Learning the Elixir Language

Elixir is a functional, concurrent, high-level general-purpose programming language that runs on the BEAM virtual machine, which is also used to implement the Erlang programming language. Elixir builds on top of Erlang and shares the same abstractions for building distributed, fault-tolerant applications. Elixir also provides productive tooling and an extensible design. The latter is supported by compile-time metaprogramming with macros and polymorphism via protocols.

Elixir is used by companies such as Ramp, PagerDuty, Discord, Brex, E-MetroTel, Pinterest, Moz, Bleacher Report, The Outline, Inverse, Divvy, FarmBot and for building embedded systems. The community organizes yearly events in the United States, Europe, and Japan, as well as minor local events and conferences.

José Valim is the creator of the Elixir programming language, a research and development project created at Plataformatec. His goals were to enable higher extensibility and productivity in the Erlang VM while maintaining compatibility with Erlang’s ecosystem.

Elixir was aimed at large-scale sites and apps. Elixir uses features of Ruby, Erlang, and Clojure to develop a “high-concurrency” and “low-latency” language. Elixir was designed to handle large data volumes. Elixir is used in the telecommunication, eCommerce, and finance industries.

On July 12, 2018, Honeypot released a mini-documentary on Elixir.