[erlang-questions] The meaning of OTP...

[igwan]

Hi,

Well, I don't think people are going to stay away from a language 
because it has Telecom in its name. After all, the "Erlang" name in 
itself also carries the "Telecom" idea (if not the well-known unit used 
for telecom traffic, it's the Er = Ericsson = Telecom again in the mind 
of people), why not change the whole name then ?
To the contrary, I think people have an idea of robustness and 
reliability when they think of telecoms (the good old and always working 
PSTN phone lines as opposed to the big unreliable internet :) and in the 
mind of programmers you can add fault-tolerance and distribution they 
've been dreaming about all of their career :) Coming from the telecom 
industry my objectiveness may be flawed here :) , but IMAO, Erlang 
should not dismiss its telecom heritage, it's all but a turn-off. 
Explain people it's certainly not limitating the possible applications 
and show them what can be done ! I'm sure we're gonna have some killer 
apps as the best proofs soon. One doesn't have to explain the OTP 
acronym every where after all. It is a fantastic tool -and the only one 
for now- for structuring a complex application, it will never be too 
late to change the name when someone comes with a different/better 
framework.
Just my two (euro)-cents

igwan

KatolaZ a écrit :
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 06:59:24PM +0200, Lennart ?hman wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>> without even having read the thread :-) I think that one does not have to try
>> to reinvent such acronyms. It is not uncommon that a company or "thing" becomes
>> the acronym and what it really was a short for becomes irrelevant.
>>
>> CD (Compact Disc). It certainly still is a disc, but not very compact with todays
>> standards.
>> IBM (International Business Machines). I dont think anyone now days says that IBM
>> is mainly a hardware company.
>>
>>     
>
> The matter is that OTP is not going to become as popular as CDs and 
> IBM, ar at least it is not going to in the next ten years :-)
>
> I think that Francesco pointed out a serious issue. The risk of
> considering Erlang/OTP as a platform suitable only for
> "telecommunication" apps is over the corner, and can scare many
> programmers which could exploit Erlang capabilities in many other
> fields.
>
> The first time I told a friend that we were working on a robot driven
> by Erlang, he wispered "But Erlang is just for telecom! Why don't you
> use Lisp or Haskell. They would fit your task better...". And many
> many people think at Erlang that way, nowadays.
>
> HND
>
> Enzo
>
>