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  5. Elixir vs Swift

Elixir vs Swift

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Swift
Swift
Stacks21.9K
Followers13.6K
Votes1.3K
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Elixir vs Swift: What are the differences?

Elixir vs Swift: Key Differences

Elixir and Swift are two programming languages that have distinct characteristics and are used for different purposes. Let's take a look at the key differences between Elixir and Swift.

  1. Concurrency Model: Elixir follows an actor-based concurrency model, where concurrent processes communicate through message passing, making it highly scalable and fault-tolerant. On the other hand, Swift follows a thread-based concurrency model, utilizing threads and work queues for concurrency, which may require manual synchronization of shared resources.

  2. Type System: Elixir is dynamically typed, allowing for flexibility and metaprogramming capabilities, while Swift is statically typed, providing stronger type safety and compile-time checks. Swift's static typing also enables better performance optimizations.

  3. Syntax and Paradigm: Elixir is a functional programming language inspired by Ruby, emphasizing immutability and pure functions. It uses a syntax similar to Ruby with a focus on pipeline operator and pattern matching. Swift, on the other hand, is a multi-paradigm language that combines both functional and object-oriented programming. It employs a C-like syntax while adopting modern programming conventions.

  4. Platform and Usage: Elixir, built on the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM), is primarily used for building highly scalable and fault-tolerant distributed systems, such as web applications and real-time systems. Swift, developed by Apple, is predominantly used for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS app development, as well as for server-side programming.

  5. Concurrency Control: In Elixir, parallelism is achieved by spawning lightweight processes that can run concurrently and independently. These processes are isolated and manage their own memory, allowing for easy scalability. Swift, on the other hand, utilizes Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) for concurrency control, where tasks are scheduled on queues and executed by threads.

  6. Tooling and Community: Elixir has a robust tooling ecosystem with features like Mix (build tool), Hex (package manager), and a vibrant open-source community. Swift is supported by Xcode, Apple's integrated development environment (IDE), which provides an extensive set of tools for iOS and macOS development. The Swift community is growing rapidly, backed by Apple's resources and contributions.

In summary, Elixir and Swift differ in their concurrency models, type systems, syntax, platform usage, concurrency control mechanisms, and tooling ecosystems. These distinctions make them suitable for different application domains and development scenarios.

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Advice on Swift, 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
vargamatyas
vargamatyas

Nov 22, 2020

Needs adviceonPythonPythonSwiftSwiftReact NativeReact Native

Hey guys, I learned the basics (OOP, data structures & some algorithms) with Python, but now I want to learn iOS development. I am considering to learn Swift, but I am afraid how the native mobile development will die out because of the cross-platform frameworks and reviews. My idea is to learn web development first and then learn React Native, and after all of that, finally Swift. What do you think about this roadmap? Should I just learn Swift first due to the pros of the native apps?

126k views126k
Comments
Noel
Noel

Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter

Jun 17, 2020

Decided

1 code deploys for both: Android and iOS. There is a huge community behind React Native. And one of the best things is Expo. Expo uses React Native to make everything even more and more simple. Awesome technologies. Some other important thing is that while using React Native, you are reusing all JavaScript knowledge you have in your team. You can move easily a frontend dev to develop mobile applications.

A huge PRO of Expo, is that it includes a full building process. You run 1 line in the terminal, and 10 minutes after you have 2 builds done. Double check EAS Expo.

263k views263k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Swift
Swift
Elixir
Elixir

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.

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
-
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
21.9K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
13.6K
Followers
3.3K
Votes
1.3K
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
Cons
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Complicated process for exporting modules
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
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
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Swift, 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.

Rust

Rust

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

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