🔗 Learning Elixir: maps

Maps are like your smartphone's contacts app where each person has a clear name and you can instantly find their information. Instead of scrolling through contact #1, #2, #3 hoping to find the right person, you simply search for "Sofia" or "Marcus" and get exactly what you need. Think of %{name: "Sofia", role: "Engineer", phone: "+1-555-0123"} as a contact entry where each piece of information has a meaningful label—you know exactly where to find someone's phone number, email, or work details. You can easily add new contacts, update existing information, or organize details however makes sense. In this article, we'll explore how maps work, when they're the perfect choice for your data, and the patterns that make them indispensable for building robust Elixir applications.

Note: The examples in this article use Elixir 1.18.4. While most operations should work across different versions, some functionality might vary.