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Learning Elixir

You're reading from   Learning Elixir Unveil many hidden gems of programming functionally by taking the foundational steps with Elixir

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2016
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785881749
Length 286 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Kenneth Ballou Kenneth Ballou
Author Profile Icon Kenneth Ballou
Kenneth Ballou
Kenny Ballou Kenny Ballou
Author Profile Icon Kenny Ballou
Kenny Ballou
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Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally FREE CHAPTER 2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming 3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks 4. Collections and Stream Processing 5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch 6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency 7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework 8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node 9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less Index

With great power...


Although, we've spent an entire chapter on macros and how awesome they are, a word of caution is required. Seldom use macros. That's worth repeating: _seldom_ use macros! Macros have the very real possibility of creating enormous complexity and technical debt—they have the ability to change the core semantics of the language. This can result in very difficult code to read and reason about. Thus, reaching for the macro system should be taken with a great amount of thought. Ask questions and poke the problem, really determine whether using macros is a good choice or not. Several questions may be:

  • Is the problem tractable via macros or can the problem be easily expressed via macros? More so than not using macros?

  • Is there significant overhead on the caller of using macros?

If either of these are answered negatively, it's likely that choosing macros is a bad move.

If both are answered positively, go forth and incur the complexity at the benefit of an elegant solution that may...

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