[toast0]

Hot code updates can be challenging at times, but the decrease in deployment time and hassle for changes where it makes sense is definitely worth it, and using hot code loading for most updates doesn't prevent you from using a rolling restart for the updates where it's more appropriate.

If you're using distribution, there's a good chance you need to deal with messages from both updated and not updated nodes anyway, so handling different shapes from different versions is a skill you already need to have; it's just hot load exposes it at more layers than previously.

Since working in Erlang for several years, when I have to work in languages where hot loading is not easy or common, it's always frustrating. Throwing away connection attached state to update code is a hard choice that doesn't need to be.