[sb8244]

I think one of the big points about being a true OO language is that the only way to talk to a process is via message passing. To me, the handle concept makes sense when you consider that it's handling a message in its mailbox.

[pmontra]

Yes, I see that but it's an unnecessary complication. All I want to do client side is calling Module.func() and GenServer side I wish I could only def func() instead of all those incantations.

Furthermore GenServers mix client side and server side code in the same module. It's very confusing even after years. It's one of the most unpleasant coding experience of the decade for me.

On the other side I'd steal Elixir's pattern matching implementation and add it to every language. It's everywhere in Elixir and IMHO it's its strongest point.

[mercer]

I think Dave Thomas has a bunch of comments on the elixir forums, and perhaps blog articles and videos too that express a similar problem with GenServers. might be interesting to look those up.

IIRC, one approach he encourages is to at the very least keep most of your logic in a separate module rather than have just a GenServer module that contains a bunch of regular functions and a bunch of handle_<x> functions (which is kind of idiomatic, or at least what I've always been taught).

That said, it's been a while since I followed this discussion so I'd be happy to be corrected.

EDIT: calling a 'public' function in a GenServer and having a handle_<x> function actually deal with it does seem to have an explicitness about it that I think I like. Learning about processes and how they work, I imagine I might've gotten confused if a seemingly normal functional call somehow magically handed things off to a different process.