To progress in your career, you need adequate learning resources, no matter how experienced you are in Elixir development. Resources are classified into four categories: learning resources for new participants, advanced and expert users, as well as valuable media, and other methods to keep yourself current.
How to start using Elixir
Exercism
Exercism (https://exercism.org) has emerged as a platform for learning programming languages interactively and online. By combining theory and practice in Exercism, you can learn at your own pace and engage in interactive learning.
Elixir programming >= 1.6
Dave Thomas’ book provides a comprehensive explanation of Elixir’s basic concepts and features. Initially, it covers the basics of the language and its platform before getting into more advanced topics. Provides you with a solid foundation for developing your Elixir programming skills.
ElixirCasts
For those who enjoy education and learning by example, this is a leading Elixir screencast. With resources ranging from the language’s very basics to more advanced topics, this is a helpful resource for those wanting to step up to a mid-level expertise tier.
The more confident you become
Alchemist Camp
With ElixirCasts, you get more detailed episodes. For those who are trying to reinforce their skillset, it provides a lot of useful information on advanced Elixir, Phoenix, Ecto, and other topics.
Learn You Some Erlang
As you get better at Elixir, you have to learn Erlang, too! You don’t need prior experience with Elixir to read the book (https://learnyousomeerlang.com). However, it is a good experience to run it, learn what Erlang is like, and experience OTP the Erlang way. A must-read for Elixir developers at some point in their careers.
Elixir in Action
As compared to “Programming Elixir >= 1.6”, “Elixir in Action” uses a slightly newer (1.7) version of Elixir. In this book, emphasis is placed on the language’s advanced features. The book is filled with plenty of examples.
Resources for experts on Elixir
Metaprogramming Elixir
To be considered an Elixir expert, you need to be able to harness macros – even if you don’t plan to write many macros yourself. You need to understand macros in order to understand many codebases, especially DSL-based ones. Chris McCord, the creator of the Phoenix Framework, probably wrote the best book on the subject.
Using OTP to design Elixir systems
Designing Elixir Systems by J. E. Gray & Bruce A. Tate explains how to design systems that provide fast and reliable services with OTP. Check out this book.
Adopting Elixir
For both start-ups and established businesses, greenfield as well as brownfield projects, Adopting Elixir is an essential read. Ben Marx, José Valim, Bruce Tate, and Bruce Tate cover every aspect of introducing Elixir in an enterprise, from designing applications, developing them, and deploying them, to human-factor-related ones, like recruiting.
Keep yourself updated
Here are a few options for where to stay current on the Elixir ecosystem, whatever your level of expertise.
- Elixir Podcasts (Thinking Elixir, Elixir Outlaws)
- Elixir Conferences & Upcoming Events (Elixir Conf EU)
- Elixir Newsletters (ElixirWeekly, edited by René Föhring; Awesome Elixir, edited by Stan Bright; Elixir Radar, edited by Hugo Baraúna)
