Groxio

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Master Elixir with expert-led courses covering AI, LiveView, OTP, and more. Mentoring, team training and video courses from Elixir expert Bruce Tate. Grox.io

People coming from Ruby, Python, or JS often think this defines multiple functions: def greet(:admin), do: "Welcome" def greet(:user), do: "Hello" def greet(_), do: "Hi" It doesn’t. It’s one function (greet/1) with multiple heads, selected by pattern matching before code runs.
Here's the thing about working with AI on codebases: You explain an architectural decision carefully. The model seems to understand. Then a few prompts later, it suggests something that quietly breaks the system. The instinct is to prompt better. Longer explanations. More reminders. That's not the fix. The real problem is that the decision only lived in chat. And chat disappears. What works: anchoring decisions in code. Module names that signal responsibility. Function names that encode behavior. Tests that assert boundaries. When intent lives in structure, you stop babysitting the model and start collaborating with it.
People coming from Ruby/JS/Python keep tripping on this: x = 1 x = 2 Looks like mutation, right? Nope. In Elixir, = is pattern matching. Those are two separate bindings to two different values. The old value still exists. The name just points somewhere else now. This one shift explains why Elixir concurrency works without locks and why code stays predictable when things get messy.