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I don’t have a favorite programming language; I’m a designer. As long as the project can be implemented in a way that aligns with user needs and business objectives, I rely on a technical lead to have a strong opinion about how we build it. But I’ve come around on Elixir’s user-centered strengths.
Here’s why: all the technical characteristics we credit Elixir with ultimately result in an improved user experience. Elixir might not be the most famous programming language out there, but it has many strengths that make it a powerhouse for delivering on user needs and expectations.
Technical Capabilities Are User Benefits
Speed and Reliability
We talk a lot about performance in software development. Elixir is built on top of Erlang, a technology originally designed for telecom networks, where speed and reliability are primary concerns, so the degree to which Elixir provides concurrency (the ability to execute more than one program or task simultaneously) and fault tolerance (ensuring the overall system remains functional) goes a long way to providing the quick, frictionless experience users expect. This makes Elixir one of the best languages for building apps that need instant updates like messaging services, financial dashboards, and live sports trackers.
Not only can applications built with Elixir handle huge surges in traffic with millions of users, but they can also support features that could measure millions of data points at once. Imagine a chat app, a social media platform, or an online marketplace where thousands (or even millions) of people are interacting in real time. Many traditional coding languages would struggle under that load, but Elixir is designed for it. That’s why companies like Discord, Pinterest, and WhatsApp build with Elixir to keep their services running smoothly.
Performance and durability have an enormous impact on user experience, and users have come to expect a very high standard of both, whether on the web or in native mobile applications. Elixir can facilitate extreme levels of computing that some products require to perform their primary purpose, like PepsiCo, which uses Elixir to process and manage large-scale orders, and users remain blissfully unaware of what’s happening behind the scenes.
Built To Grow
Many of DockYard’s clients are interested in building zero-to-one products that will begin life as a minimum viable product before growing and expanding after launch, and our design systems and product strategy roadmaps are assembled accordingly: we start with a solid foundation that will last and evolve without breaking. Elixir serves these projects well because they can start small and scale up as they grow, without needing to rebuild their entire system.
Elixir is a functional language based on clear input-to-output functions that produce predictable results. (Engineers refer to this as immutability.) Unlike object-oriented languages such as Ruby, PHP, and JavaScript, Elixir’s foundational functions provide a stable, reliable environment during development and enable quicker bug fixing.
Although Elixir is still a niche language among engineers, most engineers who work in Elixir really like it. The developer experience was central to its formulation, maybe embodied most prominently in Elixir’s readable syntax (the words it uses to describe coding elements). Engineers just getting started in Elixir can quickly level up, and new members of an established team can onboard easily without needing time to decipher complicated code. For users, this means fewer bugs, faster improvements, and better performance for the apps you use every day.
The resulting simplicity and clarity can decrease tension between design and engineering, because developers can spend less time on technical debt that can weigh down revenue-building new feature development, and spend more time delivering obvious business value without sacrificing engineering best practices. It offers the ability to ship quickly and scale over time, which is a pretty smart plan for any growth-stage organization.
And smart planning isn’t just for feature sets. Elixir’s highly concurrent, fault-tolerant, and real-time system capabilities require less server infrastructure, ongoing operating cost, and team size, so business growth doesn’t mean extensive additional resources. That means we’re making a nimble product that can react to user behavior and changes in the marketplace.
Design at DockYard
Elixir is fast, reliable, and built for the modern internet. Whether you’re just starting up, looking to scale, or ready to replatform a legacy product, it’s one of the most versatile and future-proof programming languages available. The user benefits are many.
At DockYard, we consider design to be the application of intention. In other words, we’re concerned with who a product is for, what it does, and how it works. The culmination of that intention is an elegant user experience and an interface, handsomely rendered, that is capable of responding gracefully to evolving user needs. Elixir is stable, pliable, and durable; its developer-centric syntax and efficient use of resources make it sustainable and infinitely extendable. Its contribution to a product’s user experience should impress any designer.
