[skyde]

If you need a request/response model (ex: query some data) and not simply queue an operation to execute later without waiting for it. I agree (worker/queue) are the wrong solution. But you should use a multi-language RPC framework like GRPC instead of building a distributed monolith.

With kubernetes you have an endpoint per service that route and load balance to the correct machine.

It seem to me you already got all the benefits from using actor but with less lock-in to a language.

[quaunaut]

That's even more work? Most developers already have redis/Postgres running, the issue there is the added complexity in complex operations.

Not to mention, microservices are not always the answer. And even if they were, they're still an insane amount of more work than literally changing what functions you call.

I'm not saying you should never use an RPC, but I've significantly reduced the times I'd want to use one. The only reason I even advocate for one now, is because I prefer to empower developers to use whatever language makes them happy, even if I personally greatly prefer Elixir.

[elcritch]

Also, building Elixir apps aren’t really the same as traditional monoliths.

It’s really not a distributed monolith as each node can deploy with different code. More importantly actors and supervision trees really help keep projects organized. It’s easy to use PubSub mechanisms or just named actors to communicate between services.

As an example I recently took a project that ran on a single IoT device and moved a chunk of it that managed a piece of hardware to another IoT device connected by Ethernet. It only took moving a handful of files and renaming a few modules. It took longer to figure out why multicast wasn’t working than to refactor the app. There are some limitations with type specs not working as well as I’d like with PubSub style messages (most type checking is done via api functions, not on individual messages).

[skyde]

Calling a remote function is exactly the same as calling a service in both case you are doing an RPC. While doing a Rest service is more work, using something like GRPC or java RMI is not and also support pub-sub mechanism and give you have a clear interface that define which functions can be called remotely which make understanding the cost of the function call and the security implications a lot easier.

[StreamBright]

> Most developers already have redis/Postgres running

You are joking right? You mean web developers?

[quaunaut]

Yes, web developers. Elixir is primarily a network systems language, and generally, the Ruby, Javascript, Python, etc communities use Postgres/Redis. Obviously it isn't universal, but there are obvious analogies(MySQL, etc).