[erlang-questions] erlang sucks

[Johnny Billquist]

Sean Hinde wrote:
> On 13 Mar 2008, at 08:53, KatolaZ wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 01:47:27PM +0100, Mats Cronqvist wrote:
>>
>>
>> Maybe it is due to the fact that most of them know C/C++/Java/Python.
>> Maybe Erlang syntax is not so intuitive and easy as one could expect
>> from a modern and powerful languages.
>> Maybe because the standard library is not so rich and not so
>> consistent as expected from a mature language.
> 
> As someone who learned Erlang before C or Java my observation was  
> quite the opposite. I found the Erlang syntax to be extremely simple  
> and elegant, and that it was very easy to express the meaning of the  
> code. I find C/Java Syntax ugly and unnatural.
> 
> Erlang syntax didn't spring from nowhere. I bet Prolog programmers  
> find it quite comfortable :-)

Speaking as one who knew Prolog before learning Erlang, I found the 
syntax faimilar, but that wasn't a help. Once you started write code you 
soon realized that this just fooled you into believing Erlang did all 
those nice thing Prolog does, but it doesn't. (Not surprising really, 
since Erlang is functional, not logic based.)

Also, there are some subtle differences in the syntax, and those are 
usually around the things people have been complaining about here, such 
as the different separators. In Prolog much of these things don't happen 
since the order of definitions and statements are pretty unimportant in 
Prolog (you should get the same results no matter how you define things, 
just the order of the results will differ. Prolog will give all 
solutions, and not just the first that matches.)

(Prolog is much nicer... ;-) )

	Johnny