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

[Francesco Cesarini]

It is not a language I am worried people will stay away from, it is the 
middleware which for over a decade has been used to build distributed, 
massively concurrent soft real time systems with many 9s availability 
(Some of which, but not all, happen to be telecom applications) some 
people stay clear of until pointed in the right direction. Keeping the 
OTP acronym is a must, but giving it something more meaningful will help 
(And it will stop bugging me :-)).

Francesco


igwan wrote:
> 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
>>
>>   
>>     
>
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