Elixir and Rust is a good mix

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • gleam

    ⭐️ A friendly language for building type-safe, scalable systems!

  • As it usually goes in programming, "it depends on your objectives", there are things that are easier accomplished with the ErlangVM than Rust. Also, if you want a language that uses the ErlangVM and has static types, maybe you should take a look at Glean[1].

    In my case I prefer to work with Elixir because of the community, I find way easier to work professionally with Elixir than many other languages, as mostly projects follows the same good practices, use the same tools and have good documentation.

    [1] - https://gleam.run/

  • lunatic

    Lunatic is an Erlang-inspired runtime for WebAssembly

  • There's a couple of Rust libs and frameworks inspired on Erlang in 'best of both worlds' attempts, such as https://lunatic.solutions

    I found others like Lunatic before, but cannot remember right now.

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  • zigler

    zig nifs in elixir

  • I admit for a long time this was my primary motivation to learn Rust, but, sadly, I haven't come across problems in years that were CPU bound/where I needed something like Rust... Rustler still looks like a great fit if needed, but, depending on the use case, if I were CPU bound and needed to write my own code/not just use a Rust library, I'd be as or more likely to look at using Zig and Zigler[0], for much faster learning curve, and from what I've read, easier tighter integration into elixir, including I think language server integration. Some discussion here[1] though I forget if I listened to this one or not.

    [0]https://github.com/ityonemo/zigler

  • regex_help

    Get a computer to write regex for you. A front-end for grex (https://github.com/pemistahl/grex).

  • Neat! You should definitely add a link to the github repo to the main page of regex.help though, because I didn't realize it was open source and I'll use it now.

    Github link for others: https://github.com/maciejgryka/regex_help

  • diamond-types

    The world's fastest CRDT. WIP.

  • But I think thats about it. Maybe there's more manually specified types in "normal" rust because most functions are smaller than that. But, it doesn't feel so bad. In this case I could probably even remove the explicit type annotation for that queue definition if I wanted to, but it makes the compiler's errors better leaving it in.

    [1] https://github.com/josephg/diamond-types/blob/66025b99dbe390...

  • nx

    Multi-dimensional arrays (tensors) and numerical definitions for Elixir (by elixir-nx)

  • > I guess, why not use Rust entirely instead of as a FFI into Elixir or other backend language?

    Because Rust brings none of the benefits of the BEAM ecosystem to the table.

    I was an early Elixir adopter, not working currently as an Elixir developer, but I have deployed one of the largest Elixir applications for a private company in my country.

    I know it has limits, but the language itself is only a small part of the whole.

    Take ML, Jose Valim and Sean Moriarity have studied the problem, made a plan to tackle it and started solving it piece by piece [1] in a tightly integrated manner, it feels natural, as if Elixir always had those capabilities in a way that no other language does and to put the icing on the cake the community released Livebook [2] to interactively explore code and use the new tools in the simplest way possible, something that Python notebooks only dream of being capable of, after a decade of progress

    That's not to say that Elixir is superior as a language, but that the ecosystem is flourishing and the community is able to extract the 100% of the benefits from the tools and create new marvellously crafted ones, that push the limits forward every time, in such a simple manner, that it looks like magic.

    And going back to Rust, you can write Rust if you need speed or for whatever reason you feel it's the right tool for the job, it's totally integrated [3][4], again in a way that many other languages can only dream of, and it's in fact the reason I've learned Rust in the first place.

    The opposite is not true, if you write Rust, you write Rust, and that's it. You can't take advantage of the many features the BEAM offers, OTP, hot code reloading, full inspection of running systems, distribution, scalability, fault tolerance, soft real time etc. etc. etc.

    But of course if you don't see any advantage in them, it means you probably don't need them (one other option is that you still don't know you want them :] ). In that case Rust is as good as any other language, but for a backend, even though I gently despise it, Java (or Kotlin) might be a better option.

    [1] https://github.com/elixir-nx/nx https://github.com/elixir-nx/axon

    [2] https://livebook.dev/

    [3] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler

    [4] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled

  • livebook

    Automate code & data workflows with interactive Elixir notebooks

  • > I guess, why not use Rust entirely instead of as a FFI into Elixir or other backend language?

    Because Rust brings none of the benefits of the BEAM ecosystem to the table.

    I was an early Elixir adopter, not working currently as an Elixir developer, but I have deployed one of the largest Elixir applications for a private company in my country.

    I know it has limits, but the language itself is only a small part of the whole.

    Take ML, Jose Valim and Sean Moriarity have studied the problem, made a plan to tackle it and started solving it piece by piece [1] in a tightly integrated manner, it feels natural, as if Elixir always had those capabilities in a way that no other language does and to put the icing on the cake the community released Livebook [2] to interactively explore code and use the new tools in the simplest way possible, something that Python notebooks only dream of being capable of, after a decade of progress

    That's not to say that Elixir is superior as a language, but that the ecosystem is flourishing and the community is able to extract the 100% of the benefits from the tools and create new marvellously crafted ones, that push the limits forward every time, in such a simple manner, that it looks like magic.

