If I've understood this correctly, this sounds very much like erlangs concurrency. Elixr I guess by extension too. Old, tatty code but: https://github.com/Ian

If I've understood this correctly, this sounds very much like erlangs concurrency. Elixr I guess by extension too. Old, tatty code but: https://github.com/IanCal/semq/blob/master/src/messagequeue.erl https://github.com/IanCal/semq/blob/master/src/messagequeue.... This made message queues that would pause if there was a pop on an empty queue (for long-polling), supports removing everything and if a new 'client' connects while another is waiting for an item sends an error message to the original client. I'm sure there's a neater way of doing it but this sat and ran for quite a while for me and didn't take long to write :) Generally, the loops are achieved by making an infinitely recursive function call, and you can therefore switch between major behaviours by having multiple functions. For a quick syntax thing, sending a message is "address ! message" and what I think the "accept" in your code is equivalent to a 'receive' in mine. You won't have the same type safety, but the general pattern of just blocking and waiting safely is there. It's a fun language, and people seem to be pretty happy with elixr these days too (built on top). There's some better examples here: http://learnyousomeerlang.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-concurrency http://learnyousomeerlang.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-concu... http://learnyousomeerlang.com/more-on-multiprocessing http://learnyousomeerlang.com/more-on-multiprocessing