Erlang vs Go: What are the differences?

Introduction

Erlang and Go are both programming languages that are designed to handle concurrent and distributed systems. While they have some similarities, there are key differences between the two.

1. Concurrency Model: Erlang is based on the Actor model, where each process is isolated and communicates through message passing. Go, on the other hand, uses goroutines and channels for concurrency, allowing lightweight threading and synchronous communication.

2. Error Handling: In Erlang, errors are treated as messages, and processes can monitor and link to each other to handle failures. Go, on the other hand, uses error values to handle errors, providing a more traditional approach.

3. Garbage Collection: Erlang uses a generational garbage collector, which is optimized for a large number of lightweight processes. Go uses a concurrent garbage collector, which is optimized for low latency and scalability.

4. Type System: Erlang is dynamically typed, allowing for flexibility but potentially introducing runtime errors. Go has a static type system, providing better compile-time error checking and performance optimizations.

5. Concurrency Patterns: Erlang has built-in support for OTP (Open Telecom Platform), which provides a set of design patterns for building distributed and fault-tolerant systems. Go, on the other hand, encourages the use of channels and goroutines to achieve concurrency, providing a simpler and more intuitive approach.

6. Tooling and Ecosystem: Erlang has a mature ecosystem and tooling, including tools for distributed systems, fault tolerance, and hot code swapping. Go also has a growing ecosystem with strong support for networking and web development, as well as a powerful standard library.

In Summary, Erlang and Go have different concurrency models, error handling approaches, garbage collectors, type systems, and tooling.