An important part of writing high quality code is defining a public api to be used by consumers and collaborators This is particularly important when it comes to defining an explicit contract that should have many different implementations. When you are using a module that defines an explicit contract, you can safely use the public API of the module...

One of the most defining characteristics of Elixir as a programming language is the fact that it is dynamic, and so all types are inferred at runtime. This is in contrast to static typed languages where the developer must explicitly declare each type upfront. Dynamic verses static typing is one of those classic arguments that people love to have when...

An important part of writing code is making it easy to understand for other developers or your future self. In a perfect world, this is achieved through clear and concise code that shows the intent of the developer. There really is no better documentation than the code itself. However, comments and documentation are a critically important tool for...

Last week we looked at using ETS as a storage mechanism for storing any Erlang term in an Elixir application. ETS is part of OTP and so as an Elixir developer you can automatically start using it without setting anything up. This is pretty crazy when you think about it, what other languages ship with something like Redis out of the box? Well the story...

If you have been around the Elixir ecosystem for a while, you have probably heard about “ETS”. ETS stands for Erlang Term Storage. It’s a storage engine that is built into OTP, and is therefore available in Elixir through the interoperability with Erlang. ETS is a key / value store, and so you can think of it as pretty much the same as Redis. But...

The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook is an introduction to Elixir and OTP that focuses more on the OTP side of things in contrast to Programming Elixir and Elixir in Action. Whilst it does provide an introductory section on Elixir and the syntax, the real heart of the book is focused on OTP. The book also touches upon important Elixir related topics...