Phoenix for Railsies

So, what is Phoenix? It's a Rails-like framework built for Elixir. You might ask: what on Earth is the point of learning yet another framework for yet another language that nobody really seems to be using (yet)? There are a couple of reasons. First of all, the Erlang VM is pretty darn fast and Elixir inherits this speed. There are benchmarks that show this. But of course, we can sit around all day and poke holes in those so you'll just have to build something with both technologies to believe it.

Secondly, Elixir is an interesting language because it manages to combine functional programming, OOP, and a Lisp-like conception of metaprogramming (Elixir's macros are pretty insanely powerful). Finally, Rails definitely feels a bit behind-the-curve when it comes to things like WebSockets. Phoenix comes with these right of the box. Best of all, you get most of these benefits without having to leave the niceties of Rails behind. Granted, there aren't as many packages for Phoenix as there are for Rails but the framework itself is fairly feature-complete. Let's take a look at the basics of Phoenix.

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by Dhaivat Pandya via SitePoint