Today, DailyDrip is releasing and prepare them for building web applications using Ecto and Phoenix. We produced 25 short-form episodes (around five minutes each) that will take you from “what is this Elixir thing?” to “Cool, I know how to build a basic Phoenix-based webapp” rapidly. From there, we’re building a production-capable app in the ongoing premium content. five weeks of free content to introduce people to the Elixir programming language If you just want to see the content, , otherwise stick around and we’ll look at why we are investing so much time in the Elixir ecosystem. you can skip ahead A bit of history I started ElixirSips four years ago because I ran into concurrency and fault tolerance issues on a few projects. Through research I concluded that the solution to these problems was the , and that led me to Erlang and Elixir. 18 months ago Adam joined me and ElixirSips became . Our goal is to help you ; to that end, we produce daily short-form videos on Elixir, Elm, and so much more. Actor Model DailyDrip be a better developer Firestorm — an open source Phoenix-based forum Late last year we noticed a lack of substantial example projects using Elixir and Phoenix. At the same time, we weren’t happy with the options that were available for plugging comments into . So we started the project , with the idea that we would provide content about its development. The Kickstarter was successful! DailyDrip Firestorm Forum on Kickstarter As part of the Kickstarter, we created free content to introduce Elixir to more people. That’s the content we’re announcing at the end of this post. We are also continuing to build out the Firestorm Forum in . We are building this project the way we have empirically learned that production applications should be built, using best practices like the DailyDrip Elixir topic Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and a solid test suite. We’ve built an alpha release of Firestorm while . We’re in the process of revamping Firestorm for Phoenix 1.3. We expect to reach 1.0 in early July. dogfooding it within the community We produced the design via collaboration with our backers and our designer, Amy. Following the development of this project will present real-world solutions to problems that anyone building production Elixir applications might encounter. We hope this helps both individuals and teams embrace all of the awesome that is Elixir and its community. The detailed development log also makes it easy for people to itself, of course! contribute to Firestorm The free content and time we spent on the project wouldn’t have been possible without the support of . , and hopeful that this project can be proof that it’s possible to build high quality open source software for the world — while also producing high quality educational material. If you’re or find the free content valuable and , we would be honored if you’d everyone that contributed to our Kickstarter We are incredibly grateful interested in the success of the Firestorm Forum, want to see more of this sort of thing in the world sign up for a personal or team account at DailyDrip. Startups are hard! The hard truth is that while providing you with all this content. We’re trying to help make the world better for developers. We’ve got some great content that will help you learn not only , but , , , , and . People tell us they love our content, but in order to keep producing it — and projects like Firestorm — . we are losing money Elixir and Phoenix Elm React Native Swift3 Ember lots more we need more paying subscribers We’d love to help you or your team of developers stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the software world. Additionally, if you have a hard problem that needs senior developers on it, . we’re available to help We’d like to feed our families and focus on making great content and open source software, help us do that . That said, without further ado, here’s our free content! by subscribing here Episodes Week 1: Beginning Elixir In the first week you’ll learn the basics of the Elixir programming language syntax and its tools, and you’ll learn how to send messages between processes. We wrap up with a self-directed exercise to build a standalone process of your own. — Introduction to the language, and installation of Erlang and Elixir [001.1] Introduction to Elixir — Learning the basics of the language, as well as how to run scripts. [001.2] Basic Elixir Syntax and Concepts — Using the mix tool and defining modules, functions, and structs [001.3] Mix and Modules — Processes are the unit of concurrency. We’ll spawn some processes and let them have a conversation. [001.4] Processes and Messaging — Further links for reading, and a gratuitous exercise to build a process that responds with the upcased version of any strings it is sent. [001.5] Elixir Weekly Drip #1 and Exercise: String Upcaser “Microservice” Week 2: Intermediate Elixir In week two you’ll learn how to write tests using ExUnit, some more facets of the language itself, and how to manage state. — Preparing to learn about managing state and testing. [002.1] Intermediate Elixir Prep — Managing state with processes and messaging, then seeing the Agent module from the Standard Library for a simpler way to do the same thing. [002.2] Processes With State, and Agent — Handling enumerables and collections with power and grace. [002.3] `for` Comprehensions — An in-depth look at ExUnit, Test-Driven Development, and doctests. [002.4] Testing with ExUnit — Links on documentation, with, control structures, Enumerables, and an exercise to build a Reverse Polish Notation Calculator. [002.5] Elixir Weekly Drip #2 and Exercise: Reverse Polish Notation Calculator Week 3: OTP In the third week you’ll learn about OTP. This is part of the standard library that exists to help you model concurrent processes well. It also provides supervision trees, which are the building blocks that make it possible to build fault tolerant applications with Elixir. — A solution to the Reverse Polish Notation Calculator exercise, and preparatory readings for learning about OTP. [003.1] Preparing to Learn about OTP — Building Generic Servers and Supervision Trees [003.2] GenServer and Supervisor — Using Supervisors to handle nuance within your Tasks and Agents. [003.3] Supervising Tasks and Agents — Modeling a door with a numeric lock, to explore building Finite State Machines. [003.4] GenStateMachine — Interesting links and an exercise to build an RPN Calculator with GenServer, with a Tape Printer. [003.5] Elixir Weekly Drip #3 and Exercise: Supervised RPN Calculator and Tape Printer Week 4: Ecto In week four, we introduce Ecto, which helps you interact with your database. We’ll start building a data model for a forum and we’ll end up with a few non-trivial queries. — A solution to last week’s exercise and some readings to prepare us to learn about Ecto. [004.1] Preparing to Learn About Ecto — Getting started with Ecto by creating a basic schema and querying it. [004.2] Ecto Basics — Ensuring your data meets your requirements, flexibly. [004.3] Ecto Validation with Changesets — Exploring how to model associated data in Ecto and further details on queries. [004.4] Ecto Associations and More Queries — Some Ecto-related links and an exercise to write more detailed queries [004.5] Elixir Weekly Drip #4 and Exercise: More Queries Week 5: Phoenix In the fifth and final week of free content you’ll learn about Phoenix, and we’ll start building the Firestorm Forum from scratch. Firestorm is an open source Phoenix-based forum engine that aims to provide a large, real-world Phoenix codebase for people to learn from. — Solving an Ecto exercise and preparing to learn about Phoenix. [005.1] Preparing to Learn About Phoenix — Creating a new app and generating some resources. [005.2] Getting Started with Phoenix — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are actual things. [005.3] Phoenix and the Frontend — Categories have Threads, and our URLs should reflect that. [005.4] Nested Resources in Phoenix — Fixing the tests after last episode, and some Phoenix-related links. [005.5] Elixir Weekly Drip #5 and Exercise: Fix Tests Week 6: Starting Firestorm Week six is where the premium content begins, and we’ll keep going from here. This week we switch from Brunch to Webpack2, implement OAuth authentication, look into Ecto.Multi, see how can use Changesets to handle some transactions more intelligently, and work with views and layouts. — Replacing Brunch with Webpack in a Phoenix app [006.1] Webpack2 with Phoenix — Using Ueberauth to authenticate users against OAuth providers. [006.2] Authentication via OAuth — Handling database transactions in style, with Ecto.Multi. [006.3] Adding Posts to Threads with Database Transactions — Being smarter about modifying and inserting associated data. [006.4] Using Ecto Associations in Phoenix — Making Firestorm look a bit more like it should. [006.5] Phoenix Views, Templates, and Layouts Thanks so much for checking it out, and please share this post with anyone you think might be interested in Elixir.
