I have no idea. Never had to do anything like it. But the mentioned Membrane project seems quite nice.
BartOtten
gregvaughn
Please define “microservices”. Do you mean them as a physical deployment model? If so, I think that is a pox on the software industry, pushing complexity into the network and interfaces and devops. If you mean it as a logical model, then, yes, each BEAM process is a microservice. It is isolated from its peers from crashes due to supervision trees. They communicate via memory-copied messages (however binary vs. json).
I am hugely in favor of logical microservices in an Elixir release, but I have issues with the more conventional meaning of the term.
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dimitarvp
That’s the wrong question to ask. Much better question is: “Why have microservices?”
The classic microservices are basically self-contained apps that still have to work together and each has a separate database. That’s a nightmare to maintain because what can be a simple function call is now a networked exchange of messages – needlessly complex (and 1000x times slower, too)! Even something like 2 separate microservices is going to be a huge drain of your time and energy.
Advice: do NOT fall for hyped up videos or “tutorials”, do NOT listen to some 22 year olds that barely have one production project behind them but are now excited because they themselves saw some hyped up video.
IT work (programming included) is about ruthlessly managing and reducing complexity. Do NOT introduce complexity in your paid work. Oh, and don’t mix languages unless you are forced to. Stick to one language.
If you are so hyped up about something, try it on your own time and on a hobby project. If you do that in your paid work I promise you that you’ll dearly regret it and will curse your life.
15
derek-zhou
I’ll echo what @gregvaughn and @dimitarvp have said. However, if it was decreed from above that you have to use a microservice approach, then the answer is yes, Elixir can do microservices, and monolithic, and everything in between.
I’ve never seen anyone voluntarily build a bunch of microservices in their personal hobby project. If I were a masochist, there are easier ways to torture myself.
12
csadewa
While others has spoken finely about why you really consider carefully about microservices approach (recently popular opinion has moved toward modular monolith, even among microservices proponent like Sam Newman), i want to focus if you decide to do microservices approach, how do you decide between elixir/python/golang?
Each of the language has it’s strong point and weak point, you would need to consider which of the language suit your problem domain + context the best.
IMO,
Elixir has it’s strong suit on correctness + robustness + general productivity, example problem domain it shine is communication (WhatsApp), blockchain/web3 tech, and rapid application development
GoLang has it’s strong suit on low level/binary manipulation + fast performance + tooling support, example problem domain it shine is CLI tools, binary level work (video/streaming encoding), gRPC based microservice.
Python has it’s strong suit in it’s large amount of library (especially data based library) + general productivity, example problem domain it shine is machine learning, and rapid application development
Context is things like company culture and developer general skill. for example some company is invest heavily on JVM, so usually when they introduce new language, it’s a language which are supported on JVM (like clojure/scala/kotlin).
3
Skysoft13
tnx so much for ur respond, what do you think about performance of membrane for video streaming and compare with python?
0
Skysoft13
tnx so much for ur answer, I have an example, you have a mobile app like tiktok, it has message service and video streaming service, I mean if you were create microservice about it, how you will decide, like write chat service by elixir, and video streaming service by python, or write all services by elixir?
0
Skysoft13
Skysoft13
pierrelegall
I recommend you this article by Martin Fowler about microservices.
In the case of Elixir, you can write a monolith app but in it will run “as microservices” on the host machine, which is one of it’s killer feature.
However, microservices could be interesting with Elixir if you want to slice your service into functional pieces (e.g. for a team organization purpose).
5