[erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax

[Kevin Scaldeferri]

The hypothetical question was "Should I use language X to build my  
application?", or "Is X a practical / real-world language?".  I.e.,  
more-or-less the converse of the question we started with of "Is X an  
academic language?".

-kevin

On Feb 24, 2009, at 3:02 PM, Valentin Micic wrote:

> If “I can easily hire someone” is an answer, I am not quite sure  
> what would be the question, let alone a problem, if any.
>
> From: erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED [mailto:erlang-questions-bounces@REDACTED 
> ] On Behalf Of Kevin Scaldeferri
> Sent: 25 February 2009 12:11 AM
> To: Christian
> Cc: erlang-questions
> Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax
>
>
> On Feb 24, 2009, at 1:54 PM, Christian wrote:
>
>
> In a way, the research that lead to Erlang was about finding a way to
> making it faster to have low-skilled developers cranking out new
> features. It certainly wouldnt be good PR if Erlang was a language for
> highly-skilled developers to slowly cranking out old features.
>
>
>
>
> I wasn't in the industry at the time, but I'm not sure that the  
> programming workforce of the 80's closely resembled the workforce of  
> today (or the past decade).
>
> But, really, one should ask, if Erlang was designed / evolved /  
> selected with this goal, why is it that 20 years later most  
> developers have never even heard of it?  I guess one possibility  
> would be to blame Ericsson and credit MS and Sun for why C# and Java  
> are the languages of choice for companies who care more about how  
> easy it is to hire an army of developers than anything else.  There  
> could be other possible explanations, though.
>
> Also, you've exaggerated & distorted my point with your last  
> sentence.  Haskell unabashedly markets itself as a language for  
> highly skilled developers to quickly and reliably implement new  
> features.  It is still unpopular.  Most companies do not like the  
> idea of using a language that requires them to find a top 10% or top  
> 1% developer to work on their project.
>
> Of course, you might also have misinterpreted my comment entirely.   
> I'm certainly not promoting this point of view, but just saying that  
> to a lot of companies "practical for the real world" means "I can  
> easily hire someone".
>
>
> -kevin
>
>
>>> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 18:14, Kevin Scaldeferri <kevin@REDACTED 
>>> > wrote:
>>> It's kinda funny how often people think of things like reliability,
>>> high-availability, etc. as "academic" concerns.  An awful lot of
>>> companies care primarily about how fast low-skilled developers can
>>> crank out new features.
>>>
>>> -kevin
>

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