What is Elixir and where it runs

What Elixir is

Erlang powers the Elixir BEAM VM.

Elixir is a dynamic functional language created by José Valim. You write plain text files, and the toolchain runs them on top of the Erlang virtual machine with no manual memory management.

Data in Elixir never changes in place. Functions take values in and return new values out, which makes programs easier to test and to reason about line by line.

IO.puts("Hello from Elixir") # prints Hello from Elixir 2 + 2 # gives 4

The Erlang VM

Erlang powers the Elixir BEAM VM.

The Erlang VM, called BEAM, runs your code as thousands of tiny isolated processes. These processes are far lighter than operating system threads, so one machine can juggle huge numbers of them at once.

Processes share nothing and talk by sending messages. When one process crashes, its neighbours keep running, which is why phone switches and chat backends trust this design.

pid = spawn(fn -> IO.puts("hello") end) # starts one process is_pid(pid) # gives true

Why Elixir endures

Erlang powers the Elixir BEAM VM.

Elixir pairs the battle tested VM with modern syntax: pattern matching, pipes, and a friendly toolset. Code reads top to bottom, and each step transforms data in a visible way.

The pipe operator takes the result on the left and feeds it as the first argument on the right. Long chains of nested calls turn into a flat readable list:

" hello " |> String.trim() |> String.upcase() # gives "HELLO"

Who uses it

Erlang powers the Elixir BEAM VM.

Teams pick Elixir for messaging systems, embedded devices, and web backends that must stay up under load. The same language covers tiny scripts and large servers, so skills transfer between small tools and big systems.

In this course you will move from installing the toolchain to writing scripts with variables, strings, and conditions. The next lesson installs Elixir on your machine.

Next: Install Elixir

Article author: Arthur Isaev