Erlang forums (was Re: PING TEST)

[Oliver Korpilla]

Funny, I never thought of static typing as an evolution, more like a way
to spend time on other tasks than actually solving problems.

I never have coded as efficiently and succinctly as in elixir. It
reminds me of Lisp. Many Lisps make just the right compromise to empower
you instead of going after some strict ideal that may lead to the
compiler checking the code, but also to very inflexible code that is
hard to change. Prototyping in statically typed languages can be a
nightmare, same for refactoring. As soon as you touch your type
hierarchy or data model, you're in a world of hurt.

On the other hand, I consider the five years I've spent with elixir to
be most deeply satisfying time of my professional career. I've rewritten
my codebase many times over as my understanding of BEAM and elixir
evolved, and in spite of adding features, the amount of "hand-written"
code stayed always the same. I've offloaded stuff into macros and
writing also code that generates code,  for example.

In comparison, I started small personal projects in PureScript
(essentially Haskell), versions of ML, Reason, etc. What I noticed is
that after deciding I wanted to do things differently I could often
simply start over. I got used to reading weird-ass large error messages
whenever I used any type of generic data structures, and working with
lenses and similar was a relief but also time-consuming. Never had I the
feeling that the compiler checking my code actually added anything to my
workflow, it made everything more time-consuming.

This reminds me of my time in college when professors would go deeply
into problems of type systems and how to solve them which only meant in
the end you would even spend more time with type systems. It seems to be
circular. The solution to any type system problem is a more complex,
harder to understand type system. It's like some managers believe that
problems with quality require more quality assurance and rules, until
some engineers spend like 80% of their time with that and barely
producing any code, and yet the quality problems largely continue.

So, unless I had very clear specifications that are expected not to
change much, I wouldn't chose a statically typed language. If I need to
stay flexible and the performance allows it, I would chose elixir or a
Lisp. Because I anticipate change and needing that flexibility as
requirements evolve. I have rewritten whole central frameworks in days
and weeks when in statically typed code frameworks live on for years
after most everyone agrees they were not a good idea because the cost of
change was so high.

What matters to me, besides the ability to change things comparatively
fast, is readability. Here elixir shines as well. Rereading code is
another thing I spend a lot of time with, given that sometimes things
work well for years before needing touching again. I often enough come
to my own code as a stranger, but I often find that readability can be
key to maintainability.

elixir has its flaws, but its typing system isn't one to me.

On 18.12.2021 11:19, Ivan Uemlianin wrote:
>
> This obsession with elixir is a bit strange. It was developed ten
> years ago to appeal to Ruby programmers and is already looking
> old-fashioned. No doubt there are interesting elixir projects but for
> a good while now language innovation on the BEAM has predominantly
> been statically typed.
>
>
> Side issue perhaps but has been brought up several times in this thread.
>
>
> Ivan
>
>
> —
> hilaritas excessum habere nequit
>
>> On 18 Dec 2021, at 09:48, Daniel Widgren <daniel.widgren@REDACTED>
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>  I think the mailing list has had its role in the community, but I
>> can't see any discussion in this list that we can't have in a forum.
>> More than people will not be there because they don't like Forums. My
>> feeling is that we lose more new developers or companies because we
>> have a mailing list.
>>
>> When companies look around to see if they should use Erlang or
>> Elixir, Elixir will win. The reasons are straightforward, and they
>> can see a community, have a better discussion and adopt new approaches.
>>
>> This list has had some good runs, but for me, Forums and Slack
>> community have been so much better than this list or IRC. I am not
>> saying they are perfect, and we maybe change to something else in a
>> couple of years.
>>
>> This Forum is ten years late, and we should have unified somewhere
>> long ago. If things aren't changing, Erlang will be a building block
>> for Elixir, and it will be even harder to convince companies why they
>> should use Erlang.
>>
>> Den lör 18 dec. 2021 kl 10:21 skrev Eric Pailleau
>> <eric.pailleau@REDACTED>:
>>
>>     Thanks Yao,
>>
>>
>>     I couldn't tell better my feelings on this.
>>
>>
>>     I'm not against the forum, I did a try, but my feelings is that
>>     both are not the same goal.
>>
>>
>>     We need to keep mailing for some subjects to be discussed with
>>     OTP team. And also announcements.
>>
>>
>>     Forum is helpful for helping new comers, creating groups around
>>     some applications etc.
>>
>>
>>     Regards
>>
>>
>>
>>     Envoyé depuis mon mobile
>>
>>
>>
>>     ---- Yao Bao a écrit ----
>>
>>     Hello,
>>
>>
>>
>>     Erlang bring us together as a community, we don't share data
>>
>>     between processes, but we do share love from Erlang.
>>
>>
>>
>>     It is not common for programmers say "love" to a programming
>>
>>     language. Erlang programmers might not use Erlang in daily job,
>>
>>     but we are willing to put some of our life and energy into this.
>>
>>     Personally, mainly because of the uncommon beauty of it.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Yes, we are still marginal. And this might be the root cause of
>>
>>     this movement. I can understand it, but why can't we have both?
>>
>>
>>
>>     Yes, resources are always limited, and we can't split energy into
>>
>>     two things equally, this is understandable. But having both, or,
>>
>>     in a foreseeable future, we might discover some better methods
>>
>>     to organize our community, then we can say this is the true "rich"
>>
>>     community. New generations are good and unavoidable, but I
>>
>>     hope we can keep the old generations as much as we can.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Every once in a while, some shiny things appears, and we are
>>
>>     not against shiny things, they are good, if it is good enough to
>>
>>     replace the old one entirely, nobody will miss it. We just need
>>
>>     sometime to prove it.
>>
>>
>>
>>     We can deprecate language features, but I hope we do not
>>
>>     deprecate people. Shiny tools can attract young generations,
>>
>>     I don't know the story or history about Elixir forums, but I would
>>
>>     say the biggest difference would be the origin of these two
>>
>>     languages. Of course it is good to have a try, after receiving the
>>
>>     new Erlang forums announcement, I give it a try almost
>>
>>     immediately, and personally prefer this mailing list for now.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Although as we see, this mailing list is not very "active", but we
>>
>>     really care about it. And this might be why some "sad" emotion
>>
>>     comes along. If we don't care about it, we would not say any word
>>
>>     about it.
>>
>>
>>
>>     I really hope this mailing list is still alive. Maybe one reason
>>     would
>>
>>     be good enough to keep it: old generations are still alive.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>
>>     Yao
>>
>>
>>

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