Picking a Functional Programming Language. Why Elixir?

In the introduction post for my new blog, I already mentioned that I'm learning Elixir programming language. Why though?

New to functional programming

The languages I programmed in, so far, are all languages with a C-like syntax and quite object oriented. That isn't a coincidence. Once you've learned one language, it's far easier to learn a different one within the same family. That's not to say it was never tough learning a new language, but having some familiarity with the syntax helps a lot.

Ready to get my hands dirty

I have an inner drive to always keep learning. Knowing how to program in a functional language was high up on my list. I'm ready for something radically different. It seems fun to learn another programming paradigm. And my language of choice is Elixir. There's a few reasons for that.

Elixir has an inviting ecosystem

For starters, it's different enough from what I know, but it still feels within reach. The fact that it runs on the Erlang VM (BEAM) is also a plus. But the foremost reason is it's ecosystem. The packages seem quite mature, especially for the age of the language. Everything I checked out so far is very well documented. And then... there's Phoenix. Coming from mostly a web development background, I hoped to find a mature web framework for Elixir. And there is one! It's called Phoenix Framework. I can't wait to build something fun with that.

First things first, though. Let's learn some basics. I started with a 2 hour introductory video course about Elixir to get me started. I'll take you with me on my Elixir-journey from here.