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Elixir vs Orleans: What are the differences?
The comparison between Elixir and Orleans sheds light on significant differences that can influence decision-making when selecting a technology stack. Elixir, known for its scalability and fault tolerance, and Orleans, a framework for building distributed systems, present unique characteristics that set them apart.
Concurrent vs Actor-Based Model: Elixir leverages the Erlang VM's actor model for concurrency, handling thousands of lightweight processes efficiently. In contrast, Orleans utilizes virtual actors to manage state and computation, simplifying distributed computing but potentially limiting scalability in certain scenarios.
Language Support: Elixir is a functional programming language closely tied to the Erlang ecosystem, enabling seamless integration with Erlang libraries and tools. Orleans, primarily used with .NET languages, offers a broader range of language support, appealing to organizations with existing Microsoft technology stacks.
Scalability Model: Elixir's concurrent processing architecture allows for horizontal scalability, making it well-suited for handling massive loads across multiple nodes. Orleans, on the other hand, relies on the shared-nothing model, distributing workloads across clusters but potentially facing challenges in scaling due to resource contention.
Resilience and Fault Tolerance: Elixir's supervision tree mechanism and built-in error handling strategies contribute to robust fault tolerance, ensuring system reliability in the face of failures. Orleans also offers fault tolerance features but may require additional configuration to achieve the same level of resilience as Elixir.
Community and Ecosystem: Elixir boasts a vibrant community and rich ecosystem, with countless libraries and frameworks available to streamline development. Orleans, backed by Microsoft Research, provides extensive documentation and support but might have a smaller community compared to Elixir.
In Summary, the key differences between Elixir and Orleans include their concurrency models, language support, scalability approaches, resilience mechanisms, and community ecosystems, all of which should be carefully considered when choosing the right technology for a project.
#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
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.
Pros of Elixir
- Concurrency172
- Functional161
- Erlang vm133
- Great documentation112
- Great tooling105
- Immutable data structures86
- Open source81
- Pattern-matching77
- Easy to get started62
- Actor library59
- Functional with a neat syntax32
- Ruby inspired29
- Erlang evolved25
- Homoiconic24
- Beauty of Ruby, Speed of Erlang/C22
- Fault Tolerant17
- Simple14
- High Performance13
- Pipe Operator11
- Good lang11
- Doc as first class citizen11
- Stinkin' fast, no memory leaks, easy on the eyes9
- Fun to write9
- Resilient to failure8
- OTP8
- GenServer takes the guesswork out of background work6
- Not Swift4
- Pattern matching4
- Idempotence4
- Fast, Concurrent with clean error messages4
- Easy to use3
- Dynamic Typing2
- Error isolation2
Pros of Orleans
- Akka.net alternative5
- Async/Await5
- Open source4
- Distributed ACID Transactions4
- Scalable4
- Distributed high-scale computing applications4
- Virtual Actor Model4
- Objects3
- Cross Platform3
- Distributed Locking3
- Fast2
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Cons of Elixir
- Fewer jobs for Elixir experts11
- Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages7
- Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)5
- Dynamic typing4
- Difficult to understand1
- Not a lot of learning books available1
Cons of Orleans
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What is Elixir?
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