New EEP draft: Pinning operator ^ in patterns

[Richard Carlsson]

Den tors 28 jan. 2021 kl 07:19 skrev Nicolas Martyanoff <khaelin@REDACTED>:

> I really wish people who want to see a language go a different way just
> create
> a new language of their own instead of messing with what exists and is
> liked
> as it is. José Valim did it successfully with Elixir, so yes it is
> possible.
>

If the people who rely on Erlang for their businesses and their jobs have
needs that are not fulfilled by the language as it is, then either the
language can evolve or those users will eventually move to another
language, either on Beam or on some other platform, leaving Erlang in the
eternal maintenance realm of Cobol, with no new systems being written in
it, and no new users apart from those dragged in to keep some old system
running. Would you prefer that? If Ericsson and others found a way to
transition to Elixir, for example, would anyone keep paying for maintenance
of Erlang? At least Cobol has a lot of money behind it still. If evolution
is possible, then it is always preferable to creating a competing dialect.

Of course, I get it, getting "adoption" (i.e. getting other developers to
> produce tools and libraries for free) is valuable, so why take a risk with
> a
> new language when you can try to pressure the existing community into
> accepting your changes ?
>

Sarcasm aside - why indeed? A new language could give a cleaner start, but
doesn't provide much quick help for existing Erlang codebases. Also,
"pressure" is a strange word to use when I'm a single person trying to make
a case for a suggestion which I myself have no vote on, while you on the
other hand claim to represent the community at large. If you rephrase it in
a less paranoid way as "Why take a risk with a new language when you can
try to convince the existing community to accept your changes", it becomes
an entirely reasonable statement.

    /Richard
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