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I have just starting learning Elixir and Phoenix. It seems like a solid replacement for Rails. But I keep getting hung up on performance. With React, it seem

by onebot 7y ago

I have just starting learning Elixir and Phoenix. It seems like a solid replacement for Rails. But I keep getting hung up on performance. With React, it seems like you are developing more API back-end, then web server back-end (if that makes sense). But when you look at the performance compared to Go and the steeper learning curve, why not just use Go? Kubernetes really solves the share-nothing let-it-fail aspect. Obviously, Erlang/Elixir are hands-down a good fit for fault tolerant distributed systems where performance may not be as critical or you can use NIF. But outside chat and a few other use-cases, not sure the majority of web services falls into this. However, the functional code is so nice. Anyways, any input on how to convince engineering leadership how Elixir might be better than Go would be helpful.

iends 7y ago
For non-stateful services, it seems very difficult to me to convince people to use Erlang/Elixir over Go. It also seems to me that Go is going to be more maintainable over time than Elixir. Also, Elixir has smaller corporate backing compared to Go. fwiw, I work at a telecommunications company and I've had no success convincing anybody to use either Go or Erlang/Elixir over Java (& Clojure).
- onebot 7y ago
  That’s ironic considering that Erlang was designed for telecommunications. But I think statefulness is the right context between the two. Why do you think Go would be more maintainable?
  - iends 7y ago
    I realize dialyxir exists, but I think a lack of static typing can lead to some maintainability issues over long term. At least this is my experience working on a 6 year old JavaScript codebase.
- pdimitar 7y ago
  You seem to list political / culture / habitual phenomena here. Care to list technical argumentation instead?
  - iends 7y ago
    Do you think language adoption in a company is anything other than "political / culture / habitual"? But in any case, Go is a very straightforward language if you're already familiar with popular languages like C/C+, C#, Java, or JavaScript. You basically just need to learn the concurrency features (goroutines/csp/select keyword). Elixir is a much larger conceptual leap in that it is functional and the currency toolset is a lot more to grok. Deploying code with Go is also easier than Erlang/Elixir. Static typing is also pretty huge (dialyxir seems more like a bolt on).
    - pdimitar 7y ago
      > Do you think language adoption in a company is anything other than "political / culture / habitual"? Sadly you are correct. But what I was getting at is that I'm interested in how do you choose a language. Us the techies should strive to make technical decisions not based on politics, wouldn't you agree? > But in any case, Go is a very straightforward language if you're already familiar with popular languages like C/C+, C#, Java, or JavaScript. In every single area of my life I found out that what is cheaper at the start always ends up hugely expensive later. But I am not here to argue life philosophy. Just a quick tidbit. > Elixir is a much larger conceptual leap in that it is functional True. I still found the investment very worth it though, even after I spent 14-15 years with OOP / imperative languages before that, mind you. But that's a matter of personal career choice. > Static typing is also pretty huge (dialyxir seems more like a bolt on). This is undeniably one of the big weaknesses of Erlang/Elixir (and the BEAM languages in general). It made me try and reach for languages like Go and OCaml. Go is pretty easy but extremely verbosive. Also the imperative languages' tendency to always show you how you are doing things instead of the what you are doing (namely the way of the functional languages) is something that is poking my eyes out lately, for the better or worse. Additionally, people use Go's typing escape hatch (`interface{}`) way too often, to the point that the typing system feels completely optional. OCaml I like quite a bit, and its typing system is world-class. Lightning-fast compilation times are a huge productivity boost, one I didn't expect. But lack of even basic parallelism wrappers is pretty off-putting (I am not counting convenient pthreads-like DSL, they are just that and nothing else). All in all, I'd still go for Elixir for 90% of what I ever do due to its preemptive scheduler and very friendly parallelism and concurrency story. And higher-level tools -- like Broadway -- keep getting added. The BEAM languages are not a panacea. That's a fact. They seem to fit excellently in the web programming though.

by onebot 7y ago

iends 7y ago

For non-stateful services, it seems very difficult to me to convince people to use Erlang/Elixir over Go. It also seems to me that Go is going to be more maintainable over time than Elixir. Also, Elixir has smaller corporate backing compared to Go. fwiw, I work at a telecommunications company and I've had no success convincing anybody to use either Go or Erlang/Elixir over Java (& Clojure).

onebot 7y ago
That’s ironic considering that Erlang was designed for telecommunications. But I think statefulness is the right context between the two. Why do you think Go would be more maintainable?
- iends 7y ago
  I realize dialyxir exists, but I think a lack of static typing can lead to some maintainability issues over long term. At least this is my experience working on a 6 year old JavaScript codebase.
pdimitar 7y ago
You seem to list political / culture / habitual phenomena here. Care to list technical argumentation instead?
- iends 7y ago
  Do you think language adoption in a company is anything other than "political / culture / habitual"? But in any case, Go is a very straightforward language if you're already familiar with popular languages like C/C+, C#, Java, or JavaScript. You basically just need to learn the concurrency features (goroutines/csp/select keyword). Elixir is a much larger conceptual leap in that it is functional and the currency toolset is a lot more to grok. Deploying code with Go is also easier than Erlang/Elixir. Static typing is also pretty huge (dialyxir seems more like a bolt on).
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    > Do you think language adoption in a company is anything other than "political / culture / habitual"? Sadly you are correct. But what I was getting at is that I'm interested in how do you choose a language. Us the techies should strive to make technical decisions not based on politics, wouldn't you agree? > But in any case, Go is a very straightforward language if you're already familiar with popular languages like C/C+, C#, Java, or JavaScript. In every single area of my life I found out that what is cheaper at the start always ends up hugely expensive later. But I am not here to argue life philosophy. Just a quick tidbit. > Elixir is a much larger conceptual leap in that it is functional True. I still found the investment very worth it though, even after I spent 14-15 years with OOP / imperative languages before that, mind you. But that's a matter of personal career choice. > Static typing is also pretty huge (dialyxir seems more like a bolt on). This is undeniably one of the big weaknesses of Erlang/Elixir (and the BEAM languages in general). It made me try and reach for languages like Go and OCaml. Go is pretty easy but extremely verbosive. Also the imperative languages' tendency to always show you how you are doing things instead of the what you are doing (namely the way of the functional languages) is something that is poking my eyes out lately, for the better or worse. Additionally, people use Go's typing escape hatch (`interface{}`) way too often, to the point that the typing system feels completely optional. OCaml I like quite a bit, and its typing system is world-class. Lightning-fast compilation times are a huge productivity boost, one I didn't expect. But lack of even basic parallelism wrappers is pretty off-putting (I am not counting convenient pthreads-like DSL, they are just that and nothing else). All in all, I'd still go for Elixir for 90% of what I ever do due to its preemptive scheduler and very friendly parallelism and concurrency story. And higher-level tools -- like Broadway -- keep getting added. The BEAM languages are not a panacea. That's a fact. They seem to fit excellently in the web programming though.