[erlang-questions] erlang for programming a text editor

[Toby Thain]

On 1-Nov-09, at 1:31 AM, Ted Henry wrote:

> With 100 core chips probably coming to desktop computers in the  
> near future,
> I wonder about writing a multiprocess vi-like or emacs-like text  
> editor
> (probably more emacs-like in implementation.) Sometimes single  
> threaded
> editors really bog down when searching multiple files,

This would seem to be I/O bound.

> syntax highlighting
> multiple files.

If you can't get syntax highlighting working fast enough on today's  
single core, your problems aren't going to be solved by language choice.

--Toby

> I'm not that knowledgeable in the Erlang world. It seems
> like Erlang's fault tolerance and ability to upgrade code without  
> restarting
> would not be big advantages for a text editor. Also a text editor  
> isn't
> usually distributed across multiple physical machines. I think the  
> main
> advantage would be Erlang's processes for concurrency. Would Erlang  
> offer a
> good advantage over a programming language with software transactional
> memory (e.g. Haskell, Clojure)? Would *you* use Erlang to program a  
> text
> editor or desktop application?
>
> Very interested to read your thoughts.
>
> Ted