Add support for Elixir language to benchmark code

[webcoyote]

Hello Stephen,

This pull request includes support for Elixir, a Ruby-like language built on the Erlang BEAM virtual machine.

[note: updated image based on results from message-send optimization checked in during a later commit]

I hugely enjoyed your two-queues article. I discovered a lot of new knowledge by reading both the article and code. Until now I hadn't written any Python, Go, or Elixir, so this was a great learning project for all three languages.

The Elixir code is not complete ("--host" not implemented), and I don't support "channels" the same way your code does as actors and channels solve the problem a bit differently (and I'm still learning Elixir). But I thought you might be interested anyway.

It's also only tested on CentOS at present, and the helper scripts I added to install the pre-reqs may need tweaking on OSX.

Please don't feel any need to integrate these changes -- I expect it would make the article and code less useful for readers because they'll have to get Elixir/Erlang working too. I just wanted to share because the code was fun to write and might be valuable to others.

Oh, and finally, in some ways the Elixir code isn't a fair comparison because it isn't sending the messages over sockets, though that aspect of Erlang/BEAM is a reason that it's compelling to use for server development.

Best,

Pat
blog: Code of Honor

[stephenmcd]

Thanks Pat, this is super cool!

I probably won't merge it, since the repo is mostly just meant to represent the state of the blog post - but what I might do is add an update to both the README here and the blog post that links to this pull request at least, so people can have a look at it.

Thanks again - really cool stuff.

[webcoyote]

Great, thanks!

[stephenmcd]

Done here: ccb9588

[leoluk]

Maybe open a branch for such additions?

[josevalim]

This is great work and I am super excited with the results!
If you don't mind, I will add some comments regarding the Elixir code. :)

[josevalim]

You can also use the Enum module most of the cases you need to use Erlang's :lists:

[webcoyote]

Fixed!

[unbalancedparentheses]

+1