[erlang-questions] cost of integrating 3rd party SW

[Edwin Fine]

I just wish that linked-in drivers were easier to implement. Ports are not
always appropriate. Having done a few integrations using Ruby's equivalent
of the LID, Erlang's was a bit of a shock to the system when I wanted to add
a simple CRC-16 routine in C. I eventually got it done, but it was a
comparative pain in the a**.

Edwin Fine

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 8:55 AM, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED> wrote:

> Perhaps somewhat related to the "RPC is bad" thread,
> do any of you know of any reasonably systematic
> discussions about whether or not Erlang is good or
> bad at interfacing with 3rd party components?
>
> It's something that pops up every once in a while,
> e.g. in the Facebook chat server article: that combining
> Erlang with components written in other languages is
> hard.
>
> I know that sometimes, decisions have been made to
> rather write a component from scratch in Erlang, rather
> than interfacing with some COTS component, based on
> the assumption that it will be both cheaper and better
> to do this than to deal with the 3rd party component.
> This is always a hard sell, and usually meets with the
> exclamation: "aha! Erlang is bad at interfacing with other
> software."
>
> And of course, any programmer will always opt to write
> something from scratch rather than reuse something
> that someone else has written, right?  ;-)
>
> What I'm after is a more sober and objective account,
> based on real experience and (ideally) cost comparisons.
> I'm perfectly ok if the conclusion is that Erlang indeed
> does need to improve.
>
> Cost is of course not the only parameter. Performance,
> robustness, debugging and maintenance, impedance
> mismatch (and if so, what is the preferred solution?
> Keep Erlang or throw it out?)
>
> BR,
> Ulf W
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