Try/Cond

[Richard Carlsson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Lund" <peter@REDACTED>
To: <richardc@REDACTED>
Cc: <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Try/Cond


> Who are we and why am I not included in this "discussion"?

"We" in this case are the Erlang/OTP people (mainly Björn G.,
Patrik N. and Kenneth L.), and the HiPE group (which includes
myself) - in short, those involved with implementing and supporting
every aspect of the language, both old and new.

> Anything that ever should make it into the language should
> be "discussed" and presented openly first. Decisions should
> not be made behind closed doors by some anonomous group of
> people but by the erlang *community* instead...

The addition of "try"-expressions was suggested already in the
draft Standard Erlang Specification by Jonas Barklund and
Robert Virding around 1997, which you can find here:
http://www.bluetail.com/~rv/Erlang-spec/index.shtml
(however note that the page is not being updated anymore,
and that the de facto Erlang language has by now partly evolved
away from some parts of the draft standard document).
Since then, "try"-expressions have been a recurring topic on the
erlang-questions list. I really don't think you can claim that this
is something that has been going on behind closed doors,
unless that closed door is your own.

On the other hand, there are lots of small things that have
been done with the language by the Erlang/OTP folks in the
last 5 years since the draft standard, which have simply been
presented in the "highlights" of each new release, without ever
being discussed on the erlang-questions list, for better or for
worse. You have to realise that although being Open Source,
there is in fact only one full implementation of Erlang, and it is
maintained and developed by OTP.

    /Richard