The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook
by Benjamin Tan Wei Hao · first published 2016
90% recommend10% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical introduction to OTP for Elixir developers, building ideas like supervision and processes from scratch so the mechanics are visible. Suits readers who know the basics or are moving to distributed apps.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2015–2026Programming Phoenix
Chris McCord, Bruce Tate, Jose Valim
Recommended by 32 · mentioned by 4832 recommend · 48 mention32 recommend · 4832 recommend
2013–2023Programming Elixir
Dave Thomas
Recommended by 40 · mentioned by 6640 recommend · 66 mention40 recommend · 6640 recommend
2015–2026Elixir in action
Sas̄a Jurić
Recommended by 48 · mentioned by 6048 recommend · 60 mention48 recommend · 6048 recommend
Erlang in Anger
Recommended by 24 · mentioned by 2724 recommend · 27 mention24 recommend · 2724 recommend
2010–2025Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good!
Fred Hebert
Recommended by 89 · mentioned by 9089 recommend · 90 mention89 recommend · 9089 recommend
For anyone curious about Phoenix and Elixir, I can sincerely recommend the following resources to get you started: - Programming Phoenix by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate, and José Valim [1] - The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook by Benjamin Tan Wei Hao [2] - Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić [3] Phoenix initially attracted me to Elixir, I've stuck around for that and the OTP platform: pattern matching, p
on “Phoenix 1.3.0 Released” ↗I recommend The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook. https://www.manning.com/books/the-little-elixir-and-otp-guid... It's easier to build distributed apps with Elixir because of Erlang's OTP. Check it out, I'm sure it'll be interesting for you.
on “Ask HN: Recommendations for a book on Distributed Systems?” ↗I'd read up on the elixir language itself from the official website, then look into the "Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook" https://www.manning.com/books/the-little-elixir-and-otp-guid...
on “How Discord Scaled Elixir to 5M Concurrent Users” ↗I think the basics of Elixir are easier to learn. The syntax is pretty straight forward and you don't have to worry about much more than functions and modules. OPT, which is how you build supervision trees and other more complex Elixery things, is tricky at first but reading through Designing Elixir Systems with OTP, by James Edward Gray & Bruce A. Tate, and The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook, by
on “Build a real-time Twitter clone with LiveView and Phoenix 1.5” ↗See also: Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook. Currently reading that book, it's good so far.
on “My favorite Erlang Program (2013)” ↗Dave's book gives a great overview of Elixir. If you want a deeper look at Elixir - I'd recommend Elixir in Action by Saša Jurić (Manning publications). Ben Tan Wei Hao's book is also promising (still in early release) - The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook also Manning.
on “Phoenix 1.0” ↗+1 on "The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook". It's a generally good introduction to OTP, though the book has a lot more errors than I'm used to seeing (their github code differs without explanation from the code in the book at times, and sometimes one or the other won't run successfully).
on “Phoenix 1.3.0 Released” ↗Definitely recommend reading "The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook" The focus of the book sounds like pretty much what you're asking for. The first few chapters cover Elixir basics, but its really just a primer -- easily skippable if you already know it. Starts with implementing OTP features from scratch so you can see what they do and why they exist, then dives into how to do it using OTP.
on “Joy of Elixir” ↗We have a web application developed in elixir, it's really amazing. I highly recommend the book: the little elixir & otp guidebook. understanding OTP and the actor model will crank your elixir code up to 11.
on “Études for Elixir” ↗Don't sleep on your Erlang literature: Learn You Some Erlang, Erlang in Anger, Design for Scalability with OTP. Also Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook is pretty short. I haven't read it yet, but Elixir in Action is supposed to be very good, too. http://learnyousomeerlang.com/ https://www.erlang-in-anger.com/ https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Scalability-Erlang-OTP-Fa...…
on “Joy of Elixir” ↗I read Dave Thomas' book cover-to-cover like some kind of legitimate nerd :) It was very good. For understanding genservers there's The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook, as well. In my case I experimented with it for at least a year before I decided to jump in, my "experiments" are here: https://github.com/pmarreck/elixir-snippets (I tend to use single-file dev for…
on “Elixir 1.9” ↗