March 18, 2023

Explained: How Elixir and Erlang Handle Arrays Functionally

238

clicks

Explained: How Elixir and Erlang Handle Arrays Functionally

Source: readreplica.io

Erlang Functional Programming Concurrency

Troy Martin's article discusses the fundamental differences between handling arrays in imperative languages versus functional languages like Elixir and Erlang. Imperative languages use state mutations and destructive updates, allowing fast operations on arrays such as lookups and modifications due to contiguous memory allocation. In contrast, functional programming languages value immutability and referential transparency, resulting in different behaviors and efficiencies for array-like operations. Elixir and Erlang utilize singly-linked lists and tuples as substitutes for arrays, however, neither offers the efficient random access and update operations simultaneously. The :array implementation in Erlang's standard library fills this gap, modeled as an M-Ary tree structure that optimizes for both read (random access) and write (updates) performance. The Erlang :array uses a tree data structure with a base 10 logarithmic time complexity for access and updates, significantly improving over linear time complexity with pure lists or tuples. Despite being called an array, it's notably distinct from the traditional imperative array; updates to the :array structure result in conceptually 'new' arrays with most of the older data reused, maintaining efficiency and immutability.

Implementing File Uploads in Real-time with Phoenix LiveView

The Fly.io team introduces LiveView Uploads as a solution for handling file uploads in Phoenix applications. Using LiveView, developers can achieve real-time upload progress, drag and drop functionality, and the ability to handle multiple uploads at once, all while hiding the complexity behind the scenes.

Aug 31, 2023

Implementing Unaccented Name Search in Postgres via Ecto

In this blog post by Peter Ullrich, Peter discusses the problem of efficient name search in Postgres, specifically when dealing with special symbols and accents. He proposes the use of the "unaccent" function in Postgres to treat words with and without accents equally, and also suggests adding a GIN index for faster search performance.

Aug 15, 2023

Asynchronous Task Management in Phoenix LiveView

In this blog post, Mark Ericksen explains how to build an asynchronous workflow in a LiveView using Elixir's concurrency primitives. He demonstrates how to link processes, trap exits, and handle tasks, providing a step-by-step guide to achieve an elegant and efficient solution.

Aug 29, 2023