FAQ terminology harmonisation

[Rick Pettit]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 09:40:37PM -0600, Chris Pressey wrote:
> Hey, if it works, more power to you.  I'm still in a position where I'm
> working on projects where a couple of minutes of downtime is acceptable,
> so my experience with hot swapped code comes mostly from playing with it
> - and I don't think I've ever written a .so - so I'm out of my element
> here.

Please don't get me wrong here, I am not arguing in favor of C/C++ over Erlang.
I was merely trying to help Martin clarify his argument.  To say Erlang allows
code load on the fly and C/C++ does not, or to say that you _have_ to program
defensively in C/C++ everywhere whereas you only need to do so in border cases
with Erlang is just not true in my opinion.

> > My point is that there is NOT a big difference between the two, and
> > that is how Martin should approach the sales pitch with C/C++ guys who
> > argue against hot-code load but are all for shared objects.
> 
> In light of your success with it - yes indeed.

Again, I am just playing devil's advocate here. I would like to see Erlang
succeed...I am sold. My only intent was to _strengthen_ his argument by
playing the other side.

-Rick

P.S. Writing applications which load/unload shared objects on the fly without
     crashing or corrupting data in some way is tricky business, particularly 
     in a multi-threaded environment.  I have somehow managed to be successful
     in doing so, but with Erlang/OTP I clearly see the light ;-)