Elixir in Action

Preface

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 for such a highly concurrent challenge, I needed something more suitable. 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 it’s 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 ...