[erlang-questions] The future of Erlang and BEAM

[Toby Thain]

On 12/02/12 10:17 PM, Deryk Barker wrote:
> As a mere amateur in the erlang world - I've used it a few times in my
> network programming course, probably bending the rules slightly to do so...
>
> But I've been programming for a while (first program FORTRAN on an IBM
> 7090 while still at school in 1968, second program in BASIC on a PDP-8
> while taking a course from Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge in 1970) and
> there's one aspect in all of this thread that has either not been
> mentioned or at least not made much of:
>
> the fact that erlang is a functional language.
>
> For years FP got a bad press, from the early days when the accusation
> was inefficiency ("LISP programmers know the value of everything and the
> cost of nothing") to the more recent criticisms that FP is very nice for
> academics but won't work in the *real* world.
>
> Erlang clearly blows these ideas out of the water and combines all of

All modern functional languages blow those preconceptions out of the 
water, for those who care to investigate.

--Toby

> the attributes everybody else has mentioned with those of developing in
> a functional language, with all of its associated benefits, especially
> of correctness.
>
> Besides, I think java is a terribly *ugly* language...:-)
>
> deryk