[erlang-questions] effect of destructive updates on GC implementation

[Dave Smith]

2008/1/29 Hynek Vychodil <vychodil.hynek@REDACTED>:
> +1
> robustness, reliability, programmer productivity - It is why I like Erlang
> without destructive updates. Performance is on second place.

+1 as well on no destructive updates. I'm just a newbie (relative to
others on the forum) when it comes to building large systems with
Erlang, but I've written enough production code to be pleased with the
stability that comes from not inadvertently updating something on one
process that was generated elsewhere.

In my humble (and perhaps naive) opinion, what would changing this
foundational property of Erlang buy us? Are there real world problems
where Erlang is too slow AND this is the only way to fix it?

I'm with Ulf -- the best performance enhancements are those that make
a preferred (or desired) way of working faster -- the new bit syntax
has been amazing in that regard. I've yet to encounter a programming
problem in Erlang where I _wanted_ to edit a value in place.

Put another way -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it...

D.