changelog.com VS Phoenix

Another https://dagger.io fan here. Have been using it since late 2021 to continuously deploy a Phoenix app to Fly.io: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/pull/395. Every commit goes into production.

This is what the GHA workflow currently looks like: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/c7b8a57b2...

FWIW, you can see how everything fits together in this architecture diagram: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/IN...

I really like the work that you're doing Thomas, this is the right approach. FWIW, https://fly.io/blog/carving-the-scheduler-out-of-our-orchest... is one of my favourite posts on your blog.

For everyone else reading this, we have been running https://changelog.com on Fly.io since April 2022. This is what our architecture currently looks like: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/IN...

After 15 months & more than 100 million requests served by our Phoenix + PostgreSQL app running on Fly.io, I would be hard pressed to find a reason to complain.

Changelog.com

I see this criticism a lot but I don't think it has anything to do with macros specifically and more so to do with lack of familiarity with Elixir. I've felt the same way about Django being magic because I had trouble following the class hierarchy. It makes a lot more sense now because I'm more familiar with Python and Django. But even today I'll be looking deeper at something and ask WTF it's doing. In that respect, Elixir codebases are easier to me. The module depth seems "shallower" and I don't have to disambiguate between what behavior is caused by class inheritance or an imported function.

When I first tried to use Elixir several years ago Ecto.Schema [0] seemed complex and magical, but then I came to realize it's just converting module attributes to runtime code. There is not really that much complex macro logic going on.

>This also leads to cryptic errors where you get an error in non existant lines of code.

When was the last time you used Elixir? This isn't a problem I can recall having in the last 4 years or so of using Elixir.

>following the control flow in Phoenix is like a maze because of all the macro substitutions.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? A specific case as to where this happened for you would help. Phoenix's use of macros is actually pretty light [1] except for some very low level stuff. You can even see how frequently a developer will use macros in Phoenix by searching `__using__` in the codebase [2]. It's not used as much as people think. The majority is for views and controllers and only to provide a very thin layer of support on top of your regular use of code. As an example, the "macro magic" in Phoenix.Controller is just handling some basics for giving a layout and view to Plug and handling fallback actions for exceptions. You could do the plug calls manually and I think it would be safe to not use any macros in your controller code.

Another familiarity issue with the language (and any language really) is understanding what is meaningful in a stack trace and what isn't. And the likely cause of the error in the first place. Is it syntax? Is it mistyping a variable? Is a function just used improperly? (wtf is init_p_do_apply and why does it show up in every stacktrace?) You're juggling all these different issues - learning a new paradigm, a new syntax, not knowing how to extend things. It's obviously going to be a little overwhelming and, if not strictly required, we might just pick a different language that we're more familiar with.

[0]: https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/blob/master/lib/ecto/sch...

[1]: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com/blob/master/li... (not mine, I just go here to show the most frequent use of macros in Phoenix)

[2]: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/search?q=__using...

changelog.com used to be WordPress, then became a Phoenix app because it needed features that were hacky to implement & then manage in WP. It's more of a podcasting platform these days rather than a CMS.

The code in this repo tells the truth about what it is, and even shows how it works: https://github.com/thechangelog/changelog.com

A standard Phoenix app contains a priv/repo/seeds.exs script file, which populates a database when it is run, so that developers can work with a conveniently prepared environment.

There was one in the Phoenix Framework (Elixir) about issuing certificates with an invalid end date: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/issues/5737

Interestingly, Azure had this bug some years ago too leading to an outage. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/summary-of-windows-az...

Official website: https://www.phoenixframework.org/

Since you mention Rails, have you seen https://www.phoenixframework.org/

Thus, we set out to build a desktop application using a LiveView from the Phoenix Framework in Elixir. For the uninitiated, a LiveView is a process that receives events, updates its state, and renders updates to a page as diffs. The LiveView programming model is declarative: instead of saying “once event X happens, change Y on the page”, events in LiveView are regular messages which may cause changes to its state.

It seems though like Phoenix is similar like Blazor Server (using web socket), but Phoenix is: SEO friendly (first render is plain html) Light weight, scales well and concurrency is first class Easy to develop (runs a local server so you see live updates) Compiled With auth out of the box https://www.phoenixframework.org/

Sorry to hear this. Phoenix v1.7 changed how it structures files in disk and that broke quite some of the getting started material. However, the guides are always kept up to date, so you can give it a try: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/overview.html

You can also see the resources on this page listed by year: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/main/guides... - the recent launched ones are most likely up to date.

Yes! I love Elixir :) [Phoenix LiveView](https://www.phoenixframework.org/) is really amazing. I feel so fast working in it. I got hooked after watching Chris McCord's ['Build a real-time Twitter clone in 15 minutes'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZvmYaFkNJI&embeds_referring...), and things have improved a lot since then.

I still work on a lot of Java projects. As of JDK 17 Java has most of "ML the good parts" and has the same scalable, reliable and high-performance threading Java is famous for. JAX-RS provides a Sinatra style framework that makes it easy to write JSON API back ends. JDK 21 is just about to come out as a long term supported version and it will be even better.

I do my side projects in Python with aiohttp and think it is a lot of fun even though people tell me it is suicide (I guess if you block the thread you are in trouble)

I think "Next.js" really wants a node.js backend which has the big advantage that you can share code with the front end and back end. It's basically single-threaded but I know people who are happy with it.

The system I'd most like to try is

https://www.phoenixframework.org/

which is just great if you want to do stuff with websockets that is more interactive than what most people are doing.