Chicago Boss still relevant

[rlander]

Hey guys, just wanted to share a story.

Some time ago I inherited the code base for a realtime web app written in nodejs that was old, very unstable, and leaking memory left and right. As we decided to rewrite everything, I spent a month prototyping a few different solutions:

- python + pushpin + nginx 

- clojure + redis + nginx 

- go

- elixir + rethinkdb + postgres

It just bothered me that I had to use so many moving parts or use worse languages like go.

Then it hit me: Chicago Boss is the perfect framework for this kind of problem. To cut the story short, it only took me 1/3 of the time to write the prototype, it uses less moving parts (I ditched all external services like pushpin or nginx push module) and performs very well.

So, I confess I was bearish on Chicago Boss, pmods being deprecated, Evan leaving and all. But this little experiment made me realize that Chicago Boss still fills a niche that others don't. Elixir/phoenix is a nice stack, but I find Erlang much more elegant and succinct. 

So, is anybody else still using Chicago Boss? How can we make it relevant again?

BTW, thanks Dmitry for carrying the torch forward and, if there's anyone still listening, let's make some noise!

rlander

[Kai Janson]

Thank you!  I could not agree more.  It's a fantastic framework after all!!!

Sent from the trenches

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[can2nac]

i use CB

[Nicolas Michel]

i use it too

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[Tim McNamara]

CB does have a bit of a confidence problem. It is a great framework. It would be great if we could focus on community building a bit.

Tim McNamara

@timClicks

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[Dmitry Polyanovsky]

Hi
I use it. (surprising) Actually, I started to use CB for same reasons as you:  I was unhappy with PHP for some my requirements and Django, RoR and others could not solve them too. I discovered Erlang and CB to be perfect solution for my needs. Currently I have a half dozen websites running on CB. Most important part, architecture and ideas behind CB give me ability to write cool apps fast and without a pain.

The bad part, that we don't have strong community. CB is only framework and depends on huge number of libraries of different code quality and worst thing, different support level. For example, most drivers in boss_db not working for different reasons. Actually, i can be pretty sure mysql and postgres drivers are working right now, other just broken. Each time I have a bit more time, I merge PRs or write some myself, but it's pretty hard to do anything without other people being around to help or just exchange ideas or opinions.

It looks like I'm not only one here, so if anybody want to help and keep CB alive, I'm here to merge PRs, join discussions and make world better.

[rlander]

Cool! Lots of people still using it, then.

Yup, I agree with Tim, we should focus on community building. Maybe setup a Gitter/Slack channel?

Dmitry, I should've made it clearer in my original post: I was already a CB user (I used CB for a few projects between 2009 and 2013) but in my mind CB had become irrelevant with the emergence of new frameworks. I was obviously mistaken.

So, it appears that right now CB is in a no man's land: Elixir users will use Phoenix for their web app needs and Erlang users stay away because of pmods. Where does that leave us?

[Tim McNamara]

I would say that we should follow Evan's vision in 2 ways:

1) be loud about the fact that apps built with Boss will be extremely cheap to run and reliable, his goal was to change the economics of building applications so that we could decentralize the Internet

2) play up the mob boss/Chicago political corruption element in CB's documentation and imagery. It gives a sense of personality to the framework. (There are references to Chicago's mayor in the PDF tour, plus quite a few fun things, such as the old knuckleduster logo  (I make this point because it seems that a few people have missed this))

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[Jesse Gumm]

I definitely like playing up the mob-boss angle.

CB fits a nice little niche within Erlang as the framework that does
just about everything. Some folks don't like that, and others do, but
that's okay - it means CB is opinionated software.

CB may not be rails, but then again, Erlang isn't exactly Ruby,
either, so I wouldn't sweat the smaller community. Development is
continuous and Dmitry does a good job keeping things moving. the more
folks who use a framework in their day job, the better, since that
indirectly lends it commercial support.

-Jesse

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Jesse Gumm
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