Michael Herold

In 2014, the Phoenix framework emerged onto the web development scene as a fast, productive, and concurrent solution for the modern web. Its focus was on massive concurrency, thanks to the power of the Elixir language and Erlang’s BEAM virtual machine. The original branding stressed the productive aspect, positioning the framework against the venerable king of productivity, Ruby on Rails. Those who are familiar with Rails will see a lot of inspiration from Rails. The way Phoenix auto-reloads code in development mode makes it just as easy to use as Rails. The router grammar requires a good squint to see the difference between the two. This inspiration certainly makes for a quick learning experience for Rails developers. But I wonder: at what cost? Does Phoenix make it too easy to structure your application like a Rails application? Is this convenience to the detriment of using the full power and expressivity of Elixir?