[erlang-questions] Erlang image improvements (was: Re: Beyond Strings as Lists)

[James Hague]

> Right now the website is very static. There's no feeling of community there,
> you can only consume. Not produce. (And it also has a very very 90's look
> ^_^ ).

I completely disagree about the 90s. look.  It works.  It's not
painful to look at.  The Python site is no better, visually.  But this
is irrelevant anyway.

>From my point of view:

1. The docs *are* ugly.  They're bulky.  The high-level categorization
of topics makes no sense to me.  Too much nesting.  The erts/stdlib
distinction is artificial (I frequently look at both to figure out
where the module I want is).
2. The EEP concept is great, but can we remove the dependency on the
Python formatting tools?  I spent 20 minutes one day trying to get
those tools to work under Windows and failed.  A cleaner, simpler
alternative in Erlang makes sense.  I would have submitted 3-4 EEPs by
now.  This might be a fun project!
3. The libraries have accumulated much cruft and could use a
housecleaning pass.  lists:reverse/1 should be auto-imported by
default so there's no need for "lists" header. "sets" and "ord_sets"
and "gb_sets" (and the equivalent dict versions) are still a muddle.
Simple helper functions would make some modules easier to use.
ets:new_set() could hide the quirkiness of ets:new, for example.