erlang ground breaking?

[Eric Newhuis]

I don't think Erlang is "ground breaking" at all.

Ground breaking refers to a new beginning, sometimes the first baby 
step.  Erlang, however, is far from a baby step.  It has totally 
mastered the distributed application domain.  And in that sense it is 
not breaking new ground but dominating it.

Erlang is ground dominating.


On Apr 7, 2004, at 7:45 PM, Shawn Pearce wrote:

> Ulf Wiger <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>> I stumbled across a Wiki list of "ground breaking languages"
>>
>> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GroundBreakingLanguages
>>
>> Erlang is listed as the "interesting and useful" but not necessarily
>> ground breaking.
>>
>> If anyone feels differently, there's a discussion page where you can
>> voice your opinion.
>>
>> Personally, I can't make up my mind as to whether Erlang is truly
>> ground breaking, but am not going to lose any sleep over it.
>
> I think when I first started using Erlang I felt that it was
> ground breaking, but perhaps only because threading was so painful
> and expensive in every other language/environment I've ever had the
> misfortune of using.  When you add mnesia and OTP being present in
> the default install, Erlang/OTP is a pretty powerful platform...  but
> we all know that already.
>
> I think the big things that struck me were:
>
> 	- processes
> 	- ! and receive
> 	- atoms
> 	- multiple function clauses
>
> but now that I've looked at a whole host of other languages, I see
> where Erlang's roots are.  And understand why its only "interesting
> and useful" and not ground breaking.
>
> Lets all be happy Erlang wasn't ground breaking by bringing some
> horrible feature to the table like C++'s templates and their syntax.
> :-)
>
> (Of course, C++ wasn't the first generic programming language.  It
> just happened to become the world's most popular way to screw up
> generic programming for the masses.)
>
> -- 
> Shawn.
>
>   Old Japanese proverb:
>   	There are two kinds of fools -- those who never climb Mt. Fuji,
>   	and those who climb it twice.
>