Elixir & Phoenix

Developed by José Valim, a former leading name in the Rails community, the functional-programming language Elixir has some compelling features. Built on top of the battle-tested Erlang language that had been developed for use in keeping massive phone systems running without interruption, it added the beautiful syntax of Ruby on Rails. Released in 2011, Elixir offers a compelling mix of stellar performance and developer happiness on even single server setups.

The Phoenix web application framework, developed by Chris McCord, enriched the Elixir experience further with revolutionary features such as “channels” which made incredibly high-performance real-time communication a breeze to implement.

Elixir is being used by companies such as Adobe, Bleacher Report, Lexmark, Lonely Planet, Pinterest and many more.

Rails is still our typical server-side language of choice for its mix of ease of use, rich ecosystem of open source libraries and our own wealth of knowledge. But there are areas where Elixir has clear advantages. We love Elixir and Phoenix, and they are where we look when performance and real-time are key