    And going back to Rust, you can write Rust if you need speed or for whatever reason you feel it's the right tool for the job, it's totally integrated [3][4], again in a way that many other languages can only dream of, and it's in fact the reason I've learned Rust in the first place.

    The opposite is not true, if you write Rust, you write Rust, and that's it. You can't take advantage of the many features the BEAM offers, OTP, hot code reloading, full inspection of running systems, distribution, scalability, fault tolerance, soft real time etc. etc. etc.

    But of course if you don't see any advantage in them, it means you probably don't need them (one other option is that you still don't know you want them :] ). In that case Rust is as good as any other language, but for a backend, even though I gently despise it, Java (or Kotlin) might be a better option.

    [1] https://github.com/elixir-nx/nx https://github.com/elixir-nx/axon

    [2] https://livebook.dev/

    [3] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler

    [4] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled

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    Nx-powered Neural Networks

  • > I guess, why not use Rust entirely instead of as a FFI into Elixir or other backend language?

    Because Rust brings none of the benefits of the BEAM ecosystem to the table.

    I was an early Elixir adopter, not working currently as an Elixir developer, but I have deployed one of the largest Elixir applications for a private company in my country.

    I know it has limits, but the language itself is only a small part of the whole.

    Take ML, Jose Valim and Sean Moriarity have studied the problem, made a plan to tackle it and started solving it piece by piece [1] in a tightly integrated manner, it feels natural, as if Elixir always had those capabilities in a way that no other language does and to put the icing on the cake the community released Livebook [2] to interactively explore code and use the new tools in the simplest way possible, something that Python notebooks only dream of being capable of, after a decade of progress

    That's not to say that Elixir is superior as a language, but that the ecosystem is flourishing and the community is able to extract the 100% of the benefits from the tools and create new marvellously crafted ones, that push the limits forward every time, in such a simple manner, that it looks like magic.

    And going back to Rust, you can write Rust if you need speed or for whatever reason you feel it's the right tool for the job, it's totally integrated [3][4], again in a way that many other languages can only dream of, and it's in fact the reason I've learned Rust in the first place.

    The opposite is not true, if you write Rust, you write Rust, and that's it. You can't take advantage of the many features the BEAM offers, OTP, hot code reloading, full inspection of running systems, distribution, scalability, fault tolerance, soft real time etc. etc. etc.

    But of course if you don't see any advantage in them, it means you probably don't need them (one other option is that you still don't know you want them :] ). In that case Rust is as good as any other language, but for a backend, even though I gently despise it, Java (or Kotlin) might be a better option.

    [1] https://github.com/elixir-nx/nx https://github.com/elixir-nx/axon

    [2] https://livebook.dev/

    [3] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler

    [4] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled

  • Rustler

    Safe Rust bridge for creating Erlang NIF functions

  • > I guess, why not use Rust entirely instead of as a FFI into Elixir or other backend language?

    Because Rust brings none of the benefits of the BEAM ecosystem to the table.

    I was an early Elixir adopter, not working currently as an Elixir developer, but I have deployed one of the largest Elixir applications for a private company in my country.

    I know it has limits, but the language itself is only a small part of the whole.

    Take ML, Jose Valim and Sean Moriarity have studied the problem, made a plan to tackle it and started solving it piece by piece [1] in a tightly integrated manner, it feels natural, as if Elixir always had those capabilities in a way that no other language does and to put the icing on the cake the community released Livebook [2] to interactively explore code and use the new tools in the simplest way possible, something that Python notebooks only dream of being capable of, after a decade of progress

    That's not to say that Elixir is superior as a language, but that the ecosystem is flourishing and the community is able to extract the 100% of the benefits from the tools and create new marvellously crafted ones, that push the limits forward every time, in such a simple manner, that it looks like magic.

    And going back to Rust, you can write Rust if you need speed or for whatever reason you feel it's the right tool for the job, it's totally integrated [3][4], again in a way that many other languages can only dream of, and it's in fact the reason I've learned Rust in the first place.

    The opposite is not true, if you write Rust, you write Rust, and that's it. You can't take advantage of the many features the BEAM offers, OTP, hot code reloading, full inspection of running systems, distribution, scalability, fault tolerance, soft real time etc. etc. etc.

    But of course if you don't see any advantage in them, it means you probably don't need them (one other option is that you still don't know you want them :] ). In that case Rust is as good as any other language, but for a backend, even though I gently despise it, Java (or Kotlin) might be a better option.

    [1] https://github.com/elixir-nx/nx https://github.com/elixir-nx/axon

    [2] https://livebook.dev/

    [3] https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler

    [4] https://dashbit.co/blog/rustler-precompiled

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