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

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 14/03/2012, at 2:36 PM, Ngoc Dao wrote:

> The result of Erlang vs Java is obvious.
> But how about Erlang vs Scala (with Akka, http://akka.io/)?

Akka can extend Scala, which extends Java.
As that page shows, it can extend Java directly.
But

	You cannot make a reliable system by *extending* an
	unreliable system.

Scala adds many good, even wonderful, things to Java.
But there is still a "Window into Hell" (Griswold's term,
used in the SL5 phase of what became the Icon project).
Akka adds some great things to Scala and Java.
But there is still a "Window into Hell".

A good part of Erlang's strength is the things it *CAN'T* do.

It's rather like the way people used to praise C++ as a safer
C, when in practice C++ just added a vast new range of bugs
without making any of the old bugs harder to write.

If I _had_ to write code to interoperate with Java in the same
address space, I would *certainly* do as much as I could in Scala,
and if that involved things Erlang would have been a good choice
for, well, hello Akka!

Let me put it another way:

	You cannot get a simple system by adding
	simplicity to a complex system.