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  1. Stackups
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  5. Akka vs Elixir

Akka vs Elixir

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Akka
Akka
Stacks1.2K
Followers1.0K
Votes88
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Akka vs Elixir: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare the key differences between Akka and Elixir, two popular technologies used for building distributed and fault-tolerant systems.

  1. Concurrency Model: Akka is based on the Actor Model, where actors communicate asynchronously by sending messages to each other. It provides a high level of concurrency and scalability, making it suitable for building highly concurrent and distributed applications. On the other hand, Elixir uses lightweight processes called "Erlang processes" that communicate via message passing. These processes are isolated and share nothing, making it easy to build fault-tolerant systems.

  2. Programming Language: Akka is implemented in Scala, a statically-typed programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This allows developers to leverage the existing Java ecosystem and libraries. Elixir, on the other hand, is a dynamic, functional programming language built on top of the Erlang Virtual Machine (BEAM). It provides a syntax that is easy to read and understand, making it more accessible for developers who are new to functional programming.

  3. Fault Tolerance: Akka provides fault tolerance through supervisor hierarchies, where actors can monitor and supervise other actors. If an actor fails, its supervisor can decide how to handle the failure, such as restarting the actor, escalating the failure to a higher level, or simply stopping the actor. Elixir, being built on the BEAM, inherits the fault tolerance mechanisms of the Erlang ecosystem. It provides "let it crash" semantics, where processes can fail and be restarted in a controlled manner, ensuring system stability.

  4. Distributed Computing: Akka provides built-in support for building distributed systems, allowing actors to communicate across multiple nodes in a cluster. It provides location transparency, enabling actors to interact with remote actors as if they were local. Elixir also has built-in support for distributed computing, with the ability to spawn processes on different nodes and communicate using message passing. It leverages the scalability and fault-tolerance capabilities of the Erlang ecosystem for building distributed applications.

  5. Concurrency Primitives: Akka provides various concurrency primitives like futures, agents, and STM (Software Transactional Memory). These allow developers to handle concurrency at different levels of granularity depending on the requirements of their application. Elixir, being a functional programming language, relies on immutability and message passing as the main concurrency primitives. It encourages building systems that are composed of lightweight, isolated processes communicating via message passing.

  6. Pattern Matching: Elixir has strong support for pattern matching and a powerful macro system, allowing developers to write expressive and concise code. It makes it easy to handle different message patterns and route them to the appropriate processes. Akka, being based on the Actor Model, also supports message pattern matching, but it is not as powerful as Elixir's pattern matching capabilities.

In summary, Akka and Elixir have different concurrency models, programming languages, fault tolerance mechanisms, approaches to distributed computing, concurrency primitives, and pattern matching capabilities. These differences make them suitable for different use cases and development styles.

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Advice on Akka, Elixir

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Akka
Akka
Elixir
Elixir

Akka is a toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and resilient message-driven applications on the JVM.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
1.0K
Followers
3.3K
Votes
88
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 32
    Great concurrency model
  • 17
    Fast
  • 12
    Actor Library
  • 10
    Open source
  • 7
    Resilient
Cons
  • 3
    Mixing futures with Akka tell is difficult
  • 2
    Closing of futures
  • 2
    No type safety
  • 1
    Typed actors still not stable
  • 1
    Very difficult to refactor
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand

What are some alternatives to Akka, Elixir?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Swift

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

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