Get Advice Icon

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Elixir

3.4K
3.3K
+ 1
1.3K
JRuby

85
89
+ 1
32
Add tool

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.

Decisions about Elixir and JRuby

#rust #elixir 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

See more
Timm Stelzer
VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH · | 18 upvotes · 657.5K views

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.

See more
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn More
Pros of Elixir
Pros of JRuby
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 162
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
  • 87
    Immutable data structures
  • 81
    Open source
  • 77
    Pattern-matching
  • 62
    Easy to get started
  • 59
    Actor library
  • 32
    Functional with a neat syntax
  • 29
    Ruby inspired
  • 25
    Erlang evolved
  • 24
    Homoiconic
  • 22
    Beauty of Ruby, Speed of Erlang/C
  • 17
    Fault Tolerant
  • 14
    Simple
  • 13
    High Performance
  • 11
    Doc as first class citizen
  • 11
    Good lang
  • 11
    Pipe Operator
  • 9
    Stinkin' fast, no memory leaks, easy on the eyes
  • 9
    Fun to write
  • 8
    OTP
  • 8
    Resilient to failure
  • 6
    GenServer takes the guesswork out of background work
  • 4
    Pattern matching
  • 4
    Not Swift
  • 4
    Idempotence
  • 4
    Fast, Concurrent with clean error messages
  • 3
    Easy to use
  • 2
    Dynamic Typing
  • 2
    Error isolation
  • 8
    Java
  • 7
    Faster than Ruby
  • 3
    Threads
  • 3
    JVM
  • 2
    Open source
  • 2
    Supports native Ruby gems out the box
  • 2
    Garbage collection built-in
  • 2
    Built-in Testing
  • 2
    Deploy as executable jay
  • 1
    Great community

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Elixir
Cons of JRuby
  • 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
  • 1
    Not a lot of learning books available
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    3.7K
    9.6K
    1.3K
    2.1K
    2.8K

    What is Elixir?

    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.

    What is JRuby?

    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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Elixir?
    What companies use JRuby?
    Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
    Learn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Elixir?
    What tools integrate with JRuby?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    Oct 24 2019 at 7:43PM

    AppSignal

    JavaScriptNode.jsJava+8
    5
    1013
    What are some alternatives to Elixir and JRuby?
    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.
    Erlang
    Some of Erlang's uses are in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance. OTP is set of Erlang libraries and design principles providing middle-ware to develop these systems.
    Clojure
    Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.
    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.
    Rust
    Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.
    See all alternatives