> There is a huge risk in niche languages and platforms. Hard to hire for, hard to find libraries for, hard to find blogs/tutorials/etc.
There is a real need to push Elixir outside its initial circles and it's being done a bit at the moment (I feel).
Both Chris & José are doing a lot of work for exposure outside the initial Elixir circles, and some people in the community are doing the same at their own levels.
Hiring is not that complicated actually, because a fair bit of people want to work in the language (I experience that first-hand), and a good developer will be up-to-speed quite quickly too.
But the "niche" aspect must be tamed in my opinion, and is both a risk (for the language itself) and a short-term reward (being proficient in a niche something is usually quite good).
I believe José deserves a lot of credit. For example, the Elixir Conference looks well-produced. No doubt there is a large team behind that, but it is obvious his influence guides that process. I'm particularly thinking of the LiveNative talk where the founder of the company talks about his own vision for extending LiveView to mobile and desktop. He mentions several times when José has interacted with him to help guide the project to stay inline with Elixir's overall goals. Of course, there is also the hints of frustration of a commercial business having to wait for community consensus. But that kind of direct involvement in the community is extremely encouraging.
You also make a very good point about the risk and reward metric. One of the reasons I have been focusing on Elixir as opposed to other niche languages is the progress the community is making is inspiring. I recall an essay by Paul Graham where he talks about Lisp being a contributor to his success with the startup that made him wealthy. He believed that being faster to market with features due to his platform choice was decisive in that success. In that way, something like Elixir (and really, the BEAM) could be a decisive component to some startups success. Given that they are focusing on important contemporary ideas, that is possible. LiveBook for example and Nx/Axon/etc for ML may actually be a killer feature.
Of course, time will tell. I don't have a crystal ball. But I am very interested in watching it all unfold.
I switched jobs and working as an elixir dev now. I love elixir don't get me wrong, but some of the documentation especially some of the more advanced features in ecto are very confusing.
It doesn't help you can define your ecto instructions in multiple flavors too (inline vs piping)
You can't mix inline with pipe operators without creating an additiona variable too hold the original query.
If we want to make it less niche, there's definitely good working points there. Once people understand how to hit a database from elixir it magically clicks and the other stuff is more trivial.
Ecto is a specific area and I must say I share your view on the "flavours" aspect (keywords vs not). I would personally love if there was only "one way".
And agree that there are both excellent documentation, _and_ things that are kind of "assumed" and would need better "beginner" stuff (in my opinion).
There is a real need to push Elixir outside its initial circles and it's being done a bit at the moment (I feel).
Both Chris & José are doing a lot of work for exposure outside the initial Elixir circles, and some people in the community are doing the same at their own levels.
Hiring is not that complicated actually, because a fair bit of people want to work in the language (I experience that first-hand), and a good developer will be up-to-speed quite quickly too.
But the "niche" aspect must be tamed in my opinion, and is both a risk (for the language itself) and a short-term reward (being proficient in a niche something is usually quite good).