Learn Elixir, Npm and Particle

These videos include the introductory steps to writing your first Elixir function and beginning to understand some key concepts in Elixir that make it unique. 

Some of those concepts include:
- the Mix build tool
- project structure
- collections of functions written in modules
- function *arity*
- pattern matching and common uses for it
- the pipe operator

Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

elixir

Getting Started with Elixir

You can’t be everywhere at once. Neither can node packages. But with a utility called npx — included in npm v5.2 and later — you can interact and run with node modules even if they’re not downloaded locally. The same is true for gists and remote branches of GitHub. As long as npm installed, your work can be wherever you are.

This course from Elijah Manor unlocks the power of the npx utility. Over 17 minutes, we will examine the npx package runner and look through various scenarios where the tool is helpful when running node packages from the command line. You’ll learn to use npm to:

- test out various versions of a package
- run packages without globally installing
- run code directly from GitHub
- make working with packages much easier

npm is the package manager for JavaScript. Find, share, and reuse packages of code from hundreds of thousands of developers — and assemble them in powerful new ways.

Execute npm Package Binaries with the npx Package Runner

npm is like a giant library of code building blocks. There are tons of these “blocks”, aka “packages” that we can compose together to build cool things. We can use packages by other developers, but we can also write and publish our own. 

In this course we will learn how to create, publish, and update our own packages. We will create a JavaScript utility module to filter out sensitive words from a string, including tests and development file watching. We will then cover publishing and updating our package. This same approach can be used to create and publish other types of packages too like components (React, Angular, Web Components etc.) and command line interfaces.

Publish JavaScript packages on npm

In this course we will introduce the topic of using npm scripts as a build tool. We will start simple and then continue to build a small website as we introduce new topics. By the end of the course, you'll know how to get started and what tools and techniques are needed for you to create your own set of build scripts.

How to Use npm Scripts as Your Build Tool

The ability to pull in just about anything your project needs from npm is amazing, but it can also lead to bundle bloat if you aren't selective about what libraries you pull into your library. In this lesson, we'll take a look at bundlephobia.com, a tool that provides insights about a library's size. With bundlephobia, you can make informed decisions about what libraries you pull into your project and avoid unnecessary bundle bloat.

https://bundlephobia.com/

Make informed decisions about 3rd party npm libraries with bundlephobia

React is one of the web’s most popular frameworks for building JavaScript applications. 

If you know what you’re doing, React can drastically simplify how you build, use, and maintain code.

Whether you’re a React newbie or you’re ready for advanced techniques, you can level-up with egghead. Explore our in-depth courses, lessons, and community resources to build more powerful applications and crack open your career.

react

With Node.js installed, bootstrapping a react app is as simple as executing `create-react-app` with `npx`. No further downloads necessary.

Bootstrap a react app using create-react-app

Bootstrap a new Elixir project using Mix (a build tool included when you install Elixir), with its built in project generation.

Additional resources:
- [Official introduction to Mix](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/mix-otp/introduction-to-mix.html#our-first-project)

Generate a new Elixir project using Mix

Elixir code is organized into groups of functions called modules. You can create your own modules and built on top of predefined modules that are a part of Elixir by default.

Additional resources: 
- [Getting started with Modules and function from Elixir docs](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/modules-and-functions.html)

Write a New Function Inside of an Elixir Module

The syntax to pass arguments into functions is akin to many other languages. Elixir functions are uniquely recognized when running based off of the number of arguments passed in (a term called *arity*). This means you can define functions with the same name, so long as a different number of arguments is passed in.

Arity is a key concept to be aware of when reading documentation and writing your own code.

Additional resources:
- [Information about arity](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/modules-and-functions.html#function-capturing)
- [Default arguments in functions](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/modules-and-functions.html#default-arguments)

Pass arguments into Elixir functions and understand arity

Elixir uses `=` as an operator, but rather than assigning values to variables with it, it *matches* values on the right hand side of the `=` with the left side. This can be used in simple values, more complex data structures, and powerful condition checking.

