Elixir Update (re-share)

Are there industries in which Elixir is most popular?

When recruiting for Erlang, there does seem to be trends as to the types of business that have invested in the language. Generally speaking, the language is most popular in gambling/gaming, telecom & messaging (obvious one, I know) & data analytics. However, from my personal experience it doesn't seem that Elixir follows the same trend, it seems to be easily adaptable and is prominent in a wide variety of industries. Whilst Elixir is still used in the industries mentioned above, it is in no way restricted to just that.

You can see an example of this over at https://elixir-companies.com/ this is an awesome page that has been created over time by Doomspork & Burden to promote awareness of Elixir's versatility.

How can I get into an Elixir role without any commercial experience?

This is a common one I get asked on the Slack channel & on candidate conversations, it's an age old question in most industries but due to the speed in which Elixir has grown in popularity, it seems there's a big chunk of the Ruby community ready to make the jump.

My recommendation may seem obvious to some, but you would be surprised as to how many people see this is as new information.

Your best bet is to do the following:

• Get yourself active within the Elixir community!: Attend meetups, hackathons & conferences, you can usually see the local events on Meetup
• Get involved in conversations on the Elixir slack channel & similar forums
• Use Github to contribute to open source & demonstrate your self-taught skills
• Try to be realistic with the expectations of your next role (it's unlikely that you will find a remote contract on a ￡500 day rate that will allow you to cross train before getting your teeth into their projects)
• Look for roles that fit your current skill set but mention Elixir, a lot of companies are trialling micro-services in Elixir & will get you the exposure whilst giving you the opportunity to cross-train

With all of that said, I do sometimes pick up opportunities for Full Stack Developers to cross train into Elixir without any commercial experience, ideally you'll have strong Javascript & Ruby skills as well as some personal projects that demonstrate your understanding of Elixir. - Reach out for more information.

Elixir Devs - What would you tell your 'Elixir beginner' self?

I've spoken to a number of experienced Elixir Developers in the community to gather some helpful tips that they believe would benefit those just getting started in their Elixir adventure.

• 'I think personally the biggest struggle to getting proficient in Elixir at first was really grokking "everything is a value" and pattern matching. Once you understand those two concepts a lot of stuff starts to make sense' - John Goff
• 'Try to focus on the concepts of Elixir rather than studying Phoenix. Study Erlang (at least for reading it) & try to use the concurrency' - Gianluca Padovani
• 'My advice would be to get a job early on, on the job learning is the best learning. A lot of places are willing to take you on with zero professional experience in Elixir, given you are the right fit and show enthusiasm for learning.' - Steven Blowers
• 'Elixirschool.com  and https://exercism.io  are good starting points. I mentor on the Elixir track.' - Chris Eyre
• 'I always advise to learn and understand OTP! The book "Erlang in Action" is what made it click for me and is a great book on OTP. Don't be scared of Erlang. It's very much like Elixir; just a different syntax and different compiling tools. If you learn OTP properly, you'll use Elixir to its fullest. Don't approach Elixir/Erlang with programming paradigms from other languages. Elixir/Erlang are functional, yes, but you need to develop an OTP paradigm mentality. Try to forget what you know and think in Erlang terms.' - Jahred Love
• 'Try not to neglect Dialyzer!' - Ino Murko
• 'I came from Erlang so, mainly I was using Elixir as a different way to write Erlang and maybe using the pipe operator too much. I could say to my Elixir beginner self to check further meta-programming and research more about the best practices for Elixir instead of only adapting those ones from Erlang.' - Manuel Rubio