Exploring the Concept of Reducees in Elixir

In this comprehensive article, José Valim introduces the concept of 'reducees' in Elixir, explained as an abstraction that supports collections through the Enumerable protocol. The article traces the development of reducees by examining the limitations of earlier abstractions like iterators and reducers, drawing ideas from languages like Haskell, Clojure, and Scala. Valim starts with basic recursion in Elixir, progressing to more complex concepts of iterators, reducers, and ultimately presenting reducees. The article meticulously explores the constraints of the Erlang VM and details the design choices made to enhance performance and simplicity while maintaining functional integrity. Additionally, it demonstrates how reducees provide powerful capabilities such as handling resources and ensuring reliable operation without dangling resources. The content also explains the usage of modules like Enum and Stream that help developers switch between eager and lazy computations.