Philip Brown

An important part of writing high quality code is defining a public api to be used by consumers and collaborators This is particularly important when it comes to defining an explicit contract that should have many different implementations. When you are using a module

One of the most defining characteristics of Elixir as a programming language is the fact that it is dynamic, and so all types are inferred at runtime. This is in contrast to static typed languages where the developer must explicitly declare each type upfront.

An important part of writing code is making it easy to understand for other developers or your future self. In a perfect world, this is achieved through clear and concise code that shows the intent of the developer. There really is no better documentation

Last week we looked at using ETS as a storage mechanism for storing any Erlang term in an Elixir application. ETS is part of OTP and so as an Elixir developer you can automatically start using it without setting anything up. This is pretty

If you have been around the Elixir ecosystem for a while, you have probably heard about “ETS”. ETS stands for Erlang Term Storage. It’s a storage engine that is built into OTP, and is therefore available in Elixir through the interoperability with Erlang.

The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook is an introduction to Elixir and OTP that focuses more on the OTP side of things in contrast to Programming Elixir and Elixir in Action. Whilst it does provide an introductory section on Elixir and the syntax, the

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve covered many of the fascinating aspects of Elixir, Erlang, and OTP that allow us to build highly available, fault tolerant applications. First we looked at using Agents as a way to store state in server processes.

Despite being a relatively young language, Elixir already has a wealth of learning resources available including tutorials, screencasts, and books. A while ago we looked at Programming Elixir, which serves as an excellent introduction to the language. Written by Dave Thomas, Programming Elixir is

Last week we looked at organising Elixir projects using Mix. Mix is a build tool for creating, compiling, and testing your Elixir projects. In Elixir, an “application” is a set of modules that can be started and stopped as a single unit. One of

We have already covered a lot of ground so far in this exploration of Elixir, but in just about every example we’ve been running our Elixir code either in iex or from a single file. This is fine for getting to grips with

Over the last couple of weeks we have started to explore probably the most interesting aspect of working with Elixir (and Erlang) in that applications are built around this idea of small, isolated processes. First we looked at Understanding Concurrency and Parallelism in Elixir

In last week’s tutorial we looked at storing state in Elixir using processes. In functional programming languages, in order to maintain state you need to continuously pass it between functions. Processes allow us to store state in Elixir, possibly forever, by running an

A couple of weeks ago we looked at working with Elixir processes. Processes are the basic unit of concurrency in Elixir. They provide isolation and allow us to build fault tolerant applications. Elixir is a functional programming language, and so this means there is

A couple of weeks ago we looked at working with processes in Elixir. To create a new process we can use the spawn/1 function. This creates a new process and executes the given function concurrently to the current process. Elixir also provides the

A couple of weeks ago we begin the next big section of learning elixir by taking a first look at processes. Processes are the foundation of many of the most attractive characteristics of elixir. Two of those characteristics are concurrency and parallelism. Processes enable

Over the last couple of years there have been a number of breakthroughs in the pursuit of artificial intelligence as computing power and “big data” have become more ubiquitous. It has probably never been a better time to start digging into the industry as

Allowing your users to reset their password is one of the foundational bits of functionality of just about every type of web application. It’s usually not that interesting to implement because 9 times out 10 the functionality is exactly the same for all

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve explored many of the foundational elements of the Elixir programming language. If you are coming to Elixir from a programming language such as PHP, Ruby, or Python, you have probably already learned a lot. Elixir is

In our exploration of Ruby on Rails we’ve covered testing quite a few times. It’s important to write tests at various layers of abstraction. A good test suite tests the appropriate details at each abstraction layer to provide good coverage of business

The first time I saw a comprehension in Elixir I was a bit confused as to what the point of it was. Initially I didn’t understand why you would write a comprehension when you could achieve the same result using the existing tools

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been looking at building out a registration process using Trailblazer and Ruby on Rails. First we looked at Building out a User Confirmation flow in Trailblazer, and last week we looked at Confirming Users with Trailblazer.

An important concept in programming is “polymorphism”. You may have already come across the term if you have previous experience with another programming language as just about every programming language has this concept in one form or another. Polymorphism is defined in Elixir using

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve started building a registration process using Ruby on Rails and Trailblazer. In Using Inheritance for Trailblazer Operations we created the functionality to create new users and import users from an existing application. When a new user

A couple of weeks ago we looked at working with maps in Elixir. Something that we didn’t cover, but you will come across are Structs. Structs are an extension of Maps that provide a number of interesting benefits. In today’s tutorial we

A couple of weeks ago I built out the action for creating new users in Culttt using a Trailblazer Operation (Using Inheritance for Trailblazer Operations). In this application I need 3 different ways of creating new users. Firstly, I need to import users from