Sam Jarman

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Learning Elixir: Part 2

Hey All, Thanks for reading my last post - since then I've been doing a little more hacking and watching.

I believe the important thing with learning a new programming language is to focus on its strengths and weaknesses rather than just the syntax difference. Syntax is something you can learn quickly, but knowing the strengths and weaknesses of any language of tool can take an indeterminate amount of time.

Resources

I prefer to learn by really getting into the head of the people who came up with the language. One of those is Robert Virding, one of the original team members who worked on Erlang at Ericsson.

Here's a talk by him describing the Rationale of Erlang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt8h_xeESLg

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Another great resource is The Zen of Erlang. This (long) read covers some of the core principles and the mindset of Erlang (all of which are applicable to Elixir) Some other things I plan to watch and read are Learn You Some Erlang and this other talk by Virding. I was also suggested a book called The Little Elixir and OTP Guide Book. Do you have any more to add to this list? Let me know.

I had some more progress to talk about in this post, but I'll leave it for next time in the interest of keeping these posts short and to the point.

Have you also been learning Elixir or Erlang too? Do you have any tips or comments? I'd love to hear them and share them in an upcoming post. Ping me on twitter.