[jlouis]

It isn't that hard. I have code which lets an OCaml program speak the Erlang distribution protocol. It can more or less stand-in for an Erlang node in the distribution layer. Writing the same for another language shouldn't be that hard: the protocol spoken is a simple prefix-protocol which can be parsed with LL(1) from the head plus an atom cache that is easy to maintain.

That said, good Erlang architectures definitely knows when you should fan out and use a common layer for distribution. At $work we have a Kafka cluster for some event handling simply because it is the right tool for the job, and because it makes it easier to interface other programs on top of it.

In my experience, the distribution features are best used as orchestration however. Your distribution layer is Erlang, and then you use other languages for "leaves" in the architecture. If the right library is present in e.g., Go, then by all means use it. Erlang easily speaks protobuf for instance.