Difference Between Elixir and Erlang

Elixir was introduced in 2011 globally. It is a functional programming language, designed for maintaining distributed and scalable applications. It is aimed at large-scale sites and applications. This language was designed to handle large data volumes and is used in the telecommunication, eCommerce, and finance industries.

Advantages

• Highly scalable
• User-friendly
• Availability of a useful framework
• Full Community support

Disadvantages

• To work with Elixir, one must know about Erlang.
• Weak ecosystem
• Expensive

Erlang was introduced in the year 1998 globally. It is a functional language that supports various fault-tolerant systems and applications. It is used to build scalable real-time systems with requirements on high availability and is used in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony, and instant messaging sectors.

Advantages

• Easy to use
• It is quite suitable for high-availability systems
• Community support
• Support for concurrency

Disadvantages

• Debugging is an issue as it is quite complex.
• Deployment is difficult
• Hiring challenges

Difference between Elixir and Erlang

Elixir	Erlang
Elixir was introduced in 2011.	Elixir was introduced in 1998.
Used for scalable and distributed applications.	Used mainly in the sectors of eCommerce and banking.
“elixirc” code is used to compile elixir code.	“erlc” code is used to compile erlang code.
It supports less number of databases.	It supports a wide variety of databases.
It supports Couch DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and orientdb.	It supports Apache, Riak, MySQL, Couch DB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and Mnesia.
It supports many cloud platforms.	It supports fewer number of cloud platforms than Elixir.
It supports only one framework i.e, the Phoenix framework.	It supports frameworks like Erlang OTP, Cowboy, etc.
Logical AND and Logical OR operators are available.	Logical AND and Logical OR operators are not available.
One can assign variables more than once.	One cannot assign variables more than once.
Use .(dot) to invoke the function.	Use :(colon) to invoke the function.
Default values are always defined.	Default values are not defined.
It is preferred in the current environment because of its ease in applications, fault-tolerant mechanism, and distributed applications.	It is not much preferred.