What attracts me to learning a new programming language is what unique utilities it can bring. When I learned Go, I was programming in Node.JS, and Go offered better concurrency, performance, type safety, and simpler, more maintainable code. When I transitioned from PHP to Node, I gained improved performance, modularity, and access to a larger, more vibrant community (at the time). Now, as I dive into Elixir/Erlang, I’m drawn not just to the functional programming paradigm but also to the BEAM VM, which introduces an entirely different way of thinking about how code executes, with fault tolerance, distributed computing, and scalability baked in at the core.
What’s particularly compelling about Elixir is how the language, and the BEAM ecosystem, can eliminate the need for many architectural components that traditional systems rely on. For example, Elixir’s OTP framework and processes can replace message queues like RabbitMQ, in-memory data stores like Redis for state management, and even orchestration tools like Kubernetes for scaling and fault tolerance, since processes in BEAM are lightweight, isolated, and can be supervised and scaled dynamically. This allows for a more streamlined architecture where a lot of complexity is absorbed by the language and runtime itself.
This is why I don't gravitate toward languages like Ruby or Rust, because while they each have their strengths, they don't offer a fundamentally new paradigm or utility that sets them apart enough from what I already use. I look for shifts that fundamentally change how I approach problems, not just marginal improvements.