[erlang-questions] Time to update programming rules?

[Benjamin Tolputt]

Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> On 5 Sep 2008, at 3:17 pm, Benjamin Tolputt wrote:
>> The idea of using the package support appeals to me as it will help keep
>> name-space conflicts to a minimum. As I understand the "packages.html"
>> page, this is pretty much ALL that the packages functionality offers.
>
> It doesn't offer any MORE of that than Erlang has without it.
> What it DOES give you is extra breakability.

I understand the possibility of errors. Possibility of error is a decent
point, but one that can (and has) been made about other parts of the
Erlang system. As I understand it then, this is an "opinion" exclusion
of use rather than one endorsed by the developers of Erlang (given they
implemented it and have yet to remove it from the system). Not throwing
mud at you or anything, just ensuring I understand that this is a
feature you don't like versus one that could be ripped out of Erlang on
a release's notice.

The "extra" functionality it offers is that the beams are split out
nicely such that "xyz.abc.mymod" is compiled to a "mymod.beam" file that
will not conflict with a "abc.def.mymod" module. This (in my mind) is a
Good Thing. Like Java, the multi-folder thing is likely to be a moot
issue given a decent IDE. One that I have admittedly not yet found for
Erlang - beyond a good text editor (ScITE) and the Erlang shell.

--Ben