Elixir 1.19
11 comments
·October 16, 2025crbelaus
TomBers
Completely agree. I feel no pressure to constantly upgrade my Elixir versions. I just look at the changes and there is often useful features that make me want to upgrade, as opposed the feeling of dread when I am pushed to upgrade.
atonse
Yea each time I’ve upgraded (been using elixir in production since 2017), it’s gone way smoother than I had anticipated.
I usually find the Erlang/OTP upgrades to be a bit more problematic compatibility-wise.
So I’m often in the latest elixir but one Erlang/OTP version behind cuz I wait a few months for all the kinks to be worked out.
burnt-resistor
Elixir still seems kind of rough and missing creature comforts, needs stabilization and guides to accomplish goals. There's a lot of broken/under-maintained packages and unhelpful guides that don't work because there's so much Phoenix ecosystem churn. It could get better but all the things™ need curation and approachable documentation. Not everyone wants LiveViews or to use their component system, and the learning curve for compatibility with other tools and technologies is still way too steep.
Python 3 was really, really needed to fix things in 2. Hence 2 became 3. They managed it pretty well, vaguely similar to Go, with automated update tools and compatibility-ish layers. It had its speed bumps and breakages as not everything went smoothly.
OTOH: Ruby 3 went the wrong way with types separate files and fragmentation of tools. And that's not mention having to opt-in with boilerplate to change how String literals work. Or: gem signing exists but is optional, not centrally-managed, and little-used. Or: Ruby Central people effectively stole some gems because Shopify said so. PS: many years ago Hiroshi Shibata blocked me from all GH Ruby contributions for asking a clarifying question in an issue for no reason. It seemed agro, unwarranted, and abrupt. So the rubygems repository fragment drama seems like the natural conclusion of unchecked power abuse lacking decorum and fairness, so I don't bother with Ruby much these days because Rust, TS, and more exist. When any individual or group believe they're better than everyone else, conflict is almost certainly inevitable. No matter how "good" a platform is, bad governance with unchecked conduct will torpedo it. PSA: Seek curious, cooperative, and professional folks with mature conflict-resolution skills.
It's a good idea™ to think deeply and carefully and experiment with language tool design in the real world before inflicting permanent, terrible choices rather than net better but temporarily-painful ones. PSA: Please be honest, thoughtful, clear, and communicate changes in advance so they can be avoided or minimized to inflict least net pain for all users for all time.
Honestly, I hope more development goes into making Phoenix/Elixir/OTP easier, more complete, more expressive, more productive, more testable, and more performant to the point that it's a safe and usable choice for students, hobbyists, startups, megacorps, and anyone else doing web, non-web, big data, and/or AI stuff.
Plug for https://livebook.dev, an app that brings Elixir workbooks to a desktop near you. And https://exercism.org/tracks/elixir
_susanoo
> PSA: Please be honest, thoughtful, clear, and communicate changes in advance so they can be avoided or minimized to inflict least net pain for all users for all time.
> Honestly, I hope more development goes into making Phoenix/Elixir/OTP easier, more complete, more expressive, more productive, more testable, and more performant to the point that it's a safe and usable choice for students, hobbyists, startups, megacorps, and anyone else doing web, non-web, big data, and/or AI stuff.
Seriously, this has been the case all the time. It's a great fit for AI, web (Phoenix), non-web (Nerves), students (Pragstudio), hobbyists (hi), megacorps (Discord, bleachereport).
What do you mean it's not testable, productive, expressive enough? Do you mean the entire elixir community is just fiddling about with unsafe software?
This comment seems just like a giant ragebait.
bmitc
The Phoenix churn is definitely real. It's so much so that I've never gotten into it. It's also extremely macro heavy, and so it's its own DSL or collection of DSLs. A concrete example of the churn is that the LiveView book has been "about to release" for five years now.
Although, what parts of Elixir itself are rough or missing creature comforts? I generally feel it's stable and fine, but I admittedly haven't written Elixir code in a couple of years, sadly.
josevalim
LiveView was still before v1.0, hence the churn, but Phoenix itself did not introduce breaking changes since v1.0, released more than a decade ago. Our skeleton for new applications change, as best practices around web apps are still evolving, but it is completely up to you to migrate. As a reference point, most other web frameworks have gone through several major versions in the same time, changing how new apps are built but also breaking old ones.
The idea that Phoenix is also mostly macros does not hold in practice. Last time this came up, I believe less than 5% of Phoenix' public API turned out to be macros. You get this impression because the initial skeleton it generates has the endpoint and the router, which are macro heavy, but once you start writing the actual application logic, your context, your controllers, and templates are all regular functions.
giraffe_lady
> It's also extremely macro heavy, and so it's its own DSL or collection of DSLs.
I mean this describes every full stack web framework right? Like sure if the underlying language doesn't have macros or macro-like tools that limits how perverted the syntax can get but the line between "DSL" and "API" gets really blurry in all of these massive frameworks.
asa400
Just a data point on the deps compilation, on a small Phoenix app with mostly stock Phoenix deps:
MIX_OS_DEPS_COMPILE_PARTITION_COUNT=1 mix deps.compile 32.30s user 7.23s system 320% cpu 12.336 total
MIX_OS_DEPS_COMPILE_PARTITION_COUNT=5 mix deps.compile 0.37s user 0.49s system 12% cpu 6.970 total
MIX_OS_DEPS_COMPILE_PARTITION_COUNT=10 mix deps.compile 0.38s user 0.50s system 12% cpu 7.236 total
The progressive introduction of automated type checking in Elixir should serve as a reference on how to improve a programming language gracefully without breaking changes.
So many examples of programming languages have huge breaking changes between versions that end up creating a split in the ecosystem that takes years to resolve.
Thankfully José has been very clear about Elixir being done since at least 2018. The language is stable and the language/core foundation is not changing anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suOzNeMJXl0
Truly outsanding work and stewardship.