8 ms·

Why not use Go? They have one of the best networking stacks among language standard libraries, excellent support for low latency soft real-time concurrent opera

by melony 3y ago

Why not use Go? They have one of the best networking stacks among language standard libraries, excellent support for low latency soft real-time concurrent operations, and single binary deployment is trivial.

cheeseblubber 3y ago
We were more familiar with Elixir since our last product was another real-time chat app built in Elixir/Phoenix.
fndex 3y ago
IMHO, Elixir has much more powerful networking capabilities than Go. And as for deployment, https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.12/Mix.Tasks.Release.html https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.12/Mix.Tasks.Release.html Not to mention how good Phoenix and Ecto are. I would never think about using Go if Elixir is a suitable option.
throwawaymaths 3y ago
Elixir has releases, so deployment is not really that hard whether or not you use containers. And the beam networking stack is quite good, which is unsurprising given it's been in slowly evolving use for 30 years now. In go you just don't get stuff like "trivially cleaning up associated resources with zero lines of code when your socket gets early terminated by the client or a backhoe cuts the network in to the data center"
jolux 3y ago
For me personally (not OP): I find Elixir more ergonomic, the networking stuff is very solid, soft realtime is the whole reason it exists, and I don't need single binary deployment because everything is going to be running in a container in AWS anyway. Elixir also has Releases, which let you deploy a self-contained application more easily. But I think Go might let you cross-compile out of the box, which you can't do with Releases out of the box as far as I know.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Cross compilation is possible in elixir with burrito.
  - jolux 3y ago
    I've never tried it but I think I've heard of it. Regardless, it's a third-party tool, so not at the same level of support as Go.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      Technically ecto, phoenix, plug, cowboy/bandit and Jason are third party tools too.
      - jolux 3y ago
        Yes, I'm aware. I've been programming in Elixir since 2014. I didn't intend to imply that being third-party means these are bad tools, they're not. They're great. But Go people often harp about how much stuff is in the standard library, so it felt relevant to mention.
        throwawaymaths 3y ago
        :) just thought it was a good idea to bring it up to make clear some major differences between the two communities
ianbutler 3y ago
Not OP. Very personal opinion: Go is an ugly language and I don't enjoy working in it for that reason alone. Outside of that, I also don't like the language design for a lot of its features. Though, admittedly, the goroutines part is not one of those choices I dislike. But the error handling pattern, generics and a few other things are super meh to me. And everything Go does with networking and concurrency, Elixir does better. Elixir just doesn't have the backing of a big name like Google so it doesn't have the same popularity.
- cdelsolar 3y ago
  Go is not dynamically typed. People keep putting dynamically typed languages into production. GG
  - ianbutler 3y ago
    I don't disagree on this point if Elixir were statically typed it would be great, relying on dialyzer for typing is meh at best.
reeaper 3y ago
Sometimes I want partial application and other functional paradigms... to reduce LOC by 90%
- adregan 3y ago
  I’m currently in the process of picking up elixir. When you say partial application, are you referring to the use of the capture operator `&`?
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Not your parent commenter but likely they at least partially meant that, yes. Though that alone can't reduce LoC by 90%. Elixir is just incredibly terse and no-bullshit language in general. All the shorter code idioms together make for a readable and to-the-point code.
  - reeaper 3y ago
    Bad explanation from a noob (me), but basically yes. Functions just always fit together and I don't need ugly sprawling interfaces or pointless declarations of nearly identical functions. In Elixir when I want to pass a function with 3 arguments into an interface that expects 4, I can do something inline with no extra boilerplate like func(&1, &2, &3, <a default 4th value to be used in each invocation>)
cultofmetatron 3y ago
go is great at a lot of things but if you want a multi clustered websocket solution, elixir is the absolute best in this category. go has go threads. elixir has the actors, futures, message passing, immutable data structures and the OTP platform. OTP is killer and gives you genservers with pubsub and the ability to have thousands of tiny stateful processors PER machine. Its all battle tested too. comparing go to elixir in this particular case is like comparing a piper cub to a jet liner source: 5 years of experience building an elixir startup with realtime sync between devices over websockets as a killer feature.
- foldr 3y ago
  > the ability to have thousands of tiny stateful processors PER machine Go has this too. It also has message passing (via channels). That's not to deny that Elixir/Erlang have a more developed story for IPC, process supervision and clustering.
whalesalad 3y ago
golang is pretty rudimentary versus the BEAM and OTP. It is hard to compare erlang/elixir to a traditional language. They benefit from the fact that you can run literally hundreds of thousands of processes on a single node all doing their own independent thing and managing their own state.
rco8786 3y ago
General distaste for writing `if err := nil { return err }` over and over and over
Dowwie 3y ago
The best language for the task at hand, when presented with time constraints, is the one that you already know well. OP said in the article that they authored Papercups [1]. Adopting Elixir for a websocket-push service makes a lot of sense, then. However, why don't you learn Elixir, some OTP, and then reconsider that question? You could be missing out. [1] https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups

by melony 3y ago

cheeseblubber 3y ago

We were more familiar with Elixir since our last product was another real-time chat app built in Elixir/Phoenix.

