[erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax

[Joe Armstrong]

for(Max,Max,F) ->  F(Max);
for(I,N,F) -> F(I),for(I+1,Max,F).

for(1,10, fun(I) -> io:format("...." end)

The code is *shorter than the documentation"

writing the code is quicker than finding the documentation and reading it - this
is true in most programming languages which is why programmers write
code.

This happens all the time I wanted hex2int after 20 seconds in google I gave up
and wrote it myself - this is also true for javascript C, ... as Wirth once said
It is better to know one langauge very well that to know many languages
incompletely..

Hint: read books and type in the examples. for/3 is in my book :-)
don't rely on the web for information - (example Douglas Crockford's
Good Parts of JavaScript - I learnt more in half an hour reading this
than dozens of
hours reading appallingly bad articles on the web)


/Joe Armstrong


On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Zvi <exta7@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>
>
> Kevin Scaldeferri wrote:
>>
>> If you want to have only one way of doing anything, perhaps you should
>> try Python.  I hear that's one of their design principles.
>>
>
> Kevin,
> I playing a devil advocate here (actualy some company paid me to be a
> devil's advocate :)
> I can adopt to any syntax and semantics. I already use Erlang and love it. I
> just think of it as a low-level language, kinda parallel and distributed
> COBOL :) There are some simple things that hard to do in Erlang. That's the
> reason, why project like Disco uses combination of Erlang+Python and Fuzed -
> Erlang+Ruby.
>
>
> Kevin Scaldeferri wrote:
>>
>> Anyway, the point is, if times() is something you do a lot, just write
>> it and get on with your life.  If it matters to you a lot, make an
>> argument for why it's generally important and submit a patch to the
>> standard libraries.
>>
> Obviously you didn't read the list of things hard in Erlang, simple in other
> langs. Repeat N times, is just a simplest example. In Jim Larson's
>
> Times, just a case of "for" loop.
> I working on generic collections library for Erlang, where will be ranges.
> Someting like:
>
> R = gc_range:new(1,10).
> gc:foreach(fun(_)->io:format("hi~n") end, R).
>
> Zvi
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/The-Beauty-of-Erlang-Syntax-tp22179816p22233815.html
> Sent from the Erlang Questions mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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