[erlang-questions] "Erlang, the next Java"

[Zac Brown]

Well any server-client model could be thought of as object oriented, if
you're considering threading etc. Since you're spawning multiple
processes that do the same thing, its the same idea as having multiple
objects doing the same thing though I think creating a group of objects
in Java with the same kind of concurrency would be somewhat more
difficult. Either way I understand your reasoning and I would say that
concurrent programming in Erlang "resembles" object oriented programming
but isn't true object orientation in the Java/C++ sense.

My only other qualm with that article is (at least to me) the author
seemed to belittle the functional aspect of Erlang. I think thats
somewhat of a naive look at the language seeing as the functional aspect
is what helps make Erlang reliable. All the minimizing of most of the
side effects is an important trait in Erlang due to its functional
nature. I can see his point but I still think he counted that aspect of
the language a little too trivially.

Zac

Mazen Harake wrote:
> Although I might be put on the cross for this but I really enjoyed his
> way of reasoning about OO in Erlang. This is something I have frequently
> discussed with both co workers and others and the general opinion seems
> (note _seems_) to be that OO is a *bad* thing. However in this article I
> think we come across on something that is very important to note:
> "programming is modeling". The kind of programming I do (and I'm sure
> many with me in the commercial field) has to do more with design
> patterns and models more then math and theory (which sometimes can be
> nice as well :) ).
> 
> I have to admit that when thinking processes I sometimes think
> "objects", but not object in the sense of a Java object, but rather more
> like Ralph describes in his review (mystical view I guess). Thinking
> about processes as object I find it easier for example to think about
> their state, their data include how they fit in the pattern or model. OO
> and Concurrency can work together and I think that sooner or later we
> will start to drift towards a happy marriage. Reading this article
> (http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/articles/erlang.html) I read: "The
> world IS concurrent. It IS parallel." And what does this world consist
> of? Well... objects...
> 
> My 2 cents :)
> 
> Thomas Lindgren wrote:
>> http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/ralph/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3364027251
>>
>> Ralph Johnson (gang of four) praises Erlang in a
>> longish review of Joe's book. Great stuff from a
>> veteran; here is the payoff:
>>
>> "Erlang is going to be a very important language. It
>> could be the next Java. Its main problem is that there
>> is no big company behind it. Instead, it is being
>> pushed as an open source project. Its main advantage
>> is that it is perfectly suited for the multi-core, web
>> services future. In fact, it is the ONLY mature,
>> rock-solid language that is suitable for writing
>> highly scalable systems to run on multicore machines.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> I do not believe that other languages can catch up
>> with Erlang anytime soon. It will be easy for them to
>> add language features to be like Erlang. It will take
>> a long time for them to build such a high-quality VM
>> and the mature libraries for concurrency and
>> reliability. So, Erlang is poised for success. If you
>> want to build a multicore application in the next few
>> years, you should look at Erlang."
>>
>> Best,
>> Thomas
>>
>>
>>
>>        
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