Language Bindings for Erlang Again

[Michel Urvoy]

2006/6/3, Yariv Sadan <yarivvv@REDACTED>:
>
> I know of a site: http://yaws.hyber.org/ :)
>
> Seriously, though, I have wondered about the same question. If Erlang
> is so well suited for distributed applications (which are most
> non-trivial web applications), why is it not more popular? My theory
> is that the barrier to entry is too high. If you're a PHP programmer,
> there just isn't an easy way for you to hit the ground running if you
> want to create a web app in Erlang. You have to invest quite a lot of
> time into learning Erlang, OTP, Mnesia and Yaws, and all together this
> is quite intimidating.
>

OK, this is the point. There are a lot of tools but it is difficult to
know what is up to date.
For example, I had a look to Eddie that seems great, but it's not
updated since 2000. This is a little disappointing.

> I think Erlang would get much more popular if it had a framework
> similar to Ruby on Rails. Before Ruby on Rails, relatively few
> programmers have used Ruby, but the success of Ruby on Rails  has made
> the Ruby language quite popular. I think the same can happen with
> Erlang if Erlang had such a framework.
>

An Erlang on Rails sounds great, but it's a really huge work. It could
be lighter to provide an internet library with usefully functions like
:
- users and password management,
- Paypal (or others) secure management,
- (x)html files management,
- news management,
- page edition,
- language management etc…

> As a first step towards such a framework, I thought about writing a
> script that would take a .hrl file, parse its record definitions
> (representing database objects), and then generate all the code
> required to set up a simple web app using Mnesia and Yaws. This would
> help newcomers overcome the initial barrier to entry for Erlang web
> development.
>

Not bat, it's possible to mix the both approach.

> That's my 2c :)
>
> Yariv
>