Elixir 1.16 Adds Code Snippets to Compiler Diagnostics

Elixir 1.16 arrives

Elixir 1.16 was released on December 22, 2023. The team continued improving the developer experience through tooling, documentation and precise feedback while keeping the language stable and compatible, with the notable improvements being compiler diagnostics and extensive documentation work.

Code snippets in diagnostics

Building on the new diagnostic format from 1.15, Elixir 1.16 includes code snippets in exceptions and diagnostics raised by the compiler, with ANSI coloring on supported terminals. A syntax error now points to exactly where it happened, mismatched delimiters show both delimiters, unclosed delimiters show where they start, and undefined-variable errors underline the precise span. The team credited Vinicius Muller for the work.

Revamped documentation

Elixir 1.16 moved the language's tutorials and reference material into the language repository itself. That means tutorials are versioned alongside the relevant Elixir version, full-text search spans all API reference and tutorials, and ExDoc autolinks module and function names in tutorials. The release also added cheatsheets, starting with one for the Enum module, and began enriching docs with Mermaid.js diagrams in the GenServer and Supervisor documentation.

A living anti-patterns reference

The release incorporated and extended academic work on code smells in Elixir into the official documentation as anti-patterns, trimmed to unambiguous and actionable items and divided into code-related, design-related, process-related and meta-programming categories. Smaller additions included String.replace_invalid/2, a :limit option for Task.yield_many/2, and prefix binary matches in pattern matching.

Related on Skillo

See also: Elixir 1.15 and faster compilation.

Sources

• Elixir v1.16 released (elixir-lang.org)

Published date reflects the original event date (2023-12-22). This article is original Skillo editorial written from the sources above; facts were verified in September 2026.