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  5. Elixir vs JRuby

Elixir vs JRuby

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

JRuby
JRuby
Stacks82
Followers89
Votes32
GitHub Stars3.8K
Forks933
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Elixir vs JRuby: What are the differences?

Introduction

When considering programming languages for web development, Elixir and JRuby are two options that developers often contemplate. Both have their unique features and differences which make them suitable for different use cases.

  1. Concurrency Model: One of the key differences between Elixir and JRuby is the concurrency model they use. Elixir, being built on the Erlang virtual machine, leverages the Actor Model for concurrency, allowing processes to communicate through message passing. On the other hand, JRuby follows the traditional Java threading model, which may result in potential thread safety issues.

  2. Ease of Scalability: Elixir is known for its great scalability due to its lightweight processes and fault-tolerant nature. With Elixir's ability to handle millions of concurrent connections with ease, it is often preferred for projects requiring high scalability. In contrast, JRuby, being based on the JVM, may face challenges in scaling when dealing with a massive number of threads due to the limitations of the Java Virtual Machine.

  3. Tooling and Libraries: Elixir has a well-established and growing ecosystem of libraries and tools, with a focus on web development and real-time applications. The Phoenix framework, built using Elixir, is a popular choice for building web applications. On the other hand, JRuby provides access to a vast array of Java libraries and tools, making it suitable for integrating with existing Java applications and leveraging Java ecosystem.

  4. Performance: Elixir, being a functional programming language, is known for its performance and speed due to its immutable data structures and lightweight processes. This makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance. JRuby, being an implementation of Ruby on the JVM, may have slower performance compared to Elixir, especially in scenarios where high concurrency and processing speed are crucial.

  5. Language Syntax and Paradigm: Elixir, being a functional programming language, emphasizes immutability, pattern matching, and recursion as core principles. This makes code more predictable and easier to reason about. On the other hand, JRuby follows the object-oriented programming paradigm of Ruby, focusing on objects, classes, and inheritance. Developers with a background in functional programming may find Elixir's syntax and paradigm more suitable for certain types of projects.

In Summary, Elixir and JRuby differ in their concurrency model, scalability, tooling, performance, and language paradigm, making them suited for different types of web development projects.

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Advice on JRuby, Elixir

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Jakes
Jakes

Mar 21, 2021

Decided

#rust @{#elixir}|topic:null| So am creating a messenger with voice call capabilities app which the user signs up using phone number and so at first i wanted to use Actix so i learned Rust so i thought to myself because well its first i felt its a bit immature to use actix web even though some companies are using Rust but we cant really say the full potential of Rust in a full scale app for example in Discord both Elixir and Rust are used meaning there is equal need for them but for Elixir so many companies use it from Whatsapp, Wechat, etc and this means something for Rust is not ready to go full scale we cant assume all this possibilities when it come Rust. So i decided to go the Erlang way after alot of Thinking so Do you think i made the right decision?Am 19 year programmer so i assume am not experienced as you so your answer or comment would really valuable to me

284k views284k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

JRuby
JRuby
Elixir
Elixir

JRuby is the effort to recreate the Ruby (http://www.ruby-lang.org) interpreter in Java. The Java version is tightly integrated with Java to allow both to script any Java class and to embed the interpreter into any Java application. See the docs directory for more information.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.8K
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
933
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
82
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
89
Followers
3.3K
Votes
32
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 8
    Java
  • 7
    Faster than Ruby
  • 3
    JVM
  • 3
    Threads
  • 2
    Garbage collection built-in
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand

What are some alternatives to JRuby, Elixir?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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