Put into simpler terms, pattern matching is Elixir's way of assigning variables.

Additional resources:
- [Elixir docs on pattern matching](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/pattern-matching.html)

Pattern match values in Elixir

Some common uses for pattern matching in Elixir include checking conditions and passing parameters into functions. It's useful for pulling out only specific variables from collections of data.

Additional resources:
- [Elixir docs on pattern matching](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/pattern-matching.html)

Pattern match in conditions and function parameters in Elixir

Leaflet is the leading open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. Weighing just about 38 KB of JS, it has all the mapping features most developers ever need.

leaflet

While there are a few options for building maps, [Leaflet](https://leafletjs.com/) is the most popular. Lucky for us, Leaflet is also available as a ReactJS component library with [React Leaflet](https://react-leaflet.js.org/). We'll use both Leaflet and React Leaflet to build a map in our React app.

To get started, we need to install:

[Leaflet (npmjs.com)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/leaflet) and [React Leaflet (npmjs.com)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-leaflet)

**[Click here for exercise instructions](https://github.com/colbyfayock/launchtime-workshop/tree/master/lessons/02%20-%20Adding%20Your%20First%20React%20Leaflet%20Map%20to%20a%20New%20React%20Application#1-installing-our-dependencies)**


Install Leaflet and react-leaflet with NPM in a JavaScript Project

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Nx has been design to work especially well in large monorepos. One particularity (compare to other monorepo solutions) is that Nx follows the principle of having one single version of a package in the entire workspace. That said, you'll have one version of React, one version of Angular etc.. This helps to keep things consistent, facilitates code sharing as well as easier migrations.
In this lesson we're looking into adding the [material-ui](https://material-ui.com/) package to our React app.

Install and use external npm packages in an Nx Workspace

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

node

Tests are really important in the software development cycle. But how we can test if our API - or even a page - will support the web traffic and requests our users will create by accessing them?

In this video, you will learn how to create HTTP load and benchmarking tests in Node.js using the autocannon package. With that, we can make sure our API is not consuming too much memory, CPU, or any other resource that can cause slow responses.

Create Load Tests in Node.js Using Autocannon

A lot of the power behind npm scripts is creating custom scripts that are outside the basic set that npm natively understands. In this lesson we will install the ESLint node package, create a new eslint npm script, briefly discuss about environment variables and how npm knows where to find your binary, and then execute our custom script from the command line.

Create a custom npm script

Often times you’ll have variations that you’ll want to make to your npm scripts and repeating yourself is inefficient and verbose. Instead you can create a base script and pass arguments into it from another script.

Pass arguments to npm scripts

In this lesson we will look at pulling out complex npm script logic into an external JavaScript file. Instead of writing bash scripts you can leverage your JavaScript abilities to automate your build process. We’ll use some helper node modules such as shelljs, opn-cli, and babel-cli. 

Create a node script to replace a complex npm script

In addition to package.json level variables (such as name and version), you can have custom conf settings that can be used in your npm scripts. These config values can be overridden outside of the package.json by using the npm config set command if necessary.

Use custom config settings in your npm scripts

The React team has an official Command Line Interface (CLI) for building React projects called "Create React App"; in this lesson, we show how to use this tool to quickly set up new projects using the `create-react-app {project-name}` command. We then use the npm scripts that are provided: `npm start` to develop, `npm run build` to ship, and `npm run eject` to opt out of the abstracted tooling.

The benefits of this tool are:
- It's officially maintained by the React team; this means best practices out of the box
- Zero config, one dependency
- Config is abstracted so React team can make improvements under the hood and you get the new goodness for free
- Clean command line output for errors
- You can "eject" at any time if needed

Set up React apps with zero configuration in two minutes

In this lesson we will examine two common scripts (start and test) that npm natively understands. We’ll define these scripts for our existing repository and show how you can run the scripts from the terminal.

Run the basic npm scripts

After creating several npm script it becomes useful to run multiple scripts back-to-back in series. This is a nice feature because you can enforce that one script needs to complete before starting another one.

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