Suggested Example/ emacs questions

matthias@REDACTED matthias@REDACTED
Tue Oct 10 10:55:24 CEST 2000


Others wrote:
 > > > I've read the Erlang book and I basically understanding how to use the
 > > > language.  I've also read through most of the OTP docs, and I think I

 > > I agree, and it caused me a lot of pain also.


Luc Taesch <ltaesch@REDACTED> wrote:

 > same for me . havent grok everything yet. but thats a big steps between  a
 > language, and an architecture...,

This is a good point. Something I really like about Erlang is that
it's simple enough to be understood completely. Moving to OTP *and*
maintaining that "I know _exactly_ what's going on" feeling takes some
work.

For example, if you use a gen_server to write your first server,
you'll get working code which is well-behaved. But nobody does
that. Everyone writes a 'classic' receive-loop server first and thinks
"hey! that's really neat and simple"*. And then you can go away and use
gen_server because it makes a lot of fiddly details go away. But
you never forget that the 'classic' server is the beautiful one.

The same applies to (most of?) OTP. If you haven't solved the problem
yourself in plain Erlang, it's hard to appreciate what the OTP
solution is doing. But since we're all in a hurry and want to write
something that works NOW, an OTP quick start book would be nice. All
it takes is someone to write it...

Matthias

* Ok. Not everybody. Some people think "this is not complicated
  enough". Give them a DCOM developers kit. That'll make them happy.



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