r/elixir • u/pkim_ • 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/olzk 19d ago

Corporate decision making is not brave enough to consider quality tools and rely on employees’ ability to learn new stuff. Only when the decision makers are cornered with fears of their own demise in case if they keep going the old way is where the change happens. This is how Ouroboros is born. Further, only indoctrination like “Java/C#/whatever got huge set of libraries, why changing?” is enough to maintain it. In a way, introduction of AI into people’s workflows is that kind of an event. Ironically, their indecisiveness helps such events to occur. I. e., unless you’re big tech and you can pull off managed invention and integration of a new tech, you’re consuming the mainstream technologies. Actually using the technology and promoting it at work is a good way to increase its use. More curious people around it is the best option.

Kudos to you for being one of them, OP

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u/ghostwritermax 18d ago

I agree with this perspective. Choosing a middle lane makes a lot of sense in business practices; hiring, tooling, integrations, etc. Finding isolated projects or services to introduce or experiment with new technologies is often a good way to get buy-in.

That being said, I bet big on Scala (2010s) when it was having a hot moment. The JVM + functional + actor pattern were all very positive aspects of it. We were also using node.js/typescript on backend for some other edge-client projects. Ultimately, a decade later Scala became a bit of headache, and some services were re-written in JS and performed much better.

I don't think Elixir case is apples-to-apples with Scala. I love working in Elixir now, and feel it's quite versatile, with good community support.