the list would merit its own dedicated blog post but to highlight a few nice parts, ecto lets me write sql code in elixir. it does not try to wrap it all into objects but I do get schemas. so for instance I can create a schema `Player` which maps to a table "players"
I can then get them via
```
from(p in Player)
|> where([p], p.id in ^player_ids)
|> select([p], p)
|> Repo.all()
```
need to join with an association?
```
from(p in Player)
|> join([p], s in assoc(p, :scores), as: :score)
|> where([p], p.id in ^player_ids)
|> preload([p, score: s], [score: s])
|> select([p], p)
|> Repo.all()
```
this gets me all players with their scores.
need to get the sum of scores for all players?
```
from(p in Player)
|> join([p], s in assoc(p, :scores), as: :score)
|> where([p], p.id in ^player_ids)
|> select([p], %{
player_id: p.id,
score: sum(score.value)
})
|> group_by([p, score: s], [p.id])
|> Repo.all()
```
as you can see, you can unwind this pretty fast to sql in your head. but you can also let the system just grab the kitchen sink when you jsut need to get somethign working fast. and its all very easy to modify and decuple.
this is hardly exhaustive though, I could spend a day talking about ecto. I spent 8 years developing in nodejs but now I work exclusively in elixir. unless what you're doing is 90% done by existing libraries, its juts a better tool for building highly performant backends.