Visibility of Erlang

Lyn A Headley lyn@REDACTED
Tue Jun 29 01:14:52 CEST 1999


I just posted this to comp.lang.functional, but I suspect most of you
will have opinions about this (sensitive) topic.  I am sorry if I
sound harsh, but please remember this is coming from someone who loves
erlang and wants to see it succeed.

mike@REDACTED (Mike Williams) writes:

> 3. We (Ericsson) have used the functional programming language Erlang
>    with great success to build a large number of switching systems, call
>    centres, test equipment etc. I.e. millions of lines of code. The
>    people specifying these systems have never considered that they are
>    implemented in a functional language
> 

Erlang is the most underappreciated technology I have ever seen.  I
dove in about 2 months ago and have felt nothing but glee and awe
throughout the learning experience.  I salivate when I think what a
wonderful world it would be if people had any notion of what the
language, and more importantly the environment and libraries could be
used for.  For instance, I just want to cry when I think of how many
people are using PHP3 + (database) when something like erlang + mnesia
is available.  It's not that e + m should *always* be chosen, it's
just that they've never heard of it!  And I'm afraid they never will.

Which brings me to my own personal moan: I believe ericsson is failing
miserably in promoting the environment.  The web site is stagnant, we
have no idea how development is progressing, there is no public cvs
mirror, development goes on behind closed doors, and nobody sends
announcements to the open source community.  Why hasn't erlang been
trumpeted to slashdot, linux weekly news, elj.com, etc?  If ericsson
would just hire *one* person to promote openness in the erlang
community, erlang could catch like wildfire.  Look at zope.org for an
example of how corporate-backed open source *should* be done.

The stated reason for open-sourcing erlang was to encourage its spread
outside of ericsson.  I don't understand why they leapt such a huge
chasm only to sit down on the nearest stump.

-Lyn



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