For me, the lure of Elixir is Actors.
When I first learned of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) my reading quickly lead me to Smalltalk and then to Simula.
At the time, I was professionally buried in large assembly language and C projects (and, so help me, Forth). Reading about Smalltalk and Simula formed my understanding of OOP. In my mind, a program could be built of simple little objects all chatting with each other. Each of these little objects ran independently and asynchronously.
Seymour Papert described this model as a “little person.” Two other terms I’ve seen are homunculus and kobito (Japanese for child).
Add to my book learning the release of BeOS in 1995. BeOS was designed from the ground up to provide multitasking and multiprocessing. In my mind, these two concepts were a match.
Imagine my surprise when I attended OOPSLA 2022 in Seattle Washington and found that hardly any of the talks and workshops had anything to do with the Actor model.
Instead, the topics were:
- Data storage
- Multi-platform objects
- Aspect Oriented Software
- Agile/Extreme Programming
- C#, Java, and comparisons
- CORBA, etc.
There was one workshop on Agent-oriented methodologies which was Actor-like. The workshop summary stated, “Following the success of object technology, the next advance is likely to be the introduction…agent technology for business applications.” (Interestingly, there were several sessions, including a two-day panel session, discussing how OOP had failed.)
Next advance? I thought it was already here.
Both I and a co-worker left OOPSLA disheartened. This was not why we had come.
Eventually, I started using ObjectPascal/Delphi and eventually Python OOP, C++, C#, etc., which left me wanting something better.
Elixir on BEAM is the mature Actor model for which I’ve been looking and it has Agents, which are Actors with memory.
All notes and comments are my own opinion. Follow me at @rgacote@genserver.social