Rather than try to address your specific questions as other answers have already done, I’ll try to explain in simple terms the basics behind behaviors, and let you answer your own questions based on understanding those basics. A behavior is basically a message handling framework, where by “framework” I mean the classical definition of a … Read more
Use timer:send_interval/2. E.g.: -behavior(gen_server). interval_milliseconds()-> 15000. init()-> timer:send_interval(interval_milliseconds(), interval), {ok, FascinatingStateData}. %% this clause will be called every 15 seconds handle_info(interval, StateData)-> State2 = do_some_work(StateData) {noreply, State2}.
Should I just start with a few gen_servers with a supervisor and incrementally build on that? You’re missing one key component in Erlang architectures here: applications! (That is, the concept of OTP applications, not software applications). Think of applications as components. A component in your system solves a particular problem, is responsible for a coherent … Read more
You shouldn’t stumble on anything you can do in one that you can’t in the other, since you can freely call Elixir code from Erlang and vice-versa. You can even easily mix Erlang and Elixir files in one project. In Elixir: :erlang_module.erlang_function(args) in Erlang: ‘Elixir.ElixirModule’:elixir_function(args)
erl -eval ‘erlang:display(erlang:system_info(otp_release)), halt().’ -noshell