Elixir

Elixir

You are writing Elixir on the BEAM. The runtime gives you cheap isolated processes, preemptive scheduling, and supervision. The single mental shift that separates idiomatic Elixir from ported imperative code: let it crash and supervise it, do not defend every call. A process that hits an impossible state should die and be restarted clean by its supervisor — that is more correct than a try/rescue that limps on with corrupt state.

Default to pure functions. Most of your code is data transformation and needs no process at all. Reach for a process only when you need state, concurrency, or fault isolation. Target Elixir v1.19.5 (stable, requires Erlang/OTP 28.1+) or v1.20-rc (full type inference, OTP 27+/29). Use the modern stdlib: built-in JSON, set-theoretic type warnings, mix format.

Decision: do you even need a process?

A process is not "an object": spawning one to hold a value you could pass as an argument is the most common beginner mistake, and it adds a serialization bottleneck and a failure mode for nothing.

Rule: if two pieces of code never run at the same time and share no mutable state, they are functions, not processes.

The functional core

Match in function heads, not with if — branches become exhaustive and self-documenting, and a non-match crashes loudly instead of silently falling through.

# Bad - imperative branching, easy to miss a case
def area(shape) do
  if shape.type == :circle do
    :math.pi() * shape.r * shape.r
  else
    shape.w * shape.h
  end
end

# Good - one clause per shape, unmatched input crashes (which a supervisor handles)
def area(%Circle{r: r}), do: :math.pi() * r * r
def area(%Rect{w: w, h: h}), do: w * h

Return tagged tuples {:ok, value} / {:error, reason} — the caller pattern-matches the outcome; this is the protocol the whole ecosystem speaks.

# Good
def fetch(id) do
  case Repo.get(id) do
    nil -> {:error, :not_found}
    record -> {:ok, record}
  end
end

Chain fallible steps with with — it reads as the happy path and short-circuits on the first non-match, no nested case pyramids.

# Good - any step returning a non-{:ok, _} falls straight to else
with {:ok, user} <- fetch_user(id),
     {:ok, acct} <- fetch_account(user),
     :ok <- authorize(acct) do
  {:ok, acct}
else
  {:error, reason} -> {:error, reason}
end

Use guards to constrain clauses (when is_integer(n) and n > 0) — keeps validation declarative and lets the compiler reason about types.

Pipe left-to-right for data flowing through transforms — data |> step1() |> step2(). Do not pipe just to avoid an intermediate variable; if a step needs the value in a non-first argument, name it.

There is no mutation. Rebinding x = f(x) makes a new binding; data you passed elsewhere is unchanged. Stop reaching for mutable accumulators — use Enum.reduce/3, comprehensions, or recursion.

Processes and message passing

Raw spawn/send/receive exists and is fine for a throwaway fire-and-forget where supervision genuinely does not matter, but in production you almost always want an OTP behaviour (GenServer/Task/Agent) so you get child_spec, supervision, and shutdown handling for free.

• Link (spawn_link) couples lifetimes: if one dies abnormally, the other gets an exit signal. This is how supervision works.
• Monitor (Process.monitor/1) is one-directional and non-fatal: you get a {:DOWN, ...} message but you do not die. Use it when you care that something died but should survive it.

GenServer

Split the client API (runs in the caller) from the server callbacks (run in the GenServer process). Callers never touch state directly.

defmodule Counter do
  use GenServer

  # --- Client API (caller's process) ---
  def start_link(opts) do
    GenServer.start_link(__MODULE__, opts[:start] || 0, name: opts[:name] || __MODULE__)
  end

  @spec increment(GenServer.server()) :: :ok
  def increment(server \\ __MODULE__), do: GenServer.cast(server, :increment)

  @spec value(GenServer.server()) :: integer()
  def value(server \\ __MODULE__), do: GenServer.call(server, :value)

  # --- Server callbacks (GenServer's process) ---
  @impl true
  def init(start), do: {:ok, start, {:continue, :warm_up}}

  @impl true
  def handle_continue(:warm_up, state) do
    # heavy/slow init goes here, AFTER start_link has returned
    {:noreply, state}
  end

