"Erlang" vs "zeromq+any language" for Embedded Applications

Question

I want to write actor style code for embedded processors and I am trying to decide between writing everything in Erlang vs writing everything in zeromq+any language. Using zeromq looks to be very powerful in the sense that I can use any programming language and make my development a lot easier(many available libs) but then I am not sure if there is any gotcha in this power? I understand that Erlang represent actor model much better especially with OTP concepts but then it seems easy to represent similar actor model with zeromq? Am I looking at this correctly?

1.What do I really lose not using Erlang for embedded applications (where distributed processing, a power point of Erlang, is NOT required) and just build things on top a generic messaging framework like zeromq?

2.Is Erlang offering more than a coordinated messaging framework for a non-distributed embedded application?

3.What specific capabilities of Erlang could took too long to implement with zeromq?

Answer 1

You're comparing apples and oranges. Part of the advantage of using Erlang is the language; if you're going to put it up against zmq + some other language, the other language in that comparison really matters. zmq + ARM assembly? Erlang brings all the wonderful advantages of not hand-coding ASM.

As for what else Erlang brings to the table, Embedded Erlang? Absolutely argues that Erlang has advantages in fault tolerance, hot code loading, rapid development by leveraging Erlang and OTP, easy interaction with C libraries, and simple debugging by live REPL and copy-paste of terms.

Some of those things, such as hot reload, on-device REPL, and established libraries, will definitely take some real hacking to reproduce from the ground up.

Answer 2

My point would be that you will have to work very hard to get the same kind of error handling in Zmq. Erlang has some really nice built-in error handling when things begins to go bad. There has been considerable time spent in Erlang optimizing that part and making it robust.

Zmq on the other hand, is probably faster in some combinations with some languages when you make simple benchmarks. There is less overhead, so it may process messages faster than what Erlang can provide.

But chances are that you will end up re-implementing large parts of Erlang in the language of your choice. And you will probably not do a job as good as 6-10 developers working on Erlang/OTP for 15 years.

On the other hand, Erlang is not a simple language to learn. There is way more to it than just learning how to program in a functional style. Especially the concurrency patterns and failure handling can take some time getting used to.

Answer 3

ZeroMQ =/= Erlang covers many differences. The claim there is that ZeroMQ only provides the messaging aspect, not the light-weight processes, process monitoring and other aspects.