:(e?f:g))), and so forth.
rlander 14y ago
I used to be very excited about Elixir, not because I hate Erlang's syntax (I actually quite like it), but because I saw in it the opportunity for a mainstream, general purpose language with macros on top of the excellent Erlang runtime. However, after 2 small projects with Clojure, my thoughts have changed. To me it is the general programming language, and it's only a matter of time until clojure-beam sees the light of day (there's already Joxa). Also, it occupies a weird spot: after v0.4's redesign, it pretty much kept Erlang's semantics, which made it unlikely to be adopted by old Erlangers and, with the whole OO thing was thrown away, it is too much a departure from Ruby.
- josevalim 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback and for following Elixir all this time! I also enjoy Clojure a lot and it really gave me some great ideas that were imported into Elixir. While we have Lisp based implementations on top of the Erlang VM, I don't think clojure-beam can easily see the daylight unless it contains significant departures from Clojure. Unfortunately, extending the Erlang VM is nowhere close to extending the Java VM. :( The problem with the OO approach is that OO didn't suit well an immutable language. The Erlang VM forces us to keep Erlang's semantics and it has been this way before and after the redesign. There is no way around, believe me, I tried. :) I agree its current version is a stronger departure from Ruby, but also simpler and more powerful than before (now we have all of Erlang in our hands!). We are exchanging the OO familiarity by a better/tighter integration with Erlang runtime, which will, hopefully, be a good reason for people to try it out. I also believe there are plenty of reasons for Erlang developers to try it out, it is more familiar (which actually helps) and addresses many of Erlang shortcomings (it provides protocols, dynamic records, dynamic function generation via macros, etc). During the next weeks, I will write a document more specific to Erlang developers on how Elixir addresses these shortcomings. When you give Elixir a try, join us at #elixir-lang, I would love to chat more!
  - nivertech 14y ago
    I think departing from OOP is good, but I would like to have CLU-style ADT (Abstract Data Types) which is a good fit for Erlang's FP side.
shaunxcode 14y ago
the non s-expr homoiconicity/macro stuff is really cool. http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html

89 points by loganlinn 14y ago

I really wish projects like this would put together a basic, downloadable document on their language. Something that tells the reason and acts as a tour of the language.

makmanalp 14y ago
As an example to this, I really like the xtend docs: http://www.eclipse.org/xtend/#extensionmethods http://www.eclipse.org/xtend/#extensionmethods
- josevalim 14y ago
  This is a nice intro. It shows the language features followed by some code examples, sweet, thanks for the link!

homakov 14y ago

make try-elixir.org or something )

leo79 14y ago

Is it me or a release notes with a list of what changed is nowhere to be found?

carlosgaldino 14y ago
Although it doesn't have a complete list of changes you can check some changes in the blog. http://elixir-lang.org/blog/ http://elixir-lang.org/blog/ There are some posts with a little summary of what happened during the week.
josevalim 14y ago
Consider this the initial release. The previous alpha versions were designed completely different, so release notes don't apply for this release. We will maintain a CHANGELOG from now on: https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/blob/master/CHANGELOG....

vvpan 14y ago

I am quite excited about this project. When I was looking at Erlang the syntax totally turned me off, but the rest of it is awesome.

ericmoritz 14y ago
What didn't you like about it? I remember hating the syntax when I first start but forgot why. After I worked through the initial aversion, the syntax no longer feels worse than say, Python, it is just different. In fact, I wouldn't give up Erlang's pattern matching functionality for anything and I miss that feature in any other language I use.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  The one thing that really bothers me about its syntax is all the different line terminators. It makes moving around patterns painful. I sort of dislike other aspects too, but nowhere near as much.
derefr 14y ago
If you're talking about the comma-semicolon-period thing, it seemed strange and foreign to me as well--until I realized that , and ; are just && and || with different reactions under unification. Basically, Erlang's grammar is defined such that any expression works with all the spaces stripped out--so it has to have some other way to encode things that would normally use the juxtaposition or line-separatation "operators" of other languages, in a more explicit way. Erlang's case statement, for example--and by extension its multiple-function-definition-under-pattern-matching--is basically one long ternary operator chain: (a?b:(c?d:(e?f:g))), and so forth.

rlander 14y ago

I used to be very excited about Elixir, not because I hate Erlang's syntax (I actually quite like it), but because I saw in it the opportunity for a mainstream, general purpose language with macros on top of the excellent Erlang runtime. However, after 2 small projects with Clojure, my thoughts have changed. To me it is the general programming language, and it's only a matter of time until clojure-beam sees the light of day (there's already Joxa). Also, it occupies a weird spot: after v0.4's redesign, it pretty much kept Erlang's semantics, which made it unlikely to be adopted by old Erlangers and, with the whole OO thing was thrown away, it is too much a departure from Ruby.

josevalim 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback and for following Elixir all this time! I also enjoy Clojure a lot and it really gave me some great ideas that were imported into Elixir. While we have Lisp based implementations on top of the Erlang VM, I don't think clojure-beam can easily see the daylight unless it contains significant departures from Clojure. Unfortunately, extending the Erlang VM is nowhere close to extending the Java VM. :( The problem with the OO approach is that OO didn't suit well an immutable language. The Erlang VM forces us to keep Erlang's semantics and it has been this way before and after the redesign. There is no way around, believe me, I tried. :) I agree its current version is a stronger departure from Ruby, but also simpler and more powerful than before (now we have all of Erlang in our hands!). We are exchanging the OO familiarity by a better/tighter integration with Erlang runtime, which will, hopefully, be a good reason for people to try it out. I also believe there are plenty of reasons for Erlang developers to try it out, it is more familiar (which actually helps) and addresses many of Erlang shortcomings (it provides protocols, dynamic records, dynamic function generation via macros, etc). During the next weeks, I will write a document more specific to Erlang developers on how Elixir addresses these shortcomings. When you give Elixir a try, join us at #elixir-lang, I would love to chat more!
- nivertech 14y ago
  I think departing from OOP is good, but I would like to have CLU-style ADT (Abstract Data Types) which is a good fit for Erlang's FP side.

shaunxcode 14y ago

the non s-expr homoiconicity/macro stuff is really cool. http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html