Elixir Fundamentals

Elixir's combination of modern language features, and a 30-year-old battle-tested foundation at its core, has made it increasingly popular over the past year

Elixir Fundamentals

  1. Courses
  2. Elixir Fundamentals
  3. Writing Modular Programs

Writing Modular Programs

Elixir's module system allows us to define layers of related functions. In this part of the course, we'll explore the concepts of modules, and the ability to reference code in one module from another.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsWelcome Back

    We'll recap the ground we covered in day 1 of this training, so it's fresh in your mind, as we continue building up toward Elixir proficiency!

  • Writing Modular ProgramsModules & Three Important Directives

    Modules are just a group of several functions, some of which may be private and some of which may be public. Modules give us the ability to define named functions using the def macro, which offer a few other features that were unavailable in the world of anonymous functions.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsEXERCISE: Mission Control

    We've got a set of tests for a couple of Elixir modules that are used to control a space ship. Alter the code to make the unit tests pass, and ensure that you've kept as much of each module's internal functionality private as possible.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsBasic Metaprogramming

    While the use macro is not strictly a directive, it's of particular importance when considering "mixins" for common functionality, shared across multiple concrete modules.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsEXERCISE: Extending a Module

    The use macro can essentially be used to decorate a module with some code from another module.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsProtocols & Behaviors

    Protocols are a mechanism for polymorphism in Elixir, where an implementation of a certain contract is defined on a per-type basis. In other languages, this contract would be called an interface (Java), or a pure abstract class (C++)

    Under the hood, part of how this works is by way of a Behavior: a definition of a set of functions that modules who adopt this behavior must implement.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsEXERCISE: Serializer Protocol

    Given a list of values, we want to be able to generate a string representation, either in CSV or JSON array format. Design a protocol, and adopt that behavior in each of two modules: CSVSerializer and JSONSerializer.

  • Writing Modular ProgramsLunch

    Break for Lunch

Solid Foundation

Learning a programming language in "as-needed" chunks can leave holes in critical areas of knowledge. In this course, there's no worry of "not knowing what you don't know".

The Functional Way

Many developers come to Elixir from a less functionally-oriented language like Ruby or JavaScript. We'll help you adjust the way you think, so you'll start forming good habits from day one!

Ecosystem Aligned

You'll learn how to align your code with Elixir and Erlang language-specific idioms, opinions and conventions. Why learn things the hard way on your own?