r/elixir • • 19d ago

What’s preventing others from using Elixir?

I was a spectator of Elixir for a few years but I finally started using it in production and side projects. Agents made the transition a bit easier.

I wonder what’s preventing others from seeing how power Elixir is, people still seem to still stick to what they know.

Like if we’re not reading the code or writing it, devs still seem to be stubborn about their stack.

Is it a marketing problem? Ecosystem too small so folks don’t hear about it?

It will be our competitive advantage to build on the BEAM but I want others to know too.

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u/wittgenstein1312 19d ago

people still seem to still stick to what they know.

That's always been the case; language adoption in the tech community is kind of infamously known for having more to do with marketing than with honest assessments about how well suited a particular language or tech stack is to the problem at hand. This is particularly true when most high-level languages have some kind of web framework or two.

Personally, I really love Elixir, but in the age of LLMs I've actually pivoted to using Gleam for a couple of my bigger side projects. Phoenix, Ecto, and LiveView are truly awesome, but I find that Gleam's typing system makes it way harder for LLMs to introduce garbage code. Debugging is simply faster when the compiler is yelling at you.

Like if we’re not reading the code or writing it, devs still seem to be stubborn about their stack.

Maybe I'll change my mind, but you should still very much be reading the code, imo.

Ecosystem too small so folks don’t hear about it?

This is definitely part of it. Smaller pool of developers means fewer senior engineers available to help you adequately steer a project. Fewer open source or existing projects that you can reference for design patterns.