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Dave Thomas
Elixir: Power of Erlang, Joy of Ruby

I'm a language nut. I love trying them out, and I love thinking about their design and implementation. (I know, it's sad.)

I came across Ruby in 1998 because I was an avid reader of comp.lang.misc (ask your parents). I downloaded it, compiled it, and fell in love. As with any time you fall in love, it's difficult to explain why. It just worked the way I work, and it had enough depth to keep me interested.

Fast forward 15 years. All that time I'd been looking for something new that gave me the same feeling.

Then I came across Elixir, a language by José Valim, that puts a humane, Ruby-like syntax on the Erlang VM.

Now I'm dangerous. I want other people to see just how great this is. I want to evangelize. I won't try to convert you away from Ruby. But I might just persuade you to add Elixir to your toolset.

So come along and let me show you the things that I think make Elixir a serious alternative for writing highly reliable, scalable, and performant server code.

And, more important, let me show you some fun stuff.

Help us caption & translate this video!

http://amara.org/v/FG9C/

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The video titled "Elixir: Power of Erlang, Joy of Ruby" features Dave Thomas, a prominent figure in the Ruby programming community, discussing the Elixir programming language. Thomas starts by expressing his long-standing love for Ruby, which he discovered in 1998, and emphasizes the importance of staying updated with evolving programming trends. He introduces Elixir as a modern alternative that combines elements of functional programming and Ruby-like syntax while running on the Erlang VM.

The key points of the presentation include:  
- **Evolution of Programming**: Thomas discusses the shift towards functional and concurrent programming paradigms, highlighting the limitations of traditional software development methods.  
- **Moore's Law**: He explains Moore's Law and its relevance to the increasing complexity of software due to the growing number of transistors in modern processors, necessitating new programming approaches.
- **Functional Programming**: Elixir is showcased as a functional programming language that offers robust concurrency. Thomas illustrates core concepts such as pattern matching, recursion, and declarative definitions, showcasing their efficiency in managing data and eliminating explicit loops.
- **Hands-On Coding**: Throughout the presentation, Thomas provides live coding examples to demonstrate Elixir's syntax and features, comparing them with Ruby. He writes functions for common tasks like calculating the length of lists and generating Fibonacci numbers using recursion and pattern matching.
- **Concurrency in Elixir**: Thomas highlights Elixir's ability to handle multiple processes concurrently, sharing a coding exercise that implements a parallel map function (pmap) that allows the execution of functions across multiple processes efficiently.
- **Testing**: He touches on Elixir’s ExUnit testing framework, showcasing how to write tests that confirm the correctness of functions, further emphasizing Elixir's structured and organized approach to code development.

In conclusion, Thomas advocates for adopting Elixir into developers' toolkits, encouraging Ruby developers to explore its functionalities alongside Ruby rather than as a replacement. He emphasizes the language's potential for writing highly reliable, scalable, and performant server applications while being enjoyable to use. Thomas concludes with an enthusiastic endorsement, expressing his excitement about the future possibilities with Elixir.

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