[erlang-questions] OT: Programming Language Selection as a Business Strategy

[Toby Thain]

On 14-Apr-07, at 7:31 PM, Perrog wrote:

> I'm new to this list, but I found this thread quite intresting...
>
> 2007/4/14, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED>:
>> It's probably more accurate to say that Erlang was developed in an  
>> Ericsson
>> laboratory in response to a perceived technology need. Bjarne  
>> Däcker's
>> thesis gives some good background on this:
>>
>> It also mentions that Erlang was banned in 1998, due to perceived  
>> business
>> needs.
>
> Does this mean Erlang should be avoided outside Ericsson's CS-lab as
> much as possible? :-)
>
> 2007/4/14, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED>:
>> I agree with Thomas that essays like "beating the averages" give an
>> interesting angle on this question. Large companies will also  
>> worry about
>> the cost of diversity and lock-in effects. This is most likely  
>> much less of
>> a problem in small companies.
>>
>> For large companies, aspects that will have measurable consequences
>> include: [E.N. Cost of training support staff... Difficulty... Re- 
>> training costs...
>> Difficulty...Difficulty... expensive redesign.
>>
>> ... wouldn't you want to try to eliminate the above challenges, if  
>> possible? —end of E.N.]
>
> Who said this only concern large companies...?
>
> In addition to all aspects above, mainstream languages usually comes
> with a large library (e.g. .Net/WinFX) and special designed tools
> (e.g. Visual Studio.)

(Or, for those whose world is bigger than Windows - Java/Eclipse/ 
NetBeans is another example.)

>
> If problems becomes more transparent if solved in Erlang, what are
> these type of problems really? What kind of Design Patterns make
> Erlang beat the average?

Massive concurrency is an obvious one; but, to reference earlier  
threads here, it's a putative 'silver bullet':
http://cogito.blogthing.com/2006/12/06/no-silver-bullet-and- 
functional-programming/

--Toby


>
> Regards,
> Roger
>
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