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Learning Elixir

You're reading from Learning Elixir Unveil many hidden gems of programming functionally by taking the foundational steps with Elixir

Product type Paperback

Published in Jan 2016

Publisher

ISBN-13 9781785881749

Length 286 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

Elixir

Concepts

Programming Language

Authors (2):

Kenny Ballou

Kenneth Ballou

View More author details

Table of Contents (16) Chapters

Learning Elixir

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally FREE CHAPTER

2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming

3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks

4. Collections and Stream Processing

5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch

6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency

7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework

8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node

9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less

Index

Behaviours and protocols

Before we dive into the depths of metaprogramming, we need to discuss some related functionalities of Elixir that provide polymorphic features to the language. These are behaviours and protocols.

Briefly, behaviours provide similar functionality of interfaces from other languages such as Java and protocols provide a means for defining and dispatching function implementations for specific data structures.

Behaviours

Behaviours are not exclusive to Elixir; in fact, this is how Erlang implements the Gen* patterns. Behaviours are similar to interfaces in object-oriented (OO) languages. They specify a collection of functions that the module will expose. All the GenServer modules will have the handle_call, handle_cast, and handle_info functions.

Note

The spelling of behaviour in the core Elixir and Erlang API uses the British English spelling. However, Elixir's parser will allow either spelling.

Similar to interfaces in OO languages, the behaviour definition also helps the...

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Authors (2)

Kenny Ballou

Kenny Ballou

Kenny Ballou is a life-long learner, developer, mathematician, and overall thinker. He enjoys solving problems, learning about technologies, and discussing new and different ideas. He graduated from the Boise State University, majoring in applied mathematics, and minoring in computer science. He has been programming professionally for nearly a decade, and is currently working as a software developer for an analytics company in the Boise, Idaho area. Apart from developing professionally, he is active in the open source community, contributing where he can. When he is not developing, he enjoys reading, learning, and shredding the local mountains. You can read more from him on his blog at https://kennyballou.com, check out his code on GitHub at https://github.com/kennyballou/, and follow him on Twitter at @kennyballou.

See other products by Kenny Ballou

Kenneth Ballou

Kenneth Ballou

Kenny Ballou is a life-long learner, developer, mathematician, and overall thinker. He enjoys solving problems, learning about technologies, and discussing new and different ideas. He graduated from the Boise State University, majoring in applied mathematics, and minoring in computer science. He has been programming professionally for nearly a decade, and is currently working as a software developer for an analytics company in the Boise, Idaho area. Apart from developing professionally, he is active in the open source community, contributing where he can. When he is not developing, he enjoys reading, learning, and shredding the local mountains. You can read more from him on his blog at https://kennyballou.com, check out his code on GitHub at https://github.com/kennyballou/, and follow him on Twitter at @kennyballou.

See other products by Kenneth Ballou

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