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  1. Stackups
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  4. Frameworks
  5. .NET vs Elixir

.NET vs Elixir

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

.NET
.NET
Stacks15.4K
Followers5.9K
Votes1.9K
GitHub Stars21.7K
Forks4.9K
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

.NET vs Elixir: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare and highlight key differences between .NET and Elixir programming languages.

  1. Execution Environments: .NET runs on Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Elixir runs on the Erlang Virtual Machine (BEAM). CLR provides a managed runtime environment, while BEAM provides an actor-based concurrency model. This fundamental difference in execution environments impacts the core capabilities of both platforms.

  2. Language Paradigm: .NET is primarily object-oriented, supporting multiple languages like C#, VB.NET, and F#. On the other hand, Elixir is a functional programming language built on top of Erlang, which is known for its concurrency and fault-tolerant features. The language paradigm directly affects the programming model and style.

  3. Scalability: Elixir has built-in support for concurrency and distributed computing, making it highly scalable and able to handle large systems with ease. In contrast, while .NET has various mechanisms for scaling, such as multi-threading and task parallelism, it may require additional frameworks or libraries for distributed computation in large-scale systems.

  4. Ecosystem and Libraries: .NET has a vast ecosystem with a wide range of libraries and frameworks for various purposes, allowing developers to find solutions for almost every domain. Elixir, although growing steadily, has a smaller ecosystem with fewer libraries and frameworks available. Developers working with Elixir may need to build more components from scratch or rely on Erlang libraries to fulfill their requirements.

  5. Tooling and Development Experience: .NET offers a rich set of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio and JetBrains Rider, which provide extensive tooling support, including debugging, refactoring, and code generation. Elixir has a less elaborate IDE ecosystem, with popular editors like Visual Studio Code and Sublime Text offering extensions for Elixir development, but with fewer features compared to specialized IDEs.

  6. Community and Adoption: .NET has been around for a longer time and has a large community of developers, making it more widely adopted and supported by industry. Elixir, being relatively newer, has a growing and passionate community, but its adoption is still more limited in comparison.

  7. Summary: In summary, .NET and Elixir differ in their execution environments, language paradigms, scalability, ecosystem, tooling, and community. While .NET offers a mature and versatile platform with a vast ecosystem and strong adoption, Elixir provides a functional programming language with powerful concurrency features and scalability, although with a smaller ecosystem and limited adoption.

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Advice on .NET, Elixir

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Ing. Alvaro
Ing. Alvaro

Software Systems Engineer at Ripio

May 21, 2020

Decided

Decided to change all my stack to microsoft technologies for they behave just great together. It is very easy to set up and deploy projects using visual studio and azure. Visual studio is also an amazing IDE, if not the best, when used for C#, it allows you to work in every aspect of your software.

Visual studio templates for ASP.NET MVC are the best I've found compared to django, rails, laravel, and others.

524k views524k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

.NET
.NET
Elixir
Elixir

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Multiple languages: You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.; Cross Platform: Whether you're working in C#, F#, or Visual Basic, your code will run natively on any compatible OS.; Consistent API & Libraries: To extend functionality, Microsoft and others maintain a healthy package ecosystem built on .NET Standard.; Application models for web, mobile, games and more: You can build many types of apps with .NET. Some are cross-platform, and some target a specific OS or .NET implementation.; Choose your tools: The Visual Studio product family provides a great .NET development experience on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Or if you prefer, there are .NET command line tools and plugins.
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
21.7K
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
4.9K
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
15.4K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
5.9K
Followers
3.3K
Votes
1.9K
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 273
    Tight integration with visual studio
  • 262
    Stable code
  • 191
    Great community
  • 184
    Reliable and strongly typed server side language.
  • 141
    Microsoft
Cons
  • 13
    C#
  • 12
    Too expensive to deploy and maintain
  • 8
    Microsoft itself
  • 8
    Microsoft dependable systems
  • 5
    Hard learning curve
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand
Integrations
C#
C#
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
F#
F#
Xamarin
Xamarin
Visual Basic
Visual Basic
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to .NET, Elixir?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

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