Now a new programming language called Elixir and its most popular Phoenix framework have been discussed by web developers for a couple of years. The most favorite topics are Elixir vs. Ruby and Phoenix vs. Rails because Elixir has caused the greatest interest in the community of Ruby developers.
Elixir and Phoenix Overview
In 2012 Elixir was introduced to the world. José Valim, Elixir's author, is a Ruby developer and an active Ruby community member. His aim was to create efficient ways to solve concurrency issues in Ruby on Rails development, and it led to a new coding language.
Elixir is a functional language, which is different from the majority of object-oriented languages for web development. Elixir’s greatest advantage is functional programming which allows for shorter and more accurate code, that is also easier to test and debug. On the other hand, it is considered to be a very niche language that is difficult to get used to.
Elixir development is a reasonable choice for big web apps because it runs on Erlang Virtual Machine. So, it has all the features of the Erlang platform that has been around for years and has proven to be a reliable solution for scalable applications.
Phoenix is the most popular web framework. It is built with Elixir and is used for Elixir web development.
In 2014 Phoenix framework was created by Chris McCord. His desire was to create a framework that could outperform Ruby on Rails. The author used some of the Rails solutions that he liked, but his overall approach to technical aspects was totally different.
This framework is based on the MVC architecture. It is very fast and maintainable, which makes its popularity grow quickly.
Ruby and Ruby on Rails: Why So Popular
In 1994 The very first version of the Ruby language appeared. It was created by a Japanese computer scientist and programmer, Yukihiro Matsumoto. His idea was to enjoy programming and be very productive at the same time.
Ruby is an interpreted and object-oriented programming language which main purpose is to create simple and understandable web apps. Fast development, clarity, and syntax simplicity in Ruby are more important than the running speed of an app.
What Stands Behind Ruby on Rails’ Popularity?
The Rails framework was written in Ruby, by David Heinemeier Hansson. Its initial release to open source was in 2004. After that Ruby became very popular. Until that time, the Ruby coding language had not been all that successful.
In fact, Ruby on Rails framework has influenced web development globally. The framework introduced a set of features that helped to increase the speed of app development. Additionally, it contributed to Ruby’s mission to make programmers happy.
The framework continues to actively grow, but its main principles remain unchanged. The code is built in Ruby and is based on MVC programming architecture.
Here you will learn more about Elixir and Ruby web programming languages