Erlang Open Internet Platform

[Mike Williams]

In article <402DD461F109D411977E0008C791C312039F5D95@REDACTED>,
 Sean.Hinde@REDACTED (Sean Hinde) writes:
|> I have seen many comments in articles and even on the mailing list which
|> take the position that Erlang/OTP is only of interest if you need to write
|> telephone switch software. I wonder if takeup would be wider if the product
|> were re-invented and renamed as an internet development platform?

I think there are two ways a programming language (and its runtime
environment) becomes popular.

1) It solves a number of useful problems in an easy and time saving way

2) It is hyped hugely by some powerful player.

Java, Ada, C++ (SUN, DoD, AT&T) are examples of way 2.

FORTRAN, C, Perl (Formula Translation, HW near programming, Much
better Scripting Language) are examples of way 1.

Getting Erlang more widely spread is a 1) task. Ericsson is a very
major player in the Telecoms marketplace, but not in the general
computing field. But I hope you all agree that Erlang makes
distributed, concurrent programming (so call Internet Programming)
much easier.

In this light, the "telecoms" background of Erlang works like a
life-jacket made of lead. However we see that the number of hits
on the Erlang.org site is steadily increasing. As more and more people
find uses for Erlang in many different field, the lead in the life-jacket
is becoming significantly less heavy.

/Mike