fndex 3y ago

IMHO, Elixir has much more powerful networking capabilities than Go. And as for deployment, https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.12/Mix.Tasks.Release.html https://hexdocs.pm/mix/1.12/Mix.Tasks.Release.html Not to mention how good Phoenix and Ecto are. I would never think about using Go if Elixir is a suitable option.

throwawaymaths 3y ago

Elixir has releases, so deployment is not really that hard whether or not you use containers. And the beam networking stack is quite good, which is unsurprising given it's been in slowly evolving use for 30 years now. In go you just don't get stuff like "trivially cleaning up associated resources with zero lines of code when your socket gets early terminated by the client or a backhoe cuts the network in to the data center"

jolux 3y ago

For me personally (not OP): I find Elixir more ergonomic, the networking stuff is very solid, soft realtime is the whole reason it exists, and I don't need single binary deployment because everything is going to be running in a container in AWS anyway. Elixir also has Releases, which let you deploy a self-contained application more easily. But I think Go might let you cross-compile out of the box, which you can't do with Releases out of the box as far as I know.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
Cross compilation is possible in elixir with burrito.
- jolux 3y ago
  I've never tried it but I think I've heard of it. Regardless, it's a third-party tool, so not at the same level of support as Go.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    Technically ecto, phoenix, plug, cowboy/bandit and Jason are third party tools too.
    - jolux 3y ago
      Yes, I'm aware. I've been programming in Elixir since 2014. I didn't intend to imply that being third-party means these are bad tools, they're not. They're great. But Go people often harp about how much stuff is in the standard library, so it felt relevant to mention.
      - throwawaymaths 3y ago
        :) just thought it was a good idea to bring it up to make clear some major differences between the two communities

ianbutler 3y ago

Not OP. Very personal opinion: Go is an ugly language and I don't enjoy working in it for that reason alone. Outside of that, I also don't like the language design for a lot of its features. Though, admittedly, the goroutines part is not one of those choices I dislike. But the error handling pattern, generics and a few other things are super meh to me. And everything Go does with networking and concurrency, Elixir does better. Elixir just doesn't have the backing of a big name like Google so it doesn't have the same popularity.

cdelsolar 3y ago
Go is not dynamically typed. People keep putting dynamically typed languages into production. GG
- ianbutler 3y ago
  I don't disagree on this point if Elixir were statically typed it would be great, relying on dialyzer for typing is meh at best.

reeaper 3y ago

Sometimes I want partial application and other functional paradigms... to reduce LOC by 90%

adregan 3y ago
I’m currently in the process of picking up elixir. When you say partial application, are you referring to the use of the capture operator `&`?
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Not your parent commenter but likely they at least partially meant that, yes. Though that alone can't reduce LoC by 90%. Elixir is just incredibly terse and no-bullshit language in general. All the shorter code idioms together make for a readable and to-the-point code.
- reeaper 3y ago
  Bad explanation from a noob (me), but basically yes. Functions just always fit together and I don't need ugly sprawling interfaces or pointless declarations of nearly identical functions. In Elixir when I want to pass a function with 3 arguments into an interface that expects 4, I can do something inline with no extra boilerplate like func(&1, &2, &3, <a default 4th value to be used in each invocation>)

cultofmetatron 3y ago

go is great at a lot of things but if you want a multi clustered websocket solution, elixir is the absolute best in this category. go has go threads. elixir has the actors, futures, message passing, immutable data structures and the OTP platform. OTP is killer and gives you genservers with pubsub and the ability to have thousands of tiny stateful processors PER machine. Its all battle tested too. comparing go to elixir in this particular case is like comparing a piper cub to a jet liner source: 5 years of experience building an elixir startup with realtime sync between devices over websockets as a killer feature.

foldr 3y ago
> the ability to have thousands of tiny stateful processors PER machine Go has this too. It also has message passing (via channels). That's not to deny that Elixir/Erlang have a more developed story for IPC, process supervision and clustering.

whalesalad 3y ago

golang is pretty rudimentary versus the BEAM and OTP. It is hard to compare erlang/elixir to a traditional language. They benefit from the fact that you can run literally hundreds of thousands of processes on a single node all doing their own independent thing and managing their own state.

rco8786 3y ago

General distaste for writing `if err := nil { return err }` over and over and over

Dowwie 3y ago

The best language for the task at hand, when presented with time constraints, is the one that you already know well. OP said in the article that they authored Papercups [1]. Adopting Elixir for a websocket-push service makes a lot of sense, then. However, why don't you learn Elixir, some OTP, and then reconsider that question? You could be missing out. [1] https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups https://github.com/papercups-io/papercups