> It definitely involves way more magic than spring for sure!
Elixir and Phoenix really strive to keep the "magic" to a minimum. Bending your mind the functional way instead of the OOP way, and learning how Elixir macros really helps dispel the magic and realize it's less excessive cleverness as Ruby/Rails often indulges in and more just the benefits of FP.
Makes me feel better! I have also successfully converted one of my java spring-boot app to phoenix though I am not sure how efficient it is. It definitely involves way more magic than spring for sure! Maybe its just quite hard for me to make the jump from imperative/OOPs way of coding to the functional way.
> would love your input on what would be needed for a learning resource as I have been thinking about writing a book on phoenix for newbies.
I would love to help! I think the harder part of making such a resource is updating and staying on par with the framework devs.