[erlang-questions] Onboarding programmers who are new to Erlang

[zxq9]

On 2014年8月28日 木曜日 16:43:13 Raoul Duke wrote:
> also: (do you agree or not, i am curious) teach that one should reach
> for OTP first, rather than assuming one will do it at the "low level"
> of rolling your own stuff from "base" erlang-w/out-otp.

I know this wasn't directed at me, but its an important point, IMO.

In my experience teaching someone OTP straight away results in the Erlang 
equivalent of boiler-plate. A lot of unnecessary gen_server stuff, for example. 
Its similar to a Java programmer starting out with Python and being class 
happy and writing setters and getters everywhere.

I've found it better to instead pose different bits that OTP handles as 
problems first, in whatever language, and letting the person work through the 
issues involved themselves so they know where the problem areas actually are 
first. Then, showing them OTP is this "wow, thank goodness someone wrote all 
*that* already!" sort of experience, and they have a firm grip on just what 
tools are being provided instead of wandering around with this vague sense of 
problem->tool applicability.

Fred seems to made a deliberate effort at this in LYSE and to great effect. The 
downside is that something like LYSE takes more time to get through than a 
blog tutorial intended for copypasta programming -- but that's time well spent 
by my way of thinking.

-Craig