I have decided to expand and refocus this blog on learning Elixir and Phoenix now. I’m still using Jekyll to generate static HTML pages for this blog, but in order to consider the whole JAM stack, some attention to server-side development is still needed.
Functional Programming
You can find a lot of different functional programming languages out there. OCmal, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang, and Microsoft F# too. But why am I using Elixir? It offers several features I like:
concurrency (from Erlang)
metaprogramming
active community
proven use cases
well documented
You might argue that these features are available in other languages, but after using Lisp and Prolog in years past, I feel most comfortable with the Elixir code I have already seen. The recently released versions of Elixir and the Phoenix web framework built with it seem to work really well together with PostgreSQL databases.
Books
For learning Elixir the language, I’m reading the 2nd edition of Elixir in Action by Saša Juric, published 2019 by Manning. I’m also reading Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix :Rethink the Modern Web App by Lance Halvorsen, published 2018 by Pragmatic Bookshelf. Both of these books complement each other fairly well.
The Elixir in Action provides a comprehensive overview of the Elixir language and how to use its different parts. The Functional Web book provides an example of a game developed using Elixir and the Phoenix framework.
To Do
I have an ambitious plan to develop a comment system for my blog using Elixir and Phoenix. This will mean I need to find a hosting service that supports them. There are several I’m considering at this time. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments.
At this time, you can still find low-cost or almost “free” hosting plans.
https://damonvjanis.medium.com/optimizing-for-free-hosting-elixir-deployments-6bfc119a1f44