Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhancock | Hacker News Reader

Not to put elixir down, but if someone wants to understand Erlang, I recommend just suck it up and learn the syntax. Its so so easy to read once you get the hang of it. The learning curve is nothing like Haskell. Getting comfortable with Erlang syntax takes only a few days of coding. Just reading it as an approach to get comfortable may put you off. Diving in and writing some code will take the edge off.

View on HN

http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content

is a pretty good place to start.

I also recommend the book, "Erlang and OTP in Action." Don't fall into the trap of trying to reinvent the things OTP provides.

Thanks for the link. Maybe I try Erlang after all...

But a question: It says it's using Erlang 13B. Do you recommend using a newer version, or trying to compile/finding an old binary version of 13B? (I mean, is Erlang 16 compatible with 13, or they tend to break things?)

(I'm sure I'll find this out eventually when I start the tutorial, but it's always good to know this kind of things beforehand)

I hypothesize that for a ruby programmer, learning elixir would allow them to learn the way erlang works, and then the transition from elixir syntax to erlang syntax would be very easy.

The thing is, elixir is really just erlang with some extra features (which are really compelling to me) and some syntax changes that make it much more readable to non-erlangers. (or at least, I believe it would.)

But secretly, you're learning erlang. And afterwards the transition between the two will be seamless (Because they're really the same language.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com