Coding by Transforming Data

I wanted to show you how Elixir projects are written—the tools we use and the processes we follow. I wanted to illustrate how lots of small functions can transform data, how specifying that transformation acts as an outline for the program, and how easy testing can be in Elixir.

But mostly I wanted to show how enjoyable Elixir development is, and how thinking about the world in terms of data and its transformation is a productive way to code. Look at our original design:

images/conveyor.png

Then have a look at the CLI.process function:

 def​ process({user, project, count}) ​do
  Issues.GithubIssues.fetch(user, project)
  |> decode_response()
  |> sort_into_ascending_order()
  |> last(count)
  |> print_table_for_columns([​"​​number"​, ​"​​created_at"​, ​"​​title"​])
 end

This is a cool way to code. Next we’ll dig into some of the tooling that makes using Elixir a joy.