Today on Elixir Wizards, José Valim, creator of the Elixir programming language, joins hosts Sundi Myint and Owen Bickford to discuss the future of Elixir, upcoming features, changes to the language and ecosystem, and the potential for a type system.
José discusses how Elixir’s extensibility allows the ecosystem to grow with new tools and libraries, all while requiring few languages to the core language.
Key Takeaways:
The origin of the famous rainbow heart combo
José’s hands-off approach to planning the ecosystem which allows community contribution without reliance on the core team
The success and growth of the Elixir community
Lessons learned in the first ten years of the language
The evolution of Elixir's documentation and the role of Livebook in creating more interactive and engaging learning experiences
The potential for Elixir Nx to make numerical computation, machine learning, and data science more accessible to Elixir developers
Potential implementation of a gradual type system and the importance of backwards compatibility
The role of the Elixir community in shaping the language's development and ecosystem, including the importance of open-source contributions