Comment by zuzululu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zuzululu | Hacker News Reader

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I think Elixir is interesting and there is real value but some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it

and to that point around typing feels like the same wish-washy hand waving from the community that is very off putting

BEAM has genuine use cases but its not as wide as its made to believe. There are very good places where that is a perfect fit but it simply cannot upend Typescript.

Elixir feels very similar to how Clojure started getting traction and then ultimately forgotten apart from its die hard fans, I'm not saying Elixir will go the same way but seems very hard for something new and bold to replace what is popular and boring.

I do want Elixir to succeed (also Clojure as well and I advocated for it for a bit) but the low number of jobs still puts it in similar proximity to Clojure but BEAM I think would still provide uplift where Clojure simply could not

> some stuff being sold as "all these libs/packages that haven't had any updates for over a year is fine because Elixir" I just don't buy it

I maintain more than 20 packages and, except for the major ones, like Phoenix and Ecto, they haven't been updated in more than a year and yes, they are all fine.

The language has been extremely stable. There has been almost no breaking changes in over a decade. Case in point: we introduced a whole gradual type system without making any changes to the language surface! The language is still on v1.x!

So you prefer language communities where libraries have a constant stream of fixes, new breaking change releases every six months and entirely new framework ecosystems ascending every three years?

Not to mention language communities with constant supply chain attacks because its standard library story is poor, and everyone keeps reinventing new, often half-baked solutions?

Or even that, the very same ecosystem congratulates themselves on the typing system but still relies on linters because the language and runtime themselves allow whole categories of dumb ideas to be written?

Yes because it addresses security vulnerabilities and remains competitive.

You think all software breaks every 6 months, what happened Im curious

You can buy it if you use discernment. Obviously you'll run into compatibility issues in certain situations - like you aren't going to be able to use a library coupled to Phoenix 1.3 functionality in a Phoenix 1.8 project, but I continue to be surprised at how I can add a package like https://hex.pm/packages/deep_merge, which is 6 years old and it works just fine.

Phoenix is the exception to the usual rule. It's the only Elixir package where I've encountered substantial friction during upgrades.

Unfortunate, since it's one of the flagship Elixir packages, but I think the upgrades are worth the trouble. Better to improve something than to leave it broken solely for the sake of legacy compatibility IMO.

Why would packages need to be updated?

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