Introduction
If you dont know phoenix framework, I’d describe it as rails for elixir. If you dont know Elixir I’d describe it as a functional language that feels like ruby for erlang.
If you don’t know erlang it has been around a while (open-sourced in 1998) and the virtual machine is designed to be highly fault tolerant and scalable for use in telecoms, banking and instant messaging (WhatsApp).
Experimenting
To exercise the framework, I created yet another chat app (I know, I know).
The premise is it will use slash commands for text-based social actions.
For example typing /smile Fred the following would happen (assuming your username is Bob):
Aliases were added as well, so :) Fred would do the same as above.
More to come?
Not much to say technically for now, using a pure functional language was tricky but doable once you get the hang of it.
It does require a different mindset, but its a nice change. Did not take that long to make.
Am going to leave it closed source for now. Will put more info here if that changes, or ask me too see it. Would be happy to share.
In the meantime there are some good tutorials out there:
Todo
- I did not get around to testing the scale ability of phoenix and the erlang virtual machine. I’ll just take their word for it.
- Slack addon?