Re:Ask HN: Django or Rails?
by handbanana on Monday June 11, 2018 @06:54AM
(#17283239)
Phoenix and Elixir are great. The negatives I have are: not a comparatively large community, not many companies using it, and it doesn’t have the breath of options via package management that frameworks like rails have.
I remember the rails' community on usenet when it was like that :-) However, both community and packages are growing quickly. Package and installation management is very flexible via mix and asdf.
Anecdotally, I'm seeing an increasing number of ruby shops becoming ruby + elixir shops.
Re:Ask HN: Django or Rails?
by handbanana on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @07:05AM
(#17292201)
There’s a long way to go
I'm familiar with both Django and Rails. I leaned on Rails for years – starting at the pre v1.0 day. Today, I prefer Phoenix (the Elixir framework).
You also mention in the comments the use of StackOverflow. Elixir Q&As live elsewhere on https://elixirforum.com/, which is very active. All the "senior" members of the community hang out there and routinely answer questions. Even Joe Armstrong, who designed and implemented Erlang is active. There is also an active Elixir Slack.
I still have personal projects in ruby, but none in Rails; all the survivors use Sinatra and Sequel (a far better alternative to ActiveRecord).
For small projects, any of these frameworks will suffice. However, once you need additional services, such as: messaging; background processing; server-side state (e.g. redis); crons; monitoring and self-healing; etc. then Elixir and Phoenix shine brightly.