I have this weird idea. I want to use elixir as a messaging service between python functions across a network.

Luckily, I found this post which explains how to use erlport to call python functions from elixir.

One use case for this sort of thing is as a worker-scheduler type system. But more generally it seems like a cool way to implement an actor system for python - just use an actor language.

My question to you guys is: what’s wrong with this idea? Is it doable? is it doable but difficult?

Keep in mind I’ve never really used erlang or elixir, but I love ideas behind the language. So what might I be missing?

Just so we’re on the same page let me give you a concrete example of how a framework like this could be used:

Say you have a network with 5 computers. 4 powerful machines we’ll call the ‘cluster’ and 1 laptop, we’ll call the ‘scheduler.’

You could start up a genserver (or something, I barely know what that is) so that there are workers on the clusters waiting to pull tasks from some elixir process on the scheduler. The idea is that the users (who only knows python, because lets say they are datascientists) would send a list of python functions to the scheduler using erlpoint, then the workers would pull those functions and execute the python call using erlport until all the tasks were depleted.

Of course, this is not the only use case, but its a simple, functional one.

What do you think?