[erlang-questions] Support for newcomers and the popularity of Erlang

[Wojciech Knapik]

Hello everyone

I have a question regarding mnesia that the books I have and the tutorials
I found do not answer.

I tried IRC, but was refered here. I tried the Manning forum, but was
refered here. And here I was completely ignored. Not even a "go away",
nothing. I had to check the list archives to make sure my emails reached
their destination.

I know this isn't some paid support list and you have no obligation to help
anyone, but with a community of this size, you decide about the language's
popularity by answering (or not answering) people's questions.

With any non-trivial project, there are situations where people have to
depend on outside help - where the documentation available simply doesn't
allow them to answer a question and they need the opinion of someone
experienced with the language. And this is not C++, or Java - you can't
just ask any coworker for help. If you don't get an answer on this list,
you're likely not getting it anywhere.

I'm now part of a group of 9 developers undertaking a rather large project
and Erlang is, in my opinion, the perfect fit for us. Most other members of
the group are beginning to see this too. The only problem is that none of
us know this language. Sure, we're reading the books (and they're excellent
btw), but you know that books only go so far...

I'd like nothing more than to stick to Erlang for this project, I've been a
fan of functional languages for years, but we've only written a page of
code and we've already run into a problem that noone seems to want, or be
able to help us with.

We all know a number of languages and make a living developing code in
them, so the temptation to switch to something we're familiar with, where
support will not be a problem, is pretty big. I'm guessing this is a very
popular scenario when Erlang is being considered for a new project (once
you get past the fact that everyone will have to learn a new language and,
in most cases, a new programming paradigm).

I could go on, but you get the idea. Perhaps these are the things to
discuss in the next thread about Erlang's popularity, instead of ejabberd,
Yaws and CouchDB...

br,
WK
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