Sasa Juric - Elixir in Action, Second Edition

In 2010, I was given the task of implementing a system to transmit frequent updates to a few thousand connected users in near real time. My company at the time was mostly using Ruby on Rails, but I needed something more suitable for such a highly concurrent challenge. Following the suggestion of my CTO, I looked into Erlang, read some material, made a prototype, and performed a load test. I was impressed with the initial results and moved on to implement the whole thing in Erlang. A few months later the system was shipped, and its been doing its job ever since.

As time passed, I began to increasingly appreciate Erlang and the way it helped me manage such a complex system. Gradually, I came to prefer Erlang over the technologies I had used previously. I began to evangelize the language, first in my company and then at local events. Finally, at the end of 2012, I started the blog The Erlangelist (http://theerlangelist.com), where I aim to showcase the advantages of Erlang to programmers from OO backgrounds.

Because Erlang is an unusual language, I began experimenting with Elixir, hoping it would help me explain the beauty of Erlang in a way that would resonate with OO programmers. Despite the fact that it was at an early stage of development (at the time, it was at version 0.8), I was immediately impressed with Elixirs maturity and the way it integrated with Erlang. Soon I started using Elixir to develop new features for my Erlang-based system.

A few months later, I was contacted by Michael Stephens of Manning, who asked me if I was interested in writing a book about Elixir. At the time, two Elixir books were already in the making. After some consideration, I decided there was space for another book that would approach the topic from a different angle, focusing on Elixir concurrency and the OTP way of thinking. Writing the book took a lot of work, but it was a rewarding experience.

Two years after the first edition was published, Manning and I agreed to start work on this second edition. This edition isnt radically different from the first, but it brings the book up to date with the latest changes in Elixir and Erlang. The most relevant updates are in chapters 8, 9, and 10, which have been significantly reworked to accommodate the new ways of working with supervisors and process registries.

At this point, Elixir in Action is again fully up to date and teaches you the most recent idiomatic techniques for building software systems with Elixir. I hope youll enjoy reading the book, learn a lot from it, and have a chance to apply your new knowledge in your work!