An series of introductions to Elixir Processes

Recently I took some time to try and get a better grasp on processes in Elixir. I attempted to distill that knowledge into 5 blog posts that you and I can revisit anytime to refresh our memory.

1. BEAM/Elixir processes for web programmers

In this post I attempt to explain processes by defining prerequisite technical concepts needed to understand processes. From there I walk through Process concepts themselves, using examples where possible.

2. BEAM/Elixir ‘let it crash’: what it does and does not mean

Regularly I would come across the Elixir axiom “let it crash” and be uncertain of what was meant by it. Here I try to unpack that using examples of what it does and does not mean.

3. Do BEAM/Elixir processes provide concurrency or enable parallelism?

The terms concurrency and parallelism are often confused for one other in discussion and I wanted to make sure I had a general understanding of the two so I wrote a brief post of what each means in relation to the BEAM ecosystem.

4. An introduction to BEAM/Elixir processes in Phoenix

I mostly program for the web and Phoenix is the web application framework for Elixir, therefore I wanted to have a general understanding of how processes worked within Phoenix. This post breaks down what I learned through an example web request.

5. Elixir process module cheatsheet

This is a brief overview of some of the Process module functions and Kernel functions for working with processes.