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Javier Guerra
Javier Guerra

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Why I learned Elixir Lang

I am always learning new things. And is not in a bragging sense that I said it. Is more a yell for help. Many times I spend my free time hook in an article about this new thing that I read mentioned on a twit.

I am getting better on not doing that, and respect my free time. I walk more, spend more time playing with my daughter or just laying face up on my bed looking for figures in the blank ceiling on my bedroom.

But 6 years ago, when in the company I work for, we decided to use CouchDB, I found amazing how it worked and I started looking for a way to better the speed on index view building. So I read that doing it on Erlang was better. And that started a chain reaction where I start learning Erlang. At the time I was experimenting with Scala, so I look for something similar, at least that was my reasoning, that compiled to BEAM, and that was more expressive to build my views. I found Elixir Lang, so I start playing with it. 5 years later, we have 1 API wrote in Elixir on production, and another Phoenix Framework project on its way. And more important, I think, my understanding of Ruby (my primary work language) has increased dramatically.

Understanding what is not Object Oriented Programming, has helped a lot un really grasp what it is. It also, allows me to understand Procs and Lambdas, and to reduce side effects on my day job coding.

Thanks Elixir, now, I will lay on my bedroom and think about it a little more.

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