Elixir 1.2.0 Released
How ironic, I was wondering just last night when 1.2 would be released.<p>I&#x27;m a newcomer to Elixir, and have really been enjoying it. As a Python-&gt;Rubyist, it&#x27;s been really interesting to finally hit a functional language, and some of Elixir&#x27;s most basic features just seem crazy in comparison to what I&#x27;ve come from. Some neat examples:<p>* Pattern Matching. In other words- you don&#x27;t assign things to variables, you match things. Elixir&#x2F;Erlang is just doing algebra behind the scenes. I&#x27;m sure this is a gross simplification, but it&#x27;s enabled me to write some really condensed code that still makes a bunch of sense.<p>* Streams. I know Node developers would laugh at this being a new concept, but I hit Streams when I was doing Node, and I didn&#x27;t get it. Streams in Elixir feel much more self-evident, and feel much easier to read.<p>* The Pipe Operator( |&gt; ). This effectively lets you simplify code by just passing results from one thing to the next. For example(taken from the excellent &quot;Programming Elixir&quot; by Dave Thomas):<p>$ (1..10) |&gt; Enum.map(&amp;(&amp;1*&amp;1)) |&gt; Enum.filter(&amp;(&amp;1 &lt; 40))<p>=&gt; [1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36]<p>So there, it takes the 1..10 range, maps the squares of each element to an array, then filters the array to just the elements that are less than 40.<p>It&#x27;s a surprisingly enjoyable language to program in, and best of all coming from a Rubyist- the performance gains are automatic, especially once you grok some of Elixir&#x27;s crazier(but easy to understand) powers.<p>-----<p>The other thing I really like about it, is how friendly the community seems. I feel personally predisposed toward extremely friendly communities- Ember.js was the first community that made me feel like I had a home- and the care with which Jose Valim and the core team treat people, and the general &quot;Give back everything you can&quot; attitude of the community is really just inspiring.<p>My newest side project was something I dropped because I thought that the hardware necessary would make it not worth the effort of building it, but now I have complete confidence in it.<p>I encourage you to take a shot at it if you&#x27;re looking for a fast, functional language with a clear syntax and easymode concurrency.