Notes for why I think Elixir is worth using

notes.txt

Notes on why I think Elixir is worth using for us

* Phoenix Channels - able to support 2 million concurrent clients on a single server.
    * Node.js has an equivalent feature called SocketIO
    * Ruby on Rails has an equivalent feature called ActionCable
    * Not aware of any similar feature in Python
* Concurrency
    * Ruby, restricted by a GIL
    * Python, restricted by a GIL, but there is a proposal to remove it. Not sure how long it will take to remove it.
    * Node.js, single-threaded async
* Popularity
    * StackOverflow most loved vs. most dreaded languages of 2022
        * https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-webframe-love-dread
        * Elixir ranked #2 (behind Rust)
        * Python ranked #6
        * Ruby ranked #24
        * Javascript ranked #15
    * Web frameworks ranked on the same survey:
        * Phoenix #1
        * Django #16
        * Ruby on Rails #14
    * Other things ranked highly in that survey
        * Huggingface Transformers #1
        * PyTorch #4
        * Scikit-Learn #8
        * Numpy #9
        * Pandas #10 
        * Keras  #11 
        * Notice these are all Python libraries. Clearly Python is loved in the AI/machine learning field.
* Candidate pools
    * We can find C# or Python developers all day long. Finding good ones is the difficult part.
    * There are also tons of recent bootcamp grads for languages like C#/Java/JS/Python/Ruby. We know we can filter out these kinds of candidates, but the point is we don’t even have to worry about that with Elixir people.
    * Paul Graham wrote “The Python Paradox” in 2004 http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
        * It talks about how good developers self-select into better languages. In 2004 Java was the dominant language and Python was the newer thing.
        * At the time, Java developers were easy to find and Python developers seemed harder to find.
    * Good developers are good developers. We don’t necessarily need to hire “Elixir developers”, we need to hire *good developers*.
* Efficiency
    * Pinterest switched part of their system from Python to Elixir. This allowed them to go from 200 servers to 4 servers (it could have been 2 servers, but they chose to keep 4 servers for extra redundancy reasons). It also saved them $2m a year in server costs.
    * Bleacher Report switched from Ruby on Rails to Elixir. They reduced app servers from 150 to 8 or 5 (reading conflicting reports on this number).
* In good company. Some successful places using Elixir now:
    * Discord
    * WhatsApp (started on Erlang, switched to Elixir)
    * WeChat (using Erlang, not Elixir)
    * Adobe
    * Pinterest
    * Square Enix
    * PepsiCo
    * Bleacher Report
    * Sketch
    * Apple
    * Riot Games (using Erlang)
    * Klarna (using Erlang)
    * Financial Times
    * Postmates