[erlang-questions] The quest for the perfect programming language for massive concurrency.

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

Hi Joe,

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Joe Armstrong <erlang@REDACTED> wrote:

> I'd like to see two windows.
>
> In window one I type my program. There is a single button under the window.
> The button has an icon of Sherlock Holmes on it.
>
> I press the Sherlock button.
>
> Sherlock analyses my text fragment comparing it to all the programs in the
> entire universe
> that have ever been written - in the second window it says
> "this program is very similar to ..." or "this is a new idea ..."
> "did you know that XXX is working on this at this very moment ..."
>
> I've experiment with this is several forms - I want to find "the most
> similar thing to
> the given thing" - this is an extremely difficult problem.
>

Well there is such a thing, kind of. I don't know how well it works in
practice. It's called Code Recommenders and they have a database gathered
from available repositories of code that is used to suggest what to write
next base on what others do after code similar to the one already in the
editor. It's Java only and for the kind of code that is needed to write
Java UI (repetitive and with a lot of boilerplate) it works ok. For
"normal" code it's less useful, of course.


> One day IDEs might help me think - I think some kind of synergy between
> a text editor, a search engine and a IRC thingy would be good.
>

Yes, that's the idea.


> IRC is great - if I knew who to talk to and where they hang out.
>

Hmm, so one would advertise topics of interest and get suggestions for
matching people and which rooms thay are in?


> Computers should serve our needs - not like it is today where we serve
> their needs.
>

I think that very few engineers do this on purpose, but this world's
current economy, there is no incentive for a business to make a perfect
product that will require no maintenance and will last forever. So we do
the least viable thing that gets us on the market and keeps us there. Who
cares that in the end the cost and amount of effort are much larger?

regards,
Vlad

/Joe
>
>
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