Elixir Language (Part 1)

After listening to the Introduction into Elixir language, by Dave Thomas, in Bangalore Ruby Users Group meetup, I always wanted to learn the language, or at least functional programming part of it. I did a failed attempt the same day evening! Yesterday, I started again with the tutorials. I am sharing some of my learnings here.

Elixir Language

Elixir is a simple, easy to learn functional programming language build on top of Erlang VM. It is a dynamic language which allows metaprogramming and can be used for building concurrent, distributed and fault-tolerant applications with hot code upgrades.

Installing Elixir in Ubuntu/Debian

The only prerequisite for installing Elixir is Erlang, version 17 or later. Precompiled packages are available in Erlang Solutions website. Follow the instructions on their website to install Erlang. Then, install Elixir by cloning their repository and generating binaries:

$ git clone https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir.git
$ cd elixir
$ make clean test

Make sure to add the bin directory to the PATH environment variable ( Add it to ~/.bashrc file for bash, ~/.zshrc file for ZSH ... )

$ export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/elixir/bin"

This is a distilled version of installation instructions for Debian/Ubuntu users (like me!). Refer the original version for detailed instructions.

In the next part, I'll share the basic constructs I liked in Elixir language on the first day of learning.

References: 

• Elixir: Getting Started Guide
• Elixir Primer and Resources
• Elixir (Programming Language)