  @impl true
  def handle_cast(:increment, count), do: {:noreply, count + 1}

  @impl true
  def handle_call(:value, _from, count), do: {:reply, count, count}
end

• Never block in init/1. start_link blocks until init returns, so a slow init stalls the whole supervision tree boot. Return {:ok, state, {:continue, term}} and do the work in handle_continue/2.
• use GenServer auto-defines child_spec/1 — you rarely write one by hand; override only to change :restart or :shutdown.
• call is synchronous (with a 5s default timeout), cast is fire-and-forget. Use call when the caller needs the result or backpressure; cast when it does not. A flood of casts with no backpressure is the classic mailbox-growth bug — timeouts and backpressure recipes in references/otp-patterns.md.
• Name via Registry, not a global atom, when you have many dynamic instances — atoms are never garbage-collected (see anti-patterns).

Supervision trees

The supervision tree starts in lib/<app>/application.ex, wired via the mod: key in mix.exs. mix new <app> --sup scaffolds this.

defmodule MyApp.Application do
  use Application

  @impl true
  def start(_type, _args) do
    children = [
      {Registry, keys: :unique, name: MyApp.Registry},
      {DynamicSupervisor, name: MyApp.WorkerSup, strategy: :one_for_one},
      Counter
    ]

    Supervisor.start_link(children, strategy: :one_for_one, name: MyApp.Supervisor)
  end
end

Restart strategy — how siblings react when one child dies:

Restart value per child — :permanent (always restart, the default), :transient (restart only on abnormal exit), :temporary (never restart). A pool worker is often :transient; a one-shot job is :temporary.

Let it crash: do not wrap business logic in try/rescue to keep a process alive. Validate inputs at the boundary, then trust the happy path; if an invariant breaks, crashing and restarting from a known-good init state is the recovery mechanism. Reserve rescue for boundaries where you must convert an exception into a tagged tuple for a caller.

For runtime-spawned children (a worker per connection/job) use DynamicSupervisor + Registry for lookup. Full recipe — plus Task, Agent, :ets and how to choose an OTP behaviour — in references/otp-patterns.md.

mix project

my_app/
  mix.exs               # project, deps, application/0 with mod: callback
  config/
    config.exs          # compile-time config (read once, at build)
    runtime.exs         # runtime config — reads System.get_env at boot
  lib/
    my_app.ex
    my_app/
      application.ex     # supervision tree
  test/

• config.exs is compile-time; runtime.exs is runtime. Anything coming from the environment of the running release (DB URL, secrets, ports) goes in runtime.exs — it is the only config evaluated inside the built release at boot. Putting secrets in config.exs bakes build-time values into the artifact.
• mix release produces a self-contained tarball with its own ERTS; no Elixir/Erlang needed on the target. Run it with bin/<app> start.

MIX_ENV=prod mix release
_build/prod/rel/my_app/bin/my_app start

mix.exs anatomy, deps, environments, env vars, releases and the umbrella decision live in references/mix-and-releases.md.

Types and modern stdlib

• Add @spec to public functions. The set-theoretic type system (gradual, sound; v1.18 inferred patterns/calls, v1.19 added protocol + anonymous-fn inference, v1.20 targets full inference) uses them and surfaces warnings at compile time — treat type warnings as bugs, they catch real mismatches before runtime.
• Use built-in JSON (JSON.encode!/1, JSON.decode!/1, since v1.18) for basic encoding/decoding — no Jason/Poison dependency needed unless you require their extras.
• mix format is the canonical formatter; run it and gate CI on mix format --check-formatted.
• mix compile --warnings-as-errors in CI. Dialyzer and Credo are optional add-ons, not required for correct OTP code.
• v1.19 perf: lazy module loading (>2x faster compiles on large projects) and MIX_OS_DEPS_COMPILE_PARTITION_COUNT for parallel dep compilation.

Anti-patterns

Verify

Run scripts/verify.sh from your mix project root (the directory containing mix.exs). It checks mix format --check-formatted and mix compile --warnings-as-errors, and skips cleanly with exit 0 when Elixir/mix is not installed so it never blocks a toolchain-free CI.