Books from Phoenix Inside Out series | Hacker News Reader

Books from Phoenix Inside Out series

shankardevy.com

83 pointspvsukale324 comments

Is this worth getting? I would like to spend a little time with Phoenix, but I'm not sure if this content is up to date or if it's well written.

Before getting my feet wet, I also purchased a lot of books. But, in the end, the best way I realized was to start building something like a TODO app. I started with an ECommerce website (whoa) and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, my strong background in Rails helped me quite a lot, too.

If you want a really good book that helps you understand concepts (and also the code) the best one so far I've read is Programming Phoenix by Chris and José themselves.[1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Phoenix-Productive-Reliab...

Just an FYI, there is a new version of the book coming out in a few months which details the changes in Phoenix 1.3 [1]. Also, there is another book which explains how to build an app with Elixir only and then Elixir+Phoenix [2]. However, I haven't actually read it yet as I'm waiting for it to be officially released.

[1] https://pragprog.com/book/phoenix13/programming-phoenix-1-3

[2] https://pragprog.com/book/lhelph/functional-web-development-...

This was a good lesson for me not to get tech books well before I get a chance to read it. I got the 1.0 book thinking I'd read it when I get a break. Still haven't had a chance to do it and it is already somewhat obsolete. Live and learn :(

> Is this worth getting?

I can't speak for this book, but Phoenix and Elixir in general have incredible documentation and example libraries/apps all over the place. I built a production app in Phoenix and got up to a very rapid development pace in about ~2 weeks time.

My advice would be to just build something fairly advanced and learn what you need to as you go. But that's just my method for learning new tech. It works great for me but might not be the best method for everyone.

>I built a production app in Phoenix and got up to a very rapid development pace in about ~2 weeks time.

Cool. What is the name of your app? Is it opensource?

I found it to be excellent.

Yes a few typos but the content was incredibly well laid out with good pacing and a nice little TDD tutorial thrown in for good measure. The features of the codebase you build cover a lot of real world things that are non-trivial.

I am currently reading this book. Currently in chapter 2. So far author's explanations have been really good. Although this book has a chapter on Elixir it's main focus is in Phoenix. He introduces enough Elixir to work with Phoenix.

You should learn elixir before phoenix. Phoenix is just elixir.

I don’t necessarily agree. I think you can learn both at the same time.

A decade ago, I learned Ruby through the original Agile Web Development with Rails book. Afterwards I read Ruby-only books. I think both approaches work. The most important thing is probably keeping the learner engaged. For me, being able to create something I wanted (a webapp) quickly, was rewarding enough to keep me going.

I learned Ruby and Rails at the same time just like you and many others. I found that people I got to work with who had learned Ruby first and then Rails had a clearer understanding of how things actually work. Rails was doing so much magic that some people never learned how things work without Rails. Autoloading is the strongest example that comes to mind.

I think if you are coming from Rails and Ruby to Phoenix, you should learn elixir first. Or else, like a lot of people, you may think that it's similar to Rails. Phoenix may look similar to rails, but there is a huge difference on how they work. Also atleast from my point of view, you should know about OTP too. Your application is an elixir app, with phoenix which provides just the web interface to your business logic.

You can learn both, but learning the basics of elixir will help. Phoenix is not your app, don't treat it like that.

How good is the "Blueprint for Phoenix Context" part? I am already working with phoenix/elixir on a daily basis and would be only interested in good examples with contexts.

Sorry, Don't have that book.

It depends. If you're very new and can stand the typos... maybe.

But, I would say price/quality is not that great. The whole bundle should probably be about ~20$ IMHO.

Just tried to buy using PayPal - the $69 package. PayPal tells me that it would pay $82.80 without reason? I aborted the transaction.

PayPal gives me a reason:

> Your card will be charged $82.80, including $13.80 for VAT in United Kingdom.

$82.80 is $69.0.0 + 20%, so presumably wherever you are is charging 20% tax of some sort.

I think it was trying to charge 18% service tax. 69 + 69 * 0.18

I am really liking the shopping cart app tutorial with great use of Contexts.

What is Phoenix? The site doesn't give an introduction.

It’s a web framework written in Elixir; I haven’t used it myself, but have seen others commenting here on HN and saying it’s similar to (but not an exact clone of) Ruby on Rails.

http://phoenixframework.org

It was only ever superficially similar and is becoming less so over time.

I read 'Mastering Phoenix Framework'. The stuff I found online is too scattered and lacks the flow and cohesiveness that you can get from a book.

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