问题
Basically, I would want to implement the following algorithms and analyze how the system built using these algorithms behave under different conditions.
- Gossip protocol
- Multiple paxos
- Consistent hashing
My interest here is in these algorithms. I basically am looking for a programming language that lets me write these algorithms quickly and deeply understand these algorithms.
Which language should I choose? Java, Scala, Erlang or anything else.
Currently, I know Java and C++.
回答1:
You could try implementing the protocols in Erlang.
- Process communication is very elegantly baked into the language and VM. Asynchronous message passing between two elrang process whether in the same VM or across VMs in semantically equivalent.
- Coding in the fault tolerance aspects / retry logic etc. of the algorithm is a breeze in erlang. Encapsulate everything into light weight processes and use special processes called supervisors to restart them.
- Serializing Erlang objects are really simple. You dont have to explicitly code your Serialization logic (such as implementing Serializable in Java).
- The Erlang distribution comes with a module called rpc which lets you invoke functions on remote VMs.
- The Elrang shell is a real god send. You can attach a shell to any remote VM. The shell lets you profile internal tables/data structures. The VM has also extremely sophisticated debugging and tracing features which is available to you via the shell.
- You can take a look at Riak, an open source NoSQL datastore written in Erlang modelled on Amazon's Dynamo. It implements both Consistent Hashing and the Gossip protocol.
回答2:
Oh yes ! you can start Programming Erlang by looking at these:
- Learn You some Erlang for great good
- Erlang Book Part 1
- Orielly's Erlang Programming Text Book (Francesco Cezarini and Simon Thompson)
- Joe Armstrong's Programming Erlang Text Book
Those links above will provide you with resources to all the Erlang programming you may need. I however suggest that you begin with Joe Armstrongs Programming Erlang Text Book, and as you read it, use the website: Learn you some erlang for great good (reference No. 1 above) as a reference for further understanding the data structures.
You can download Erlang from here: Erlang Download official Page.
You may need other links and resources (applications, libraries e.t.c.), most of which are indexed here: Erlang/OTP .com website.
Occasionally, you can always ask any question on Stackoverflow here, or you can search for tools and libraries from sourceforge.
回答3:
All of those protocols was already implemented in various Erlang projects. See Mnesia, Riak, CouchDB, Scalaris for more details (not all protocols in each project). I can't imagine more friendly environment for this kind of protocol experiments than Erlang.
回答4:
Have you decided about your message passing library? If you are interested in MPI, both java and C++ editions of it are available.
MPI performs lots of jobs for you, such as broadcasting a message and retrieving the replies, which is essential in your algorithms. As a result, I recommend you to find a proper version of MPI for C++ or Java and kick off the work.
Take a look at:
- mpiJava
- OpenMPI
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7140086/programming-language-to-choose-for-implementing-distributed-message-passing-algo