It's not too late. You can write your own wrapper around the :gen module, and if it's really good maybe people will adopt it.
I will say one thing:. If you are thinking of BEAM processes as actors/(Kay objects), you're missing the real meat of what makes BEAM processes special; what they really are are atomic units of failure domains. The other stuff is just a useful analogy that lets people grok the code structure by comparing it to something familiar. The trouble then is that people will take habits from OO and apply them to BEAM where blindly copying the organizational form will lead to performance regressions. If you're treating BEAM processes like python or Java or Ruby objects, you're going to bottleneck your system and turn it into a needlessly complex mess.
In short, not all function calls (cheap) should be message passing (expensive). Sorry Alan Kay.
We have very few GenServers in our system, with their supervisors to keep them alive and read back the initial status from the db in case of failure. They're not object in the Ruby or Python or Java way. They really are servers that take care of a specific action. The vast majority of code is function calls in the main process of the system. Still I'd like to be able to program the GenServer in a more understandable way.
Yes. Genserver is quite frankly a mess. I just want to discourage pushing that object metaphor. Have you seen the Dave Thomas ornery video where he calls a genserver a dog's breakfast?
I will say one thing:. If you are thinking of BEAM processes as actors/(Kay objects), you're missing the real meat of what makes BEAM processes special; what they really are are atomic units of failure domains. The other stuff is just a useful analogy that lets people grok the code structure by comparing it to something familiar. The trouble then is that people will take habits from OO and apply them to BEAM where blindly copying the organizational form will lead to performance regressions. If you're treating BEAM processes like python or Java or Ruby objects, you're going to bottleneck your system and turn it into a needlessly complex mess.
In short, not all function calls (cheap) should be message passing (expensive). Sorry Alan Kay.