Publicity needed: was Re: Is erlang too small?

[Dominic Williams]

Le 12 mai 04, à 12:44, Joe Armstrong a écrit :

> On 11 May 2004, Jeffrey M. Einhorn wrote:
>
>> In summation as an Erlang developer I would like to see its user base
>> continue to grow and I feel including additional libraries would help
>> that cause by making current developers more effective and increasing
>> the features that might convince new developers to give the language a
>> try.
>> 	Thanks for Erlang/OTP,
>> 		-jeff einhorn
>
>   Well I guess all of us in this list agree about that.

I am not sure I agree. It depends on what we want to achieve. Erlang is 
the best language I know. The first thing I want is for it to stay 
good. What will be achieved by increasing the user base? One positive 
thing would be if it increased the number of jobs I could get that 
involved programming in Erlang. Another would be to reduce the risk 
that the language is no longer supported in the future.

I can think of several negative consequences, however. Pandering to a 
large user base could dilute the goodness of Erlang (thoughtlessly 
adding things to make Erlang more friendly to Java or other mainstream 
language programmers).

>     The reason for using the same template is so that people will think
> we have made a gigantic web site.

Hmm, this seems rather deceitful, which I don't like. Besides, imagine 
the following two possible reactions:

- Wow, these people have made a gigantic web site. Impressive, I want 
to play with them.

or:

- What sort of an idiot do these people think I am?

Which of these two hypothetical people would you rather see get 
involved with Erlang?

Best regards,

Dominic Williams
http://www.dominicwilliams.net
----