[erlang-questions] Erlang is the best choice for building commercial application servers

Mon Mar 12 02:27:41 CET 2012

scala has the potential to successor java and also integrate all legacy
java applications. Though many of its features are copied from Erlang.
On Mar 11, 2012 5:01 PM, "Matthew Evans" <mattevans123@REDACTED> wrote:

>  Pretty much this. I've recently been introduced to Java, and
> unfortunately what most of the pointy-haired managers don't realize is
> there is a huge difference between Java the language (which isn't that
> bad), and Java the application environment (which is complex and terrible).
> Once you get Java+Spring+Hibernate+20 other frameworks and libraries you
> are left with a VERY hard to maintain and complex application. In the end
> it often only has a small amount of real Java - the rest is pages of
> impossible to maintain XML.
>
> See this blog:
> http://www.jillesvangurp.com/2009/10/07/server-side-development-sucks/
>
> The other problem is one of control. Even if the managers, and the rest of
> a development team don't know Java, it looks very familiar to C++ and the C
> family of languages. If you propose Erlang, they see that the language
> looks very different, and that scares people. Suddenly they are not in
> control anymore, feel less valuable to the organization; it makes them feel
> threatened.
>
> We as a community can help to remove many of the negative perceptions
> people have about Erlang. It's perceived to be slow, although in many cases
> that's caused by lousy code from newbies (JIT would be nice though ;-).
> It's also hard as a newbie to write good code since the concepts are very
> different. You can knock up a simple Erlang application quite quickly, but
> it might not perform that well. What you end up with are newbies producing
> poor code, getting frustrated and giving up. I've read many stories on
> Reddit and similar places of companies starting an Erlang project, getting
> bad results and throwing it out. It give a very bad impression on the
> language. More often than not someone will come along later, refactor the
> code, and get stellar performance - but by then it's too late.
>
> I think tidying up some modules, and getting the word out there on how to
> write proper Erlang apps would help a lot. Things like E2
> http://e2project.org/ are a good start along this path. Projects like
> rebar make app. packaging simpler. Basically we need
> more consistency across the board. Also having more languages running on
> BEAM could make the take-up easier (as well as Erjang on the JVM).
>
> Finally I would say this. As Torben mentioned, no one gets fired for
> choosing Java. More to the point, no one gets fired for choosing Oracle. I
> think Ericsson is doing a more than stellar job of maintaining Erlang. But
> is this also a problem? Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if Erlang
> was "owned" by Ericsson, Klarna, Basho, Trifork, Erlang Solutions,
> Springsource/VMware (RabbitMQ). Basically have it owned by a consortium of
> companies. Would that make managers more comfortable taking on Erlang?
>
> I could go on, but that's my 2 cents for now.
>
> Matt
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:04:33 +0100
> From: torben.lehoff@REDACTED
> To: shahrdad1@REDACTED
> CC: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] Erlang is the best choice for building
> commercial application servers
>
> Nobody has been fired for choosing Java.
>
> See Mike Williams slides from the London Erlang Factory 2011:
> http://www.erlang-factory.com/conference/London2011/speakers/MikeWilliams
>
> Digging a bit deeper it comes down to risk management and most big
> companies has a strong dislike for anything new and different since that
> reeks risk to them.
> Take a look at all the start-ups in the US that is using Erlang and asking
> for Erlangers. There Erlang has been chosen since it is the right fit for
> the problem at hand.
>
> For a big company with a lot of legacy Java code and people trained in
> Java it is far from obvious that a switch to Erlang will be the right
> choice. I would actually get a bit nervous if management accepted such a
> shift without a thorough investigation and even if that investigation gave
> a go-ahead to do a shift I would be nervous since such a fundamental break
> with the past only happens when a company is staring into the abyss of a
> pending bankruptcy!!
>
> I was one of the two guys behind a product made in Erlang in Motorola. One
> of the main reasons for getting the go-ahead to that project was that we
> were building a new product and did not have to throw anything out.
> Eventually we shipped the product as a beta to a single customer, but the
> reluctance to bet on something as strange as Erlang for a "real" contract
> is still around and I will actually bet on the final product being written
> from scratch in C or Java since that is what the managers and old school
> architects feel most at ease with!
>
> The history of technology is full of this kind of stories... and one day
> some new technology will come along and overturn whatever kingdom Erlang
> might have build. The circle of life continues.
>
> Cheers,
> Torben
>
> On 11/3/12 18:09 , Shahrdad Shadab wrote:
>
> When I was learning Erlang and understanding its capabilities I really
> cannot find a satisfactory answer to the question that
> why in North America companies like former BEA, former Sun, Oracle , ...
> use Java to build commercial application servers instead of Erlang?
> From technical perspective such decision doesn't make any sense to me for
> following reasons:
>
> _Java is not a fault tolerant.
> _Java performance is nowhere near Erlang.
> _Concurrent programming in Java is a pain.
> _J2ee Technology introduced as add on to java to make communication cross
> servers possible (i.e web services  XML SCHEMA, WSDL) is unreasonably and
> grotesquely complicated. (This complication  is dictated by the technology
> and not by the problem domain)
> _Java is not distributed language (No asynch communication is possible
> without JMS, also RMI stub solution is more complicated than it should be).
>
> and many more reasons I can list here.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Shahrdad
> --
> Software Architect & Computer Scientist
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing listerlang-questions@REDACTED://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
>
> -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/torbenhoffmann
>
>
> _______________________________________________ erlang-questions mailing
> list erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20120311/3d7dc4d0/attachment.htm>