obscure erlang-related publication

[Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB)]

Matthias Lang wrote:
>
> Wading through it all, you get to this on page 8:
> 
>   | These [the results] are the results of the judgment of one
>   | or several persons for each language. In particular there
>   | were 2 persons to evaluate Erlang, 3 for C++, 2 for Haskell,
>   | 4 for VHDL, 2 for SDL and 2 for ProGram.
> 
> I.e. they asked between 4 and 15 people what they thought 
> about various aspects of one or more language and then put 
> the results in impressive-looking tables, assigned fancy 
> abbreviations and the odd greek letter before fudging around.
> 
> They conclude that you can't conclude anything from the exercise.

Actually, that's not what they write:

"We have not eliminated subjectivity and we
cannot suggest a final conclusion but we have analysed 
different strengths and weaknesses of the languages 
and we have established causal relations between 
assumptions and evaluation results due to a systematic 
evaluation method. [...] 

However, we have shown a way to make an evaluation 
transparent and subject to detailed analysis and 
discussion by making all the assumptions and 
priorities as explicit as possible."


That is, they propose a method of comparing languages
that is at least somewhat more structured and transparent
than the usual hand-waving approach.

For one thing, this method allows you to wade a bit 
deeper, look into their tables and evaluation criteria
and highlight the parts where you disagree, or you 
think that they could manage to be less subjective. (:

BR,
Ulf W