Learning resources

Our website provides a Getting Started guide to learn more about Elixir’s foundation and explore how to build projects with Mix and OTP.

The Elixir Community has also produced plenty of resources to explore Elixir from different backgrounds and other perspectives. We are sure you will find a resource that follows your pace and interests.

Learn Elixir

Programming Elixir 1.3

Explore functional programming without the academic overtones (tell me about monads just one more time). Create concurrent applications, but get them right without all the locking and consistency headaches. Meet Elixir, a modern, functional, concurrent language built on the rock-solid Erlang VM.

Elixir’s pragmatic syntax and built-in support for metaprogramming will make you productive and keep you interested for the long haul. Maybe the time is right for the Next Big Thing. Maybe it’s Elixir. This book is the introduction to Elixir for experienced programmers, completely updated for Elixir 1.3.

Elixir in Action

Elixir in Action is a tutorial book that aims to bring developers new to Elixir and Erlang to the point where they can develop complex systems on their own. No knowledge about Elixir, Erlang, or functional programming is required, but it is assumed that a reader has a few years of production experience using mainstream OO languages, for example C#, Java, Python, or Ruby.

The book starts with a basic introduction to the Elixir language and functional programming idioms. The central part of the book deals with Erlang VM and OTP, discussing topics such as concurrent programming, fault-tolerance, and distributed systems. Finally, you’ll learn how to package your code into components, create a standalone deployable release, and troubleshoot the running system. The theory is demonstrated through a simplistic example that is gradually expanded throughout the book into a fully standalone releasable system.

Introducing Elixir

Elixir is an excellent language if you want to learn about functional programming, and with this hands-on introduction, you’ll discover just how powerful and fun Elixir can be. This language combines the robust functional programming of Erlang with a syntax similar to Ruby, and includes powerful features for metaprogramming.

This book shows you how to write simple Elixir programs by teaching one skill at a time. Once you pick up pattern matching, process-oriented programming, and other concepts, you’ll understand why Elixir makes it easier to build concurrent and resilient programs that scale up and down with ease.

The Little Elixir and OTP Guidebook

The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook gets you started programming applications with Elixir and OTP. You begin with a quick overview of the Elixir language syntax, along with just enough functional programming to use it effectively. Then, you’ll dive straight into OTP and learn how it helps you build scalable, fault-tolerant and distributed applications through several fun examples. Come rediscover the joy of programming with Elixir and remember how it feels like to be a beginner again.

Elixir Cookbook

This book is a set of recipes grouped by topic that acts as a reference to get ideas from or to quickly search for a solution to a problem. You will begin by launching an IEx session and using it to test some ideas. Next, you will perform various operations like loading and compiling modules, inspecting your system, generating a supervised app, and so on. Furthermore, you will be introduced to immutability, working with data structures, performing pattern matching, and using stream modules to generate infinite data sequences. You will learn about everything from joining strings to determining the word frequency in text. With respect to modules and functions, you will also discover how to load code from other modules and use guards and pattern matching in functions.

Elixir School

Elixir-School is an open and community driven effort inspired by Twitter’s Scala School. The site’s content consists of peer-reviewed lessons on various Elixir topics that range in difficulty. The lessons are currently available in over 10 languages to help make programming Elixir more accessible to non-English speakers.

Video/Interactive Resources

Try Elixir with Code School

Start learning and programming Elixir in your browser with Code School’s interactive Try Elixir course. Learn the basics of functional programming with instructor-led videos before taking on challenges where you’ll code directly in the browser, receiving immediate feedback and code validation.

Take Off With Elixir

Red:4 is a fictional aerospace startup that needs your help! Through a book, a video, or both you can learn Elixir the fun way by immersing yourself in an on-the-job style set of problems. For instance, you will set up a project to calculate escape velocity for each of the planets in our solar system, learning pattern matching and language basics along the way. You’ll move on to orbital mechanics while learning how to debug and refactor your code for clarity and meaning. You’ll learn list basics and data storage techniques as you build a solar flare tracking system. Finally, you’ll dive into OTP using Ecto and PostgreSQL - all in an effort to overwhelm our internal systems with the power of Elixir!

Screencasts

Elixir Sips

Elixir Sips is a screencast series that provides 2 short videos - typically from 2 to 7 minutes, but occasionally much longer - each week. The videos consist of various topics, ranging from exploring a module in the standard library to trying out a new project to building a web-based Tetris game from scratch.

The intended audience ranges from someone entirely new to the Elixir language, to experienced developers that want to get a broad range of topics to think about from time to time.

LearnElixir.tv

LearnElixir.tv is a screencast series which provides in-depth, step-by-step videos about Elixir’s main features. Videos range from 7 to 15 minutes in length, and are posted weekly.

It’s intended to help beginners get familiar with all of Elixir’s features by building their knowledge incrementally. Experienced Elixir developers might also learn a trick or two.

In-depth Resources

Études for Elixir

Études for Elixir is an open source book of programming exercises. Each one has been designed to provide practice material for a particular Elixir programming concept. The topics are keyed to the chapters in “Introducing Elixir,” but they are general enough to be used with any Elixir book. Études for Elixir can be read free online.

Metaprogramming Elixir

Write code that writes code with Elixir macros. Macros make metaprogramming possible and define the language itself. In this book, you’ll learn how to use macros to extend the language with fast, maintainable code and share functionality in ways you never thought possible. You’ll discover how to extend Elixir with your own first-class features, optimize performance, and create domain-specific languages.

Erlang in Anger

This book intends to be a little guide about how to be the Erlang medic in a time of war. It is first and foremost a collection of tips and tricks to help understand where failures come from, and a dictionary of different code snippets and practices that helped developers debug production systems that were built in Erlang.