[erlang-questions] "Erlang as a First Language" -- crazy? or just stupid?

[Dave Smith]

It seems to me that the system being proposed should strive to hide as much
of the imperative code as possible, regardless of the language used.   If
you can build a framework that would allow the end user to write essentially
"everything" as declarations, then the value of an IDE or source level
debugger are reduced.


The frameworks that I have worked on are in the business/financial domain,
and I find that constructing a framework that allows the business rules to
be written as predicates or patterns that can simply be "plugged-in" to the
framework is the best approach.


I would start by determining whether this approach is sufficient for your
needs.  If it is, I think the IDE/debugger debate become moot, and it will
drastically reduce the learning curve for your "non-programmer" users.  And
if this declarative approach does work for you, you'd be better selecting a
language that is more declarative (such as a functional language).  This can
be done in a an OO/imperative language such as Java, but this would
typically mean creating a class for every rule that implements some common
interface, which could mean a lot of boiler-plate.


If you are disposed to provide more deails about the projects requirements
and goals, I'd be happy to elaborate.

--DS

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