Erlang for desktop applications?

[Michael McDaniel]

On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 07:07:41PM +0200, Christian S wrote:
> >Think that when I say desktop apps I refer to a whole bunch of typical
> >apps you can see in a desktop, not just one app I could have in mind
> >right now. Think of filemanagers, games, media players and that sort of
> >apps... And as I've just said to Richard A. O'Keefe, I don't know if
> >Erlang is also strong in those kind of developments (I don't know if any
> >of those apps need a lot of concurrency where Erlang could be superior
> >to C/C++/C#).
> 
> Don't make the mistake to think that concurrency in Erlang is just
> good for increasing computational throughput. Processes are also
> useful in a purely software engineering way: they provide isolation
> between independant tasks.
> 
> A modern GUI is typically very concurrent, the user expect to be able
> to jump between programs or views within programs (think tabbed
> browsing). Imagine if when firefox hit a site that exposed some bug in
> the renderer it would not all crash, just that tab, wouldnt it be
> nice?  Browsers whose GUI lock up while a domain name is being
> resolved feel quite ancient too, dont they?
> 
> As for media players, sure, erlang might not be the best choice to
> implement a video decoder (though computers are so scarily fast now i
> would not be surprised if erlang could achive full framerate).
> However, during playing I expect to be able to pick a new file to play
> without stopping the current one, and also interrupt myself from file
> browsing and adjust the volume then continue browsing for that cool
> Erlang video.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 Speaking of decoders, here (http://www.dadgum.com/james/performance.html)
 is the article that got me started using Erlang shortly after I read it.
 I was reading up on (of all things) performance and came across 'Erlang'.
 Further investigation got me hooked.

~Michael