Let’s Get Functional with Elixir!

Elixir is a dynamic functional programming (FP) language built on top of the Erlang VM, but comes from developers in the Ruby ecosystem, so it’s an accessible functional programming language.

This talk discusses some of the basics of FP as well as the basics of Elixir in an easy to understand way.

Are you intrigued about functional languages? Have you thought about checking out what’s so important about functional programming only to get scared away by the talk of lambda calculus and monads? Do you struggle to see why you’d use a functional language? This talk will cover a newer server-side functional language called Elixir. It’s designed by former Ruby developers so it has an emphasis on readability and developer satisfaction but still has the benefits of functional programming such as immutability. Additionally, Elixir excels in concurrency, which causes nightmares in some languages.

By the end of the talk, you’ll understand some of the core concepts of functional programming, as well as some of what makes Elixir unique. As a result, you’ll have a better understanding for the types of problems that functional programming can help you solve, and you’ll be ready to install Elixir and start writing code in a functional style.

This talk is a slimmed down version of my Pluralsight course “Getting Started With Elixir.” Since it’s a “getting started” course, all that is required is that people have a basic understanding of programming, such as what an if is. No knowledge of Elixir is assumed.