Ruby vs Elixir: A Detailed Comparison Between Them

Over the past couple of years, programming languages have evolved at an unprecedented speed. In this period, Ruby has gained a lot of popularity along with JavaScript. Elixir is no exception to this. No doubt, Ruby is not a new language as it was first introduced in 1993, but its frameworks like Ruby on Rails have made it very popular lately. 

Similarly, Elixir is relatively sophomore but this language has gained traction very quickly. This galvanization is a by-product of its amazing features and capabilities. Speaking of, one of the most popular frameworks of Elixir is Pheonix.

This blog aims to compare both Elixir and Ruby thoroughly. This will entail the pros and cons of both languages and provide a comprehensive insight into which can better fit you and when. 

Before jumping straight into their comparison, it is essential to know about these languages to develop an understanding of both briefly. So let's get into it.

Furthermore, it is a general-purpose programming language, which mainly supports server-side programming. More importantly, its programming syntax is similar to other popular and basic programming languages like C++, C#, and Python. 

Moreover, scalability is a deciding feature of any programming language, and Ruby is highly scalable. Additionally, it is maintainable and has a diverse community along with numerous built-in functions. One can incorporate these functions easily in the scripts written in Ruby.

So, his motivation for developing the Elixir language was to fill the gaps in Ruby. Elixir is a concurrent language, and it works very well even under a high traffic load. Elixir is also very scalable. most importantly, this language is known for its' resilience - even in times of minimal failure it can recover automatically and rather quickly. 

As we have developed a basic understanding of both languages, now is the time to get into their pros and cons. This will allow us to compare both languages thoroughly and answer Ruby vs Elixir-related questions. 

Recommended: Web Development  Languages Wars - Erlang vs Elixir vs Ruby

Pros of Elixir Programming Language

As we have a lot of popular programming languages, a question that arises in everybody's mind is why and when to use Elixir. What are its benefits? So let's nail down some of the most prominent features of Elixir.

• Immutable Data

A great benefit of using Elixir is that it provides local reasoning of code. In other programming languages like Java, data is mutable, which means that when variables are passed in the program, they can be changed in other places of the program.

This makes it difficult to find bugs and makes it hard to debug the code as variables can change from place to place. However, this issue does not exist in Elixir, as data is immutable and language is functional.

• Performance of Elixir

Another reason why you should use Elixir is that it is amazing performance-wise. Pheonix is the most popular web development framework of Elixir. It prides itself on its unmatchable performance as its response times lie in microseconds.

However, Rails is also not slow. Its response time lies in microseconds. So, comparatively, Elixir is a performance-wise better choice.

• Concise and Facilitates Easy Testability 

Since Elixir is a functional programming language, it makes sure that the code is concise. It has small and clear functions with a direct purpose. In such languages, when functions receive input, it is easy to predict and understand the output of the function. This is very helpful in making quick changes and facilitating the testing processes.

• Quick Refactoring

At times, it becomes a herculean task to refactor the existing code without causing any further problems with the external behaviors of the code. It is very easy to break something, but it takes midnight oil to build something. However, in the case of immutable and functional languages like Elixir, it is comparatively simple to make changes and refactor the code.

• Parallelism 

Parallel systems can have latency and responsiveness issues because a single task will require a lot of computing power. However, Elixir has a very intelligent and good process scheduler which preemptively shifts control to different processes in this case. So, when an application is under extreme load, a single slow process can't compromise the application's overall performance. 

With this feature, Elixir almost makes sure low latency which is very important for modern web applications. 

• Highly Fault-Tolerant

In a lot of programming languages, when a bug in one process is identified, it fails and crashes the entire application. However, in Elixir, it's not the case. Elixir limits the bug to the process and makes sure that the rest of the processes are working as per expectations. 

So when a request is made to the faulty process, that request will crash. But, the rest of the functionalities of the application will be operational. So it enables you to limit the blast radius efficiently. 

Recommended: Hiring an Elixir Developer: Benefits of the Programming Language

Cons of Elixir

• Very Scarce Resources 

One of the backdrops of Elixir is that it is a very emerging language, so there are very limited resources available in the market as other programming languages such as JavaScript and Python are also very popular these days. Therefore, the resources are finding it hard to switch to Elixir. So it is a little difficult to find and hire experienced elixir developers. However, learning elixir is gaining a lot of traction nowadays. 

• Functional Programming Paradigm

Elixir is a functional programming language, and other popular programming languages are object-oriented. So switching from an object-oriented to a functional programming language can be an obstacle for many developers. However, it is not impossible to make a switch - it's just a matter of acquiring a new way of thinking about software development.

• Relatively Small Community and Ecosystem

Since Elixir was just created in 2012, it does not have a big community of developers. However, Elixir has very easy-to-understand and thorough documentation, making it a dynamic and easy programming language. 

Moreover, although Elixir has full interoperability with Erlang libraries, many features may require development from scratch. So this is another con of using Elixir.

Now, as we have discussed the pros and cons of Elixir, let's get into the advantages and disadvantages of Ruby.

Pros of Ruby

• A huge ecosystem

Irrespective of the fact that Ruby is a very easy programming language and great to work with - it has a very big ecosystem of libraries. It has created a gem for any feature you may want to implement and add. There is an abundance of such gems in Ruby, which makes it able to develop fast applications. 

• Productive and Easy to Work With

When the founder of Ruby was creating Ruby, his aim was to make development easy and pleasant thing. This is the reason that the syntax of Ruby is very easy, clean, and human-readable. It makes development very easy and productive.  This is the reason that ruby is a popular choice among web developers.

• Resourceful community

The community of Ruby is not only vibrant but also comes up with regular publishing of ready-made solutions and features with public access. It makes Ruby a popular choice among new developers as they can seek help and find solutions easily online.

Cons of Ruby

• Concurrency

When we talk about concurrency, Ruby is not a good choice for web application development. Although with concurrent ruby tools, it is possible Ruby's global interpreter lock (GIL) allows only one thread at a time. 

• Performance and Development Speed

Ruby is not a slow programming language at all, but when compared with Elixir, it is slow. The response time of Ruby-developed apps is in microseconds. 

• Hard to Maintain

Although gems in Ruby and Rails made it a very powerful language, it is also a bone of contention in many cases, especially in the long-term maintenance of the application. It may not be a problem for experienced developers, but for junior developers, it can be hard to maintain the code and productivity as they may not know what is going on behind the Rail's curtain.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, it can be said that both languages have their own properties. It is very hard to better one from the other, as both of these languages are good in their own domains. However, knowing the pros and cons of different popular programming languages is very important to make a befitting choice as per the requirements. For example, if you want to develop a high-traffic web application, IoT application, or distributed system, you may choose Elixir. But if you want to develop MVPs, prototypes, or marketplaces, you might want to choose Ruby. So, it all depends on the requirements. 

If you are looking for web development services and don't know which technology stack to choose, don't hesitate to contact us at InvoZone for development and consultation.