yordisprieto
Elixir/Erlang and the Cloud Native Ecosystem
Hey folks,
What are your thoughts about the usage of Elixir/Erlang in Cloud Native systems (whatever that means, let’s use cncf.io for now, I think you get what I am trying to say, I hope so)?
Golang (predominantly), Java, and C++ dominate the ecosystem of k8s, cloud-native, and all those fuss words of nowadays (or honestly most software development nowadays).
I only found one project from cncf.io written in Elixir, and it wasn’t that well-maintained compared to the other ones.
It seems that the combination of Go CLIs for everything, fast language, small binary, and gRPC for interoperability makes a strong case to choose such toolkit for most projects like the CNCF projects.
From my experience, Elixir projects are focused on specialized solutions than embracing interoperability and reusable components.
I would like to know your thoughts about the reason why Elixir is not become widely adopted in those areas or ecosystems.
Thoughts?
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gregvaughn
I want to yell BINGO! because my buzzword bingo card just got a full row. No, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say and I’m guessing at what “Cloud Native” implies.
Go, Java, C++ all share the status of being OO/imperative mutable languages. You’ve got a “Cloud Native” environment optimized for that type of language, yet you’re surprised why languages that do not fit that category do not fit in well? Do you also ask why Haskell, Ocaml, Prolog, Forth, etc. are not well represented in your environment? Interoperability and reuse all require some common denominator of assumptions to work smoothly - the lowest common denominator. They discriminate against languages whose strength is something they never considered.
The Erlang VM and programming model, which Elixir adopts, was first developed in the late 80’s, and is effectively a progenitor to “Cloud Native”. They did it 30 years ago. Each GenServer is a microservice. Instead of JSON, they speak in the shared vocabulary of Erlang terms. They can be distributed among multiple physical servers or live within a single server with no change to the programming model. Instead of coding in YAML (via k8s) to manage restart policies, you use Elixir/Erlang – the same language as your primary business logic.
Elixir/Erlang represents a “cloud” within a single OS-level process. To wrap a single GenServer as a “microservice” managed by others is a step backward, IMHO.
ityonemo
Well also don’t forget that Sun literally spent billions of dollars marketing Java, which overshadowed any technical advantage that erlang could have brought to the scene in the 90s. Google was originally a Java shop, and kubernetes, while written in go, is built on top of java technology (https://youtu.be/4VNDjwzzKPo), and even if it weren’t, cargo culting google is totally a thing in tech.
LostKobrakai
There was a similar discussion here on the forums, where I tldr’ed the likely reason:
Last Post!
shanesveller
In the most common implementations like AWS Lambda that are shared-nothing, where a single message/request means a single invocation, the implied concurrency for a given amount of message volume happens in another layer altogether, not in the function itself. That is what I meant originally. That said, some problem domains definitely still imply a certain amount of fan-out in the meaningful work, though, so that’s a point well-taken.