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by mononcqc 5526 days ago
Because what to do when the queue is full is absolutely application specific.

What happens if the message you can't add is a specific system message that allows the suspension of OTP processes for a code upgrade? Do you end up livelocked? How do you propagate back that you couldn't insert your element in the queue? Do you make message passing an operation that can fail? How would that work over the network when the message telling you something failed is lost over a netsplit? Is it a different kind of failure?

This has very deep design repercussions on the language. It's not impossible, but it wouldn't let Erlang be the same.