Elixir: Agent Basics - [016][Free]

Elixir Foundation?

To me this is rather interesting. Is it an open foundation, meaning, can I join if I want to?
Also, you mention this one is free. I didn’t have trouble but I assume some episodes will be locked behind a paywall, right?

Why use Agents?

Because they give you an additional level of abstraction… Why use airplanes? Because they give you a different means to perform geospatial traveling within a shorter frame on the time axis of the 4D chart reality exists on.

Did you get it? No? Neither did anyone else learning Elixir.

From what I understand you explain Agents before finishing all of GenServer’s features. IMHO, this was a mistake. If I don’t fully understand GenServer, I cannot value what Agent brings to the table.

Don’t take me wrong, I am one of the guys who thinks there are reasons to use Agents, namely:

  • Reduced boilerplate code (less repeated code that you have to do over and over)
  • Shorter servers which lead to less bugs (there is a mathematical relation between the number of lines of code a file has and bugs. The more lines something has, the higher the probability of a bug).
  • Less mental load and complexity.

You may prefer the lower level approach via GenServer, and that’s fine, but these benefits hold value as well. I didn’t see you explaining them, instead you jumped right into Get and update.

But for me, what the video really lacks is an answer to the following question…

Why shoulnd’t I use Agent?

Someone who watches this single video will believe Agents replace GenServers. Such is not true. Agents lacks some of the capabilities GenServers have and this is a major factor people consider when they tell you they just use GenServer and don’t bother with Agents.

My evil opinion

You may have had the impression from my second paragraph I didn’t like your work. This is not true - I am by default a hard critic and I apologize if I hurt you. People in this community are not like me, so don’t be afraid :stuck_out_tongue:

Truth is I like quite liked the video:

  • post production effects were nice
  • short and straight to the point
  • real code examples

Videos like this take a lot of work I know for a fact. I just think the topic on Agents could have taken another approach.

Hope you guys keep on doing this great work!