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

[Jean Chassoul]

long live Carl Hewitt!


On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 9:40 PM, Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman@REDACTED>wrote:

> Loïc Hoguin wrote:
>
>> On 02/16/2014 01:05 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>>
>>> Loïc Hoguin wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> To make a comparison, it generally goes like this:
>>>>
>>>> What's Go? -> Language from Google by the Unix people -> I know and
>>>> like those, therefore Go must be good too, plus it looks similar to
>>>> what I'm used to.
>>>>
>>>> What's Erlang? -> Language from Ericsson invented 25+ years ago ->
>>>> Really? I'm not sure what Ericsson does... If it was invented 25 years
>>>> ago and I haven't heard about it yet it must not be very good, plus
>>>> it's not OO so it must not be very useful.
>>>>
>>>> You can't fix that.
>>>>
>>>> What you can fix about perception is actually minimal stuff. Like
>>>> changing the name. Using release numbers that aren't from another
>>>> planet. And so on.
>>>>
>>>
>> Just in case this wasn't clear, I'm not saying changing the name or
>> release numbers or whatever is a good idea. I'm saying it's minimal and
>> thus not going to change anything.
>>
>
> Ahh... my apologies for misinterpreting.  I think we agree on this.
>
>
>
>>  This is just plain silly.
>>>
>>
>> You are talking about companies, I am talking about people. Erlang is
>> already adopted in many companies, there are more companies using Erlang
>> than there are Erlang developers. It is a grave mistake to focus on
>> companies at this point. What's missing is Erlang developers to work for
>> them and for new ones that might be interested in it.
>>
>> It's about people.
>>
>>
> Can we explore this a bit?  In two directions:
>
> - My sense is that a lot of the comments in this thread have been about
> the need to promote adoption of Erlang - which is really a business/company
> decision, not that of individual developers (at least in my experience,
> it's companies that make language/platform decisions, for business
> reasons).  It sounds like you and I agree that adoption by companies is
> going along just fine - but I'm not sure that's what others are saying.
>
> - It strikes me that the comment that started this branch of discussion
> was something along the lines of "who needs Erlang on a resume?" - or words
> to that effect - which is, as you say, a developer issue.  I wonder three
> things about your assertion that "what's missing is Erlang developers:"
> -- Is this true?  How does supply and demand for Erlang developers look
> right now?  (Anybody from Erlang consultancies able to comment here?)
> -- If yes, is this perhaps a good thing for Erlang developers? (This was
> my earlier assertion.)  Supply, demand, prices, all of that.  20 years ago,
> one could command big bucks for building web sites - these days, not so
> much.
> -- Does promotion actually make a difference?  In my experience, there are
> those who are committed to one particular language - doesn't matter what
> language - and nothing is going to get those folks to explore another
> language.  And then there are real engineers, who pick the right tool for
> the job at hand - and my sense that any good engineer who's working on
> high-availability, high-concurrency systems either already knows about
> Erlang, or will find it pretty quickly when doing technology assessment for
> a project with requirements that are best suited for Erlang  (mind you
> "good engineers" are not all that easy to come by, particularly when it
> comes to the kinds of big, complicated systems that Erlang is best suited
> to - but that's a far broader issue than finding coders with Erlang skills)
> -- On a related note:  A lot of this comes down to computer science
> education.  40 years ago (I'm showing my age), a typical computer science
> curriculum included quite a bit of language design theory, and experience
> with a range of languages (anybody else remember using "Structure and
> Interpretation of Computer Programs" as a 1st-year text?) - these days, not
> so much.  I see an awful lot of people who took a couple of courses in Java
> who think they're computer scientists - but ask them about "actors" or
> "lambda expressions" and you get a glazed expressions.  (Real software
> engineers read lambda-the-ultimate.org ?)
>
>
>
>
> Miles Fidelman
>
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
>
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