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Posted by bbg2401 18 hours ago

Elixir-lang.org has a new design(elixir-lang.org)
184 points | 111 commentspage 3
binaryturtle 16 hours ago|
Site doesn't work for me (older Firefox). Looks like there's no CSS and some Javascript error (probably makes it bail out loading the CSS?)
pwg 15 hours ago|
It also does not load if Javascript is blocked.
bbg2401 18 hours ago||
Also observed here: https://elixirforum.com/t/elixir-lang-org-redesign/76041
Starlevel004 16 hours ago||
Why does it have like 0.1s animations?
josevalim 16 hours ago|
Can you clarify which ones? We will be glad to improve them (or feel free to send a PR).
zuzululu 16 hours ago||
I appreciate Elixir but the problem is the job market/talent pool is tiny compared to other existing languages.

If you buy into the Elixir stack then you now have constraint you could've avoided entirely by avoiding it.

Also for devs there seems to be no premium offered for this talent pool scarcity. With LLMs I think language-specialists are redundant in a large scheme of things. ex) at one of my current remote jobs, I shipped an entire telecom infrastructure with barely knowing Elixir and we brought on contractors to audit the code and they found no issues.

toast0 16 hours ago||
> appreciate Elixir but the problem is the job market/talent pool is tiny compared to other existing languages.

> I shipped an entire telecom infrastructure with barely knowing Elixir and we brought on contractors to audit the code and they found no issues.

Erlang/Elixir experience is rare, because it's not widely used and the teams are small. It's not worth trying to hire for it. Hire for people who can figure it out on the go (amd are willing to give it a try).

You did it, hire other people who seem likely to be able to.

zuzululu 13 hours ago||
as a SWE this is not a good sign. it means the job market is slowly transitioning into temp work like economics. The value I got out of the Elixir contractors was immense since it not only proved that we can get a huge bulk of the work done without specialists and use them on demand for audit for a few months before AI this would've been not been possible.

normal market dynamics suggest scarcity demand premiums but this is not the case with software developers it seems.

toast0 11 hours ago||
Well,

a) did you pay your Elixir contractors more than you would pay a Java contractor for similar work?

but also...

b) scarcity isn't the only factor in price. Erlang/Elixir developers are scarce, but Erlang/Elixir jobs are also scarce. You need both demand and scarcity to raise prices. Also, it doesn't cost much to turn a willing, good developer into an Erlang/Elixir developer; substitute goods reduce the impact of scarcity.

also c) if you found contractors, but not employees, maybe you weren't willing to pay enough... So maybe the price is higher than you thought?

zuzululu 9 hours ago||
a) for sure but my point is that we didnt need them for long

b) true

c) i think we paid them $100/hr for two months which is fair

stanmancan 13 hours ago|||
If you vibe coded an entire telecom infrastructure and an external audit found no issues then it sounds like you might need to find better auditors.
zuzululu 13 hours ago||
both contracts have over 10 years of experience with Elixir and one of them have written a widely used library. I think you are tad out of touch with the job market and with where agentic coding is right now.
stanmancan 12 hours ago||
Possibly, but I’m a senior software engineer that’s been writing Elixir for the last 5 years and has been experimenting with and using AI for the last 12-18 months.

Congrats on being one of the mythical developers that manages to get AI to write perfect code consistently!

zuzululu 12 hours ago||
there's nothing mythical about it

if you treat it like any architecture then there's all sorts of techniques and knobs to produce consistent output

stanmancan 11 hours ago||
Sure, but vibe coding a whole telecom platform that’s considered flawless by experts in the language is a pretty mythical feat if you ask me.
zuzululu 9 hours ago||
thats the beauty of BEAM
dnautics 15 hours ago||
i hired a biologist (for my pharma startup) and she produced feature ideas for our internal stack and was guiding claude to write idiomatic code with feedback from my reviews with no coding experience. realistically if you want to start an elixir company today you need one consciencious senior that likes code review and any number of juniors with minimal competency and sufficient curiosity.
phplovesong 16 hours ago||
I guess elixir is a nice lang for the niche of erlang. But its dynamic (the "type system" is really meh at best) its not suited for real world use.

