A Joeish Erlang distribution (long)

[Joakim G.]

Hi,
Both Ulf and Mickaël (Hi!) goes directly for the nitty gritty details. I
don't mind this but to me the switch of paradigm towards COPL *and*
simplicity is in itself more important than if we choose this or that
CPAN or RPM packaging support.

I agree: A package mechanism would be great when building a new
distribution. Not required though.

Erlang needs to come out of the closet. Erlang is to good to niche itself
as a Telecom Functional Language. Talk about a small niche. Erlang needs
a larger user base if it is to survive.

IMO a COPL distribution could achieve this.

 > An alternative distribution would have these characteristics:
 >
 > 1 Internet (server) programming focus
 > 2 Concurrency Oriented Programming Language
 > 3 Simplicity (due to 4)
 > 4 Capable of handling small/middle/largish software projects
 > 5 Aggressive towards addition/removal of language constructs/libraries
 >   (thus 6) [*].
 > 6 Less focus on backwards compatibility.
 >
 > * = For example: mnemosyne is out, yaws replaces inets. Joe's !!
 >    addition is in (http://www.sics.se/~joe/nerl.html) etc.

I know. This would require a substantial amount of work. Especially the
documentation. A TODO list (in some detail) of stuff needed in order to
achieve it would be a good start. Then we just need volunteers.

/Jocke