[erlang-questions] erlang sucks

[Rick Pettit]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 11:41:10AM +0000, Alp?r J?ttner 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.
> 
> I cannot agree with it. I grew up in the C/C++ world and also had known
> Python before I met Erlang, still I find it very intuitive. I'm also
> _very_ impressed by the simplicity and the expressive power. (I'm not a
> student though...)
> 
> I think, the major obstacle for newcomers is not the syntax, but the
> immutable data structures, the impossibility of variable rebinding, and

These "features" make it much easier to write buggy code (and much harder to
find such buggy code). The developers you speak of need to take off their
blinders if they ever hope to see the light.

> the miss of loop constructs like 'for' and 'while'.

Erlang has plenty of loop constructs--how else could you write a server
loop? And with the use of tail-recursion this need not be inefficient.

There's also lists:foldl/3, lists:foreach/2, list comprehensions, etc. I
much, much prefer the look of these constructs over the equivalent 
for or while loops--regardless, the same can be accomplished with both.

> For someone familiar
> (only) with procedural languages, it is hard to believe that a language
> can be efficient without these features.

For someone more familiar with functional languages, it is hard to believe
applications can be written correctly (let alone efficiently) _with_ those
features.

-Rick