63 Free Elixir Ebooks, Resources, Tutorials and Videos

Elixir is a functional programming language built on the power of Erlang. Inheriting from Erlang, it is a language designed for distributed, concurrent, fault tolerant systems. Elixir, a dynamic, functional programming language, is designed for building scalable and maintainable applications with a simple, modern, and tidy syntax. Although it is easy to understand, Elixir’s approach to concurrency and its data type nuances require some getting used to.

Learning Elixir can make you a better programmer in other languages. There are a number of stories, from people who come from object-oriented languages, who found that the process of learning Elixir made them a better programmer in their language of choice. Learning the functional way of doing things will require some brain bending for anyone coming from procedural/oop languages, but I think anyone can get the hang of it. After that, I would say that elixir is easier than most languages, functional or otherwise.

The following are suggested readings and videos to learn about Elixir and Erlang. The readings provide more detailed information about the language and tutorials, while the videos are higher level about usage etc. There are also materials on specific Elixir topics, blogs / sites and podcasts. Have fun exploring and learning!

Starter Books

1. Elixir School by Elixir School
   Elixir-School is an open and community driven effort inspired by Twitter’s Scala School. The site’s content consists of peer-reviewed lessons on various Elixir topics that range in difficulty. The lessons are currently available in over 10 languages to help make programming Elixir more accessible to non-English speakers.
2. Elixir succinctly by Emanuele DelBono
   This is a introductionary book about Elixir and OTP, written to go straight to the point. Almost 100 pages to learn the language and the platform.
3. Getting Started by Elixir
   Official Elixir starting guide that will take you through the language foundations. You will also explore how to build projects with Mix and OTP, and it will introduce you to more advanvced techniques suchs as meta-programming.
4. Guide to an Elixir DOJO by Victor Oliveira Nascimento
   Guide to an Elixir DOJO.
5. Joy of Elixir by Ryan Bigg
   Joy of Elixir came about because there was not very much when it comes to absolute beginner material for learning Elixir.
6. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good by Fred Hebert
   This book is for you if you’ve got some programming experience and if you’re not too familiar with functional programming. It can still be useful if you’re too good for that, as we progressively go into more and more advanced topics.

Advanced Books

1. Elixir API by elx for BR
   Elixir / Phoenix
2. Erlang In Anger by Fred Hebert
   This book intends to be a little guide about how to be the Erlang medic in a time of war. It is first and foremost a collection of tips and tricks to help understand where failures come from, and a dictionary of different code snippets and practices that helped developers debug production systems that were built in Erlang.
3. Hands-on Elixir & OTP: Cryptocurrency trading bot by Kamil Skowron
   Want to learn Elixir & OTP by creating a real-world project? With Hands-on Elixir & OTP: Cryptocurrency trading bot you will gain hands-on experience by working on an interesting software project. We will explore all the key abstractions and essential principles through iterative implementation improvements.
4. The Erlang Runtime System by Erik Stenman
   The real goal with this book is to give you all the information, all the gory details, that you need in order to really understand the performance of your Erlang application.

Resources

1. Awesome Elixir
2. Discover Elixir & Phoenix
3. Elixir Koans
4. Elixir Radar Newsletter
5. Elixir School
6. Erlang Factory
7. Exercism.io
8. Joe Armstrong – A week with Elixir
9. Reddit
10. Stack Overflow

Topics

1. Dialyzer – Link #1 / Link #2
2. Ecto – Link #1
3. ETS, Erlang in memory key-value store – Link #1 / Link #2 / Link #3
4. ExDoc – Link #1
5. ExUnit – Link #1
6. Flow, Elixir behavior – Link #1
7. GenServer – Link #1 / Link #2
8. GenStage – Link #1 / Link #2
9. Phoenix On a Cluster of Nodes – Link #1
10. Phoenix Presence – Link #1
11. Streams – Link #1 / Link #2