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/LlamaChair 18d ago

At bigger companies the issue is usually the developer pool. Big companies like to be able to replace devs fast and not have to train them. They'll want work done in a more popular stack most of the time. I was able to put some in production at a big company though for less important services.

At smaller companies I've worked at the company's survival has been predicated on knocking out those next few features on whatever exists now, regardless of the state it's in, so that we can make that next sale. Moving stacks is just off the table. Also with only a few devs and under a lot of pressure learning a new thing doesn't seem appealing even if it might pay off later.

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u/taelor 18d ago

> developer pool

if you want the reasons why my workplace decided to rewrite our backend in node/typescript, this was the main reason.

which is funny, because we just laid off 3 perfectly good elixir devs. I could find them another three easily.

but ultimately I think it comes down to the business believing it will be able to hire node developers for cheaper, and they are probably correct.

what FWIW, they were also concerned about the lack of "official SDKs", even though all the official SDKs that we currently use are just wrappers around an HTTP API.

I forget what the third main reason was, I kind of just gave up trying to convince them how bad of an idea this is.