Why I won't be switching to Disque
Disque's alpha release announcement generated some buzz on HackerNews. If you missed it, Disque is a distributed message broker from Salvatore Sanfilippo, the author of Redis.
In the Limitations section of the README, Salvatore has written:
Disque was designed a bit in astronaut mode, not triggered by an actual use case of mine, but more in response to what I was seeing people doing with Redis as a message queue and with other message queues.
This admission makes me wary of using Disque, even if it reaches a stable release, because of my own experience with similar projects I've created but never actually used. These projects are usually fun opportunities for learning, but when it comes to maintenance, my experience has shown me that they quickly become a burden. Usually the problem is masked by the fact that if I'm not using it usually nobody else is either, but in the rare case I do end up with users, then eventually those users are going to submit bug reports and feature requests.
For a problem as complex as a distribute message broker, I imagine that there are going to be a lot of bug reports, strange edge-cases, and feature requests to support exotic use-cases. I hope that, in addition to his work on Redis, Salvatore can find the time to support Disque!
The other reason I don't foresee using Disque is alluded to in the author's own comments. He observes that many people are using Redis as a message broker, and decides that maybe there is a need for a "Redis of messaging". I would say the opposite is true, and that instead of another message server, people want to use Redis!
Redis integrates very nicely into the stack for web-based projects. It can be used as a cache, for locking, as a primary data store, for write-heavy portions of the application, and yes, as a message broker.
Perhaps the reason people are using Redis as a message broker is because they don't want to use something else?
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