Erlang Open Internet Platform

[Vance Shipley]

Sean Hinde writes:
> I have seen many comments in articles and even on the mailing list which
> take the position that Erlang/OTP is only of interest if you need to write
> telephone switch software. ...

Hmmm... I originally found Erlang 4-5 years ago when I was researching
Finite State Machines and multi-threading.  My original impression was
that it was a user land package for implementing threads.  Pretty far off
I guess but back then there wasn't as much information available outside
of Ericsson.

My impression from the list has been that most people are in fact using
Erlang for the language as opposed to the OTP environment.  People are
interested in the power of the language.  Many people are interested in
Mnesia it seems but not much is said about OTP.  I had the thought a
while back that we might want to have separate mailing lists for Erlang
and OTP.

> I wonder if takeup would be wider if the product were re-invented and
> renamed as an internet development platform?

The first thing that springs to mind is the past criticism of string
handling in Erlang.  That seemed to be a concern to those evaluating
Erlang/OTP as a platform for web servers.

	-Vance