Why Erlang is the best concurrent language available

[Joe Armstrong]

On 22 Jan 2003, martin j logan wrote:

> I fully agree. I think that simplicity & practicality are some of the
> prime virtues of erlang. These properties lend themselves to making any
> language, system, or construction of any sort that is to be used by an
> operator, better at allowing the operator to leverage the strength of
> the tool and concentrate on the problem at hand and not on the vast
> non-intuitive intricacies of the tool(enter C++ and pthreads). In my
> honest opinion erlang is largely successful due to the coupling of its
> smart paradigm, concurrency, and its simple straightforward (for the
> most part) syntax and semantics. When  looking at an erlang program it
> is easy to see what it does - the code is, on the whole,  short concise
> and readable. Try saying the same for, or a step better, refactoring, a
> program built with an advanced hybrid OO modular encapsulated statically
> typed everything is an object except these five things - oh and you can
> configure it with XML and... Like Joe says its all just too hard!!!
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 

Thank you Martin, yes - C++, java, ... etc.  programming is too hard.

  My philosophy is  "write as *beautiful* code as  possible" - if it's
too slow buy a faster machine.

  My  350 MHz celerion  (at home)  is fast  enough for  *everything* I
I write in Erlang - (except video rendering :- - I tried, but it was to slow) -

  Projects fail because the SW does  not work and *not* because the SW
was too slow -  remember this and you will have a  long and happy life
as a programmer.

  /Joe

BTW - as programmers it is our job to write as inefficient code as possible -
otherwise mass unemployment and economic disaster would strike the
hardware industry with negative knock on effects for the entire economy.