As a lover of Erlang, I don't see why this pattern wouldn't be useful in Erlang. (Though, to some degree it's already there, as (IIRC) a node unresponsive to h

As a lover of Erlang, I don't see why this pattern wouldn't be useful in Erlang. (Though, to some degree it's already there, as (IIRC) a node unresponsive to heartbeats will eventually be brought down, and messages will fail to send immediately.) It's perfectly possible for gen_servers to get wedged and exhibit exactly this behavior…