[erlang-questions] languages in use? [was: Time for OTP to be Renamed?]

[Pieter Hintjens]

On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:31 PM, Michael Truog <mjtruog@REDACTED> wrote:

> Erlang provides a stable
> distributed system development platform that provides many avenues for
> integration, as shown by its successes, so your complaints show your
> ignorance.

Good job on smacking down my ignorant complaints. I feel chastised and
would slink back to silent observation of Erlang's slow demise at the
hands of people who always know better. Except, I will take the bait.

Cloudi looks valiant in a tragic fashion. A 1-person project still in
beta that uses REST as its messaging carrier. How can I count the ways
this will fail? Anyone looking for a HTTP-based cloud will use Open
Stack, period. Anyone smart will be thinking of new designs based on
much cheaper distributed messaging. People broadly either embrace risk
(then won't use this), or hate risk (then won't use this).

Erlang's unique status used to be, we understand distributed systems.
Today that's changed. There are many other ways to make distributed
systems, more cheaply, more successfully.

Erlang either gets its cost model way down, or it dies. Quote me on
that if you like. Our industry has no pity for excess friction, and
you have competitors.

I think this thread is really important. And the questions should not
be "what is Erlang called", since that's trivial to solve (just stop
saying "OTP" in polite company). The question should be, "where are
there friction costs and how can we remove them?"

My example of outreach to other languages is about friction costs. If
it's trivial to integrate polyglot languages with Erlang, friction
costs fall right away.

Smacking down the ignorant won't remove friction costs.

Cheers
Pieter