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Comment by Pandabob | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or is Elixir being talked/written about more in the past couple of months?

A bunch of startups including my own bet big on elixir 2 years ago and are starting to launch and gain prominence. the first wave of early adopters are coming out with battle stories to share and the conclusion is that elixir is the real deal.

> ... the conclusion is that elixir is the real deal

This makes me even more excited to start an upcoming new position writing Elixir full-time!

It is growing and having good adoption. Not a huge language but it also has a fair share of novel features (being built on Erlang) that aren't commonly seen with other langs. So I think it might have a disproportionate visibility compared to size. Lots of work happening in the community, lots of ambitious ideas and releases.

Why do you say its growing?

It recently hit top 50 on one of the big lists of programming languages and I see more people getting into it every day. It is growing unless there's s lsrge drain hole somewhere. Might not be growing relative to other larger langs but I'm fairly certain it is growing.

And I've heard a lot of concern about it being niche so I tend to mention that it is growing. Because in my experience the biche is quite large and .. growing. I find plenty of work.

There's quite a disconnect between the amount of attention it gets on HN and the fact it's not in the top 40 languages. I mean Tiobe index has it behind Lua, Lisp and RPG (?). So yes you can definitely say it's a niche.

This is a forum composed mostly of software engineers working on web technologies in young companies or startups, which means we're usually at the bleeding edge of computing.

The TIOBE Index represents the world of computing at large, including embedded development, industrial, financial, automotive, medical, hardware, etc. This is why C and Java are at the top of the TIOBE index and I'll argue will be there for the next 40 years, and doesn't mean that any language which is not C or Java are unpopular or niche. Ours might be a small percentage of total computing, but would you argue that web technologies/the Internet as a whole is a niche?

There is a reason the embedded world still uses C, and there is a reason the web world doesn't. Using the TIOBE index as popularity contest is misguided.

Elixir is niche. It's number 48 in Tiobe, in Redmonk it's not in the top 20, in Stackoverflow yearly surveys it dropped out of the list (too little usage). You mean to tell me a programming language not in the top 40 isn't niche? Hey I'm a Rubyist and I acknowledge the fact Ruby is niche (in some cities/countries you will have difficulty getting a Ruby job), yet even Ruby is way more popular than Elixir.

I can’t reply directly to the comment below yours, so it will be as a side comment.

I don’t think anyone is arguing Elixir isn’t niche, we are just explaining why Elixir gets attention on HN even though it is top 50 on TIOBE. HN itself is focused on certain domains and tends to be early adopters.

I think a lot of Elixir devs think or want to believe Elixir is bigger than it really is. That's what I understand from the guy I made the comment to. Now I don't enjoy popping people's bubbles but I think it's better for everyone to acknowledge the truth and then think how to deal with it.

> Now I don't enjoy popping people's bubbles but I think it's better for everyone to acknowledge the truth and then think how to deal with it.

How to deal with what? That Elixir isn't as popular, so I should tell my company to drop it? I should stop enjoying programming in it?

Sorry, sounds like you don't want to accept that Elixir is on the up, for whatever reason.

Yes, it's not super popular. Yes, people are being productive with it. I don't get the point of your comment.

I won't tell you what to do with it, but the fact is Elixir is not on the up, it's very niche (nichier than even Rust is) and it's probably starting to decline already. Look at Linkedin jobs

Lisp - 142 Clojure - 700 Elixir - 828 Rust - 3160 Golang - 9205 Ruby - 24353 PHP - 68444 Java - 132606

So Elixir, at its peak, has about the amount of jobs Clojure has (never knew anyone using Clojure btw). That's quite a niche, ±800 jobs in the entire U.S is very very little. You might not care or have any action items from these facts, others may. As for companies - I would never choose something like Clojure/Elixir for my startup that's quite crazy considering the small eco system.

Sorry, where's your proof Elixir's at his peak? How can you tell from these numbers it's on the decline?

> I would never choose something like Clojure/Elixir

Then don't, nobody is making you. I still don't see why you want to stress so much Elixir is not a top language. From what I can tell, you have a bone to pick with the language and being confrontational with no discernible reason. Good day.

EDIT: checked your post history, you're definitely being a troll on purpose on most Elixir posts.

I don't think I was confrontational at all, I only listed facts on this thread. Other threads have zero relevance. Good day to you too!

You keep bringing up “Elixir has peaked” but you don’t provide any concrete evidence for that. The only mention so far is Stack Overflow, which is not used by the community, and such was explained to you on separate occasions.

Someone mentioned Elixir has just passed top 50 on TIOBE - that’s growth. It also just crossed top 20 on GitHub by number of pull requests on Q1/2021.

I am not disputing it is niche. I am not disputing the job market is tiny. But for someone who mentions acknowledging the truth, you don’t seem to be very truthful on your claims the language has peaked, especially given the last time you claimed so, you used a milestone (Top 50 on TIOBE) that has been reached since then.

The problem with Elixir is it's too small to get good data on (I'm not being mean, that's the truth). Tiobe has trends only for the top 20 languages so can't use that.

The best I've got is Stackoverflow survey (are you saying Elixir devs don't use Stackoverflow at all? I find it bizarre. Even if you use Elixir forum a modern dev has questions on many things he needs answered (css, javascript, sql etc).

So please compare https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#most-popular-... With https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-... Elixir was dropped from the list. That's definitely a sign of decline. Now it could be that on absolute terms Elixir is keeping it's usage but only dropping on relative terms but I find it a bit hard to believe. I have a feeling Elixir devs who look for the next gig use other tech more often than not.

It is a data point, not definitive.

The language could be shrinking in comparison to everything an still be growing. I don't think that's the case but it wouldn't change anything for me. I don't work with a proportion of client according to trends. I work with particular companies and I'm at capacity doing Elixir as are many I know.

I believe it has a stronger trend then you believe it does. But neither of us have strong data.

Aren't clients considering migrating to different tech? I'm not trying to be annoying, genuinely interested. My current company considered it and they're a Ruby shop (luckily for them they rejected the idea). The thinking was something along the lines of Ruby is declining and how will they find developers 10 years from now. So if people can get this paranoid about Ruby I'm interested how it is on Elixir land.

So what is your action plan? To keep commenting that Elixir is niche on many threads even though most people here aren’t saying otherwise?

And even if they think that’s true, do you think being antagonistic to them on forums is what is going to change their mind?

I remember a recent comment from you saying that Elixir has probably peaked without even crossing top 50 on TIOBE... and yet here we are.

Look if you wanna shoot your career in the face go ahead stick to Elixir, the rest of us have bills to pay.

That’s only an issue if you define your career by a single programming language... I don’t.

Regarding bills, I made my biggest salary bump after I jumped to Elixir, but I appreciate the concern.

There were 300 elixir stories in 2020, an average of roughly .8 per day. In 2021 there have been 89 elixir stories for 108 days, so about the same. (Source: hnsearch)

Is it possible to tell how many of those hit the front page? I think the majority of those 300 stories in 2020 did not hit the front page. I'm curious how many there were in years prior as well.

Years.

Interesting that I'm getting down voted, I'm long on Elixir and betting my startup on it.

I didn't down vote you, but my guess is that it was because you commented a single word. Also, because of the position of your comment, I had to scroll back up in order to find the context.

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