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  5. Elixir vs Perl

Elixir vs Perl

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Perl
Perl
Stacks4.3K
Followers935
Votes575
GitHub Stars2.2K
Forks602
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Elixir vs Perl: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between Elixir and Perl

Elixir and Perl are both popular programming languages, but they have fundamental differences that set them apart. Here are the key differences between Elixir and Perl:

  1. Syntax: Elixir has a modern and clean syntax inspired by Ruby, while Perl uses a more complex and flexible syntax known for its "TIMTOWTDI" (There Is More Than One Way To Do It) approach. Elixir's syntax is easier to read and follow, making it more beginner-friendly and promoting maintainability.

  2. Concurrency and Parallelism: Elixir is built on the Erlang virtual machine, which is designed for concurrency and parallelism. It has built-in support for lightweight processes (called "actors") and a message-passing communication model, making it highly scalable and efficient in handling concurrent tasks. Perl, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for concurrency and parallelism, requiring additional modules or manual implementation.

  3. Functional Programming vs Scripting: Elixir is a functional programming language, meaning it emphasizes immutable data and pure functions, promoting modularity and predictable behavior. Perl, on the other hand, is primarily used as a scripting language, allowing quick and dirty solutions with its rich collection of built-in functions and regular expression support. Elixir's focus on functional programming makes it suitable for complex, reliable, and maintainable systems.

  4. Community and Ecosystem: Perl has a long-standing and active community with a vast ecosystem of libraries and modules available on CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). It has been around for decades and has a wealth of resources and solutions for various tasks. Although Elixir's community is relatively smaller, it is rapidly growing and has a passionate developer base. It also has its own package manager (Hex) and a growing ecosystem of libraries focused on scalability and fault tolerance.

  5. Type System: Elixir has a powerful and flexible type system, thanks to its underlying Erlang virtual machine, which supports dynamic typing and pattern matching. It allows for better code expressiveness and robustness, catching errors at compile-time or runtime. Perl, on the other hand, has a more permissive and flexible type system, often relying on implicit conversions and context-dependent behavior.

  6. Error Handling: Elixir promotes a philosophy of "let it crash" and has built-in mechanisms for handling errors, such as supervisors and fault tolerance. It encourages the idea of failing fast and recovering gracefully. Perl, on the other hand, has a more traditional error handling approach with explicit exception handling using try-catch blocks and error-checking functions.

In summary, Elixir and Perl differ in terms of syntax, concurrency/parallelism capabilities, programming paradigms, community/ecosystem, type systems, and error handling approaches. These differences impact their suitability for different types of projects and emphasize their unique strengths.

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Advice on Perl, Elixir

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Rubin
Rubin

Software Cloud Developer at RUBIN THOMAS

Oct 8, 2020

Review

As a developer myself, I would recommend you not to restrict yourself to JAVA, PHP or any other language. New Tools/languages keep coming every day. If you do plan to move to freelancing. PHP has a lot of options in the freelance space and a lot of competition too.

Learning PHP is as simple as learning any other language. It depends merely on your interest.

Personally if you can code, you should not restrict yourself. I have had to code in many languages, PHP, Perl, shell script, Python, Java, Javascript, Ruby etc... I would keep your developing skills and logic, algorithms etc.. and increase your knowledge and experience in the different languages.

I agree with you JAVA is a lot more time consuming. But it also has its enterprise level scope.

At the same time learning a new language should not be a barrier for you to stop exploring what's out there and keeping your skills up to date. Learning new technologies should be your primary focus and getting project out of your stack helps you build a good reputation.

There are many options for you to pursue. Having an open mindset will help you move forward. If you look to learn now, you are setting yourself up for a brighter future.

684k views684k
Comments
Jakes
Jakes

Mar 21, 2021

Decided

#rust @{#elixir}|topic:null| So am creating a messenger with voice call capabilities app which the user signs up using phone number and so at first i wanted to use Actix so i learned Rust so i thought to myself because well its first i felt its a bit immature to use actix web even though some companies are using Rust but we cant really say the full potential of Rust in a full scale app for example in Discord both Elixir and Rust are used meaning there is equal need for them but for Elixir so many companies use it from Whatsapp, Wechat, etc and this means something for Rust is not ready to go full scale we cant assume all this possibilities when it come Rust. So i decided to go the Erlang way after alot of Thinking so Do you think i made the right decision?Am 19 year programmer so i assume am not experienced as you so your answer or comment would really valuable to me

284k views284k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Perl
Perl
Elixir
Elixir

Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
2.2K
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
602
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
4.3K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
935
Followers
3.3K
Votes
575
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 72
    Lots of libraries
  • 66
    Open source
  • 61
    Text processing
  • 54
    Powerful
  • 49
    Unix-style
Cons
  • 4
    Messy $/@/% syntax
  • 3
    No exception handling
  • 2
    Bad OO support
  • 2
    No OS threads
  • 2
    "1;"
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand

What are some alternatives to Perl, Elixir?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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