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Learning Elixir

Learning Elixir

By : Kenny Ballou, Kenneth Ballou
5 (1)
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Learning Elixir

Learning Elixir

5 (1)
By: Kenny Ballou, Kenneth Ballou

Overview of this book

Elixir, based on Erlang’s virtual machine and ecosystem, makes it easier to achieve scalability, concurrency, fault tolerance, and high availability goals that are pursued by developers using any programming language or programming paradigm. Elixir is a modern programming language that utilizes the benefits offered by Erlang VM without really incorporating the complex syntaxes of Erlang. Learning to program using Elixir will teach many things that are very beneficial to programming as a craft, even if at the end of the day, the programmer isn't using Elixir. This book will teach you concepts and principles important to any complex, scalable, and resilient application. Mostly, applications are historically difficult to reason about, but using the concepts in this book, they will become easy and enjoyable. It will teach you the functional programing ropes, to enable them to create better and more scalable applications, and you will explore how Elixir can help you achieve new programming heights. You will also glean a firm understanding of basics of OTP and the available generic, provided functionality for creating resilient complex systems. Furthermore, you will learn the basics of metaprogramming: modifying and extending Elixir to suite your needs.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally
1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally
Why functional?
Installing Elixir
Hello, World!
Exercises
Summary
2
2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming
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2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming
Everything is an expression
A short introduction to types
Invariable variables and pattern matching
Elixir structure
Elixir files
Exercises
Summary
3
3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks
3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks
Modules
Anonymous functions
Named functions
Calling functions
Grabbing functions
When patterns aren't enough for matching
Functional algorithms for everyday problems
Mix – the ladle of Elixir
Building functional projects
More to do about modules
Testing with comments
Exercises
Summary
4
4. Collections and Stream Processing
4. Collections and Stream Processing
Keywords, maps, and dictionaries
Flow-based programming
Stream processing and Elixir
Exercises
Summary
5
5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch
5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch
Branching with Elixir
Examples using branching
Exception handling
Determinism
References
Exercises
Summary
6
6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency
6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency
Parallel computation and concurrent computation
Erlang processes and OS processes
Basics of Elixir process
Applications
Summary
7
7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework
7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework
Applications
Gen(eric) behaviours
Supervisors
Exercises
Summary
8
8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node
8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node
Obligatory discussion about distributed computing
Another short discussion about networks
Distributed computing with Elixir
Summary
9
9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less
9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less
Behaviours and protocols
Abstract syntax trees
Our first macros
Context and macro hygiene
Macro examples
Domain-specific languages
With great power...
Exercises
Summary
Going forward
10
Index
Index

A short introduction to types

Like most programming languages, Elixir has its fair share of numerical, boolean, character, and collection types. It also has some extra types, namely, atoms and binaries. In this chapter, we will see how all of these types work. However, let's start our discussion with numerical types.

Numerical types

Numerical types include the obvious integers. For example, in the interactive prompt (iex), we can enter a few basic numbers:

iex(1)> 42
42

We can also do some basic arithmetic with numbers, of course:

iex(2)> 42 + 5
47
iex(3)> 6 * 7
42
iex(4)> 42 - 10
32
iex(5) 42 / 6
7.0

So, addition, subtraction, and multiplication work as we expect. Division, however, did what is typically called implicit type widening or implicit type casting. That is, we took two integer types and converted it into a floating type through division. In fact, the / operator will always return a floating point type. If you want an integer type back, you can use the div and rem functions...

End of Chapter 2
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