Elixir Study Notes

Building an API with Phoenix

A practical walkthrough of building a JSON API in Phoenix -- routing, controllers, Ecto contexts, JSON rendering, and testing.

Comprehensions in Elixir

Learn Elixir's for special form — a concise syntax for looping over enumerables and generating new collections with filters, multiple generators, and pattern m…

Ecto and Databases

How Ecto's Repo, Schema, Changeset, and Query modules work together to safely model, validate, and query data in Elixir.

Elixir and LiveView

How Phoenix LiveView delivers real-time, interactive UIs from server-rendered Elixir without hand-written JavaScript.

Elixir Best Practices

Idiomatic conventions and patterns for writing maintainable, robust Elixir code, from naming and pattern matching to OTP and testing.

Elixir Data Types

A tour of Elixir's built-in data types, integers, floats, atoms, booleans, strings, lists, tuples, and maps, and how immutability shapes the way they behave.

Elixir Interview Questions

Common Elixir interview questions and model answers covering the BEAM, OTP, pattern matching, concurrency, and system design.

Elixir Quick Reference

A condensed cheat-sheet of core Elixir syntax, data types, collection tradeoffs, and standard-library functions for quick lookup.

Elixir vs Ruby

A practical comparison of Elixir and Ruby covering syntax, concurrency, fault tolerance, mutability, and when to reach for each language.

Fault Tolerance in Elixir

Explore how links, monitors, and the let-it-crash philosophy combine to make Elixir systems resilient by design.

Functions and Modules in Elixir

Learn how Elixir organizes code into modules and functions, covering named functions, arity, default arguments, private functions, module attributes, and anony…

GenServer Explained

Understand how GenServer standardizes stateful server processes in Elixir with a clean client/callback API.

Guards and case in Elixir

Learn how Elixir's case expression and guard clauses let you branch on pattern matches with additional boolean conditions, and when to reach for cond instead.

Installing Elixir and Mix

A practical guide to installing Elixir on your system and getting started with Mix, Elixir's built-in build tool and project manager.

Keyword Lists

Learn Elixir's keyword list — an ordered list of atom-keyed tuples used heavily for options, configuration, and DSL-style function calls.

Lists and Tuples in Elixir

Learn how Elixir's two core sequential data structures — singly linked lists and fixed-size tuples — are represented in memory and when to use each one.

Maps in Elixir

Understand Elixir's key-value data structure, how to build, update, and pattern-match against maps, and when to reach for structs instead.

Mix and Hex Packages

How Elixir's built-in build tool Mix and the Hex package manager handle project structure, dependencies, and production releases.

Pattern Matching in Elixir

How Elixir's = operator performs structural pattern matching rather than simple assignment, and how that idea powers destructuring, function clauses, and contr…

Phoenix Framework Basics

An introduction to Phoenix's router, controllers, contexts, and plug pipeline — the core building blocks of a Phoenix web application.

Processes in Elixir

Learn how Elixir's lightweight BEAM processes enable massive concurrency through isolation and message passing.

Protocols in Elixir

Learn how Elixir protocols provide polymorphism across data types, letting a single function like Enum.map or to_string dispatch differently for lists, maps, a…

Recursion and Enum

Explore how Elixir uses recursion for iteration and how the Enum and Stream modules provide higher-level functions built on that foundation.

Structs in Elixir

Learn how Elixir structs extend maps with defined fields, compile-time checks, default values, and protocol-based behavior.