If we're talking memory usage, I don't think Node is necessarily a significant improvement over Ruby.
FWIW Elixir isn't necessarily lightweight. Memory will stay pretty flat (even during high workloads) but it's not lightweight.
Re:Why We Chose Rails to Build Gitlab
by jamescostian on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:43PM
(#18973397)
> Go comes nowhere near Ruby's readability for me
I am not fluent in either, and I'm not looking to change that, but I have read code in both. I feel the exact opposite way, and I'm not trying to start a war or anything, but I was wondering if you'd be open to talking about what things in Go you find hard to read (and what things in Ruby you find very easy to read). Or is this about libraries (are Go libraries providing lower-level APIs than Ruby ones?)? Or have you read/written a lot more code in Ruby than Go?
I agree - Go has issues, but they're not related to readability. Perhaps if you include "familiarity with the standard interfaces" (like using io.Reader) which is different to other languages, and took a while for me to get used to.
Is there a benefit learning Elixir over Erlang? I've working a little bit with Erlang, and I've wondered if its worth the jump.
Completely! With convention and macros, it's a whole new language.
Personally I'd love something typed, performant, and as readable as Ruby with a convention focused platform like Rails. Elixir + Phoenix is probably the closest I can find, but not a perfect fit. Maybe close enough though.