If i go full dynamic, why not use pure erlang instead?

pluralmonad 16 hours ago||
Maybe try and build something and see for yourself? Saying elixir is not fit for real world use shows how little experience with it you have.
phplovesong 1 hour ago||
I tried it, and it brings little. It got new syntax, but syntax alone is not important. I can build with erlang, so why would i pick elixir? I used erlang for almost 20 years, and never saw the idea of elixir.

Gleam on the other hand has a actual type system. It still young but i can see what it offers.

So syntax for me is totally pointless and just noise.

ch4s3 16 hours ago|||
Have you tried it since the new type system rolled out?
phplovesong 1 hour ago||
Yes. It feel unergonomic and bolted on. I rather have a pure static type system, or a full dynamic language.
dnautics 15 hours ago||
> not suited for real world use.

I hope you don't use discord or rely on pagerduty.

phplovesong 1 hour ago||
Dont use discord, never have. It could be just as easily be built in vanilla. Its just a chat really. Nothing special.
ModernMech 17 hours ago||
[flagged]
josevalim 17 hours ago||
The Software Mansion folks designed it and we actually iterated on the designs on Figma, having discussions as humans, and exploring alternatives. They were lovely to work with.

I also worked on all of the copy myself, collecting feedback from core maintainers as I went. The new tagline was a suggestion from Theo which we iterated on. I did use LLMs as an assistant, but I did not ask it to generate the content.

Might as well use LLMs for the whole thing next time, since we will be accused of doing so anyway! :D

ch4s3 12 hours ago|||
Ignore the haters, it looks very good.
ModernMech 16 hours ago|||
Shame then that despite all that, they landed on the same design used by every "I asked an LLM to make me a language and a website this weekend here's what it spit out" project. I mean, I'm not saying it looks bad or is a bad result. Just it's very similar to other things that have put in much less effort.
pests 16 hours ago||||
"Human produces output similar to a machine trained on all human output"
josevalim 15 hours ago||
It is funny (and perhaps a bit depressing) that LLMs were trained on our content and now, if we generate a similar structure as before, with the usual love and care, we will be criticized by it. Even when it does not "look bad or is a bad result".
chickensong 13 hours ago|||
It is indeed funny/sad to see the rancor created by our own inputs. You can't escape the AI police on HN right now. There will always be someone leaving a shallow complaint or accusation about the look or language, regardless of reality. Obviously slop exists, but the culture war has polarized some people enough that they're blinded, and anything resembling LLM output is a trigger. God help you if you use useful language like "load-bearing", because the police are definitely on their way.

FWIW, I don't think the site fits the LLM template. The scroll through the use cases is particularly nice.

And thanks for Elixir. I love it, and the agent + tidewave loop is a joy to use!

lenkite 10 hours ago|||
Thankfully, the webpages I make are so god-awful that no one can accuse of me of using an LLM. I use bog-standard browser controls for forms - they look fugly but its so rare to see raw/naked form controls nowadays that they look snowflake special.
ia 16 hours ago|||
I’m tried to understand the motivation for this salty comment and the parent comment. I failed. Then I opened the user’s comment history and most of their comments are like this. ModernMech, please, keep in mind we’re all doing our best. Being passive aggressive on the internet is social pollution. No offense intended, I’m just hoping you reflect a bit next time before you post.
ModernMech 14 hours ago||
[flagged]
Pay08 16 hours ago|||
This is how every second website has looked for the past 10 years.
acedTrex 17 hours ago||
Its pretty snappy/responsive for me at least so thats good. Normally LLM slop sites are pretty at first but sluggish as hell. So some level of skill went into this one.
shevy-java 13 hours ago||
Looks nice. But it would be more important to clean up elixir itself. So many things are unnecessary syntax-wise. At the least elixir made working with erlang easier, so they solved that part.
stanmancan 13 hours ago|
Such as?
arikrahman 17 hours ago|
I prefer https://jank-lang.org/ new re-design, and the approach of a more step-wise refinement.
__float 17 hours ago|
How is this language related to Elixir? Or are you just commenting that another language has a website?
arikrahman 16 hours ago||
They had a recent re-design last week.