I like Elixir and Phoenix but I agree with you.
First I think a very large number of developers don't care for functional programming.
Then Phoenix is mainly run by only two persons, Chris McCord and José Valim (who also manages Elixir and Ecto). If I compare the pace of development and what you get out of the box with PHP/Symfony (I don't know RoR) it's quite clear that Phoenix is not there yet (without even speaking of the difference in ecosystem size).
Having said that I'm excited for Phoenix 1.4 https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/milestone/17
In Is Rails still relevant in 2018?phoenixframework
phoenix
Elixir2014–2026
phoenixframework / phoenix
phoenix
Peace of mind from prototype to production
39Distinct people
45Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
23.2KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Peace of mind from prototype to production
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
It's really awesome how Phoenix has come a really long way in a really short period of time. Chris and José (and many others) do an excellent job of carefully considering…
rubiquity used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- elixir-ecto/ecto · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- elixir-lang/elixir · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:02:50 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year45 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-06-23 16:37:03 UTC to 2026-06-04 10:08:44 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Peace of mind from prototype to production.
Getting started
See the official site at https://www.phoenixframework.org/.
Install the latest version of Phoenix by following the instructions at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/installation.html#phoenix.
Documentation
API documentation is available at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm.
Phoenix.js documentation is available at https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/js.
Contributing
We appreciate any contribution to Phoenix. Check our CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and CONTRIBUTING.md guides for more information. We usually keep a list of features and bugs in the issue tracker.
Generating a Phoenix project from unreleased versions
You can create a new project using the latest Phoenix source installer (the phx.new Mix task) with the following steps:
Remove any previously installed phx_new archives so that Mix will pick up the local source code. This can be done with mix archive.uninstall phx_new or by simply deleting the file, which is usually in ~/.mix/archives/.
Copy this repo via git clone https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix or by downloading it
Run the phx.new Mix task from within the installer directory, for example:
cd phoenix/installer
mix phx.new dev_app --dev
The --dev flag will configure your new project's :phoenix dep as a relative path dependency, pointing to your local Phoenix checkout:
defp deps do
[{:phoenix, path: "../..", override: true},
To create projects outside of the installer/ directory, add the latest archive to your machine by following the instructions in installer/README.md
Building from source
To build the documentation:
MIX_ENV=docs mix docs
To build Phoenix:
mix deps.get
mix compile
To build the Phoenix installer:
mix deps.get
mix compile
mix archive.build
To build Phoenix.js:
mix assets.build
Important links
#elixir on Libera IRC
elixir-lang Slack channel
Issues tracker
Phoenix Forum (questions and proposals)
Visit Phoenix's sponsor, DockYard, for expert Phoenix Consulting
Copyright and License
Copyright (c) 2014, Chris McCord.
Phoenix source code is licensed under the MIT License.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
4 sourcesI'm curious as to what was a nightmare about the deployment and runtime configuration. Would you mind sharing your experience? Even better, post your concerns on one of the following sites and link back here. Sounds like it could be an interesting issue and I might be able to contribute.
https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/issues
https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/issues
In Elixir v1.7 releasedYou should read Discord’s experience with Elixir if you haven’t already [1]. They didn’t use Phoenix channels though AFAIK.
Also the Phoenix channel implementation uses CRDTs behind the scenes from what I gather. They make problems like user presence much more tractable [2].
1: https://blog.discordapp.com/scaling-elixir-f9b8e1e7c29b
2: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/guid...
In Building a chat app in 8 minutes with PhoenixI don't call it "art", but I've been putting textual diagrams into documentation lately, and I think it can be very helpful.
For example, I added a diagram to the Phoenix Channels guide, showing how the implementation works: https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/master/guid...
I use Monodraw (https://monodraw.helftone.com/), which lets you work with boxes, arrows, etc as objects in layers, and export to ASCII or Unicode. ASCIIFlow (http://asciiflow.com/) is a simpler alternative.
In Ascii art – dead or alive?