I am not going to engage you on the details that you got wrong (Akka not covering 100% of OTP's guarantees is one example) but I'll just point out something else on a higher, more pragmatic level.
Of all 7-8 programming languages I worked actively with for my almost 20 years of career, only Elixir apps had predictable and stable latency even under load. So you know, at one point I stopped caring how does the BEAM do it or why aren't the other languages/runtimes doing it. I just started going to the technology that gives me this.
Is Go faster? Feck, absolutely yes! But its 95 percentile latency is spiking through the roof under load while a Phoenix/Ecto raises its median latency by no more than 20-30% (worst I've seen is +300% when from median latency 15ms the app went to 60ms and that's only in the 99th percentile of requests) even when the hardware is close to toppling over.
I feel that the raw muscle power of languages is vastly over-represented. I'd love to have a Rust with OTP's guarantees because at some places it's literally 1000x faster than Elixir, absolutely. But in a world where we have to choose raw power versus predictable performance (even if that performance is lower than what we can get in other languages) then I'll choose the latter any day.
And I am not alone in this. Many teams are choosing Elixir for exactly this reason.
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One thing I'll agree with is that other languages have taken notice and are working hard to catch up with the OTP. I'd welcome them in the club once they are there because I hate language wars and I gauge technologies based on their merit. But they are still not there, sadly.
i'm not trying to convince you (or anyone, really) to stop using elixir. i am however encouraging you to engage deeper with the beam vm and it's actual properties and compare that honestly to what else is out there. what is it exactly about the beam vm and elixir that lets it achieve these latencies and why is this not achievable in other languages? simply saying the beam vm is better than other implementations isn't an answer to that question
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE doing that but my work time and employer priorities doesn't allow it yet (and might never). And I am starting to get really sick of extending my work time to my free time as well.
Of all 7-8 programming languages I worked actively with for my almost 20 years of career, only Elixir apps had predictable and stable latency even under load. So you know, at one point I stopped caring how does the BEAM do it or why aren't the other languages/runtimes doing it. I just started going to the technology that gives me this.
Is Go faster? Feck, absolutely yes! But its 95 percentile latency is spiking through the roof under load while a Phoenix/Ecto raises its median latency by no more than 20-30% (worst I've seen is +300% when from median latency 15ms the app went to 60ms and that's only in the 99th percentile of requests) even when the hardware is close to toppling over.
I feel that the raw muscle power of languages is vastly over-represented. I'd love to have a Rust with OTP's guarantees because at some places it's literally 1000x faster than Elixir, absolutely. But in a world where we have to choose raw power versus predictable performance (even if that performance is lower than what we can get in other languages) then I'll choose the latter any day.
And I am not alone in this. Many teams are choosing Elixir for exactly this reason.
---
One thing I'll agree with is that other languages have taken notice and are working hard to catch up with the OTP. I'd welcome them in the club once they are there because I hate language wars and I gauge technologies based on their merit. But they are still not there, sadly.