[erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax

[Richard Andrews]

> 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.

Marketing.

Sun marketed Java. MS marketed C#. MS marketed C++ indirectly by chosing it as a platform for Windows development (ATL, COM).

Java and C# are easy to market to the Windows mindset. In these languages simple common problems are easy to solve quickly. So lots of "little" projects begin using such tools. The problem is that projects grow and with these languages the cost of adding complexity rises much more quickly than for say erlang.

Often it looks cheaper to keep incrementally building on what you've got. And the further you go down this path, the more investment is made and the harder it is to justify jettisoning the existing implementation even though each change gets harder and long and less reliable. 

Unfortunately making the wrong decision at the outset doesn't become apparent until it is too late to do anything about it.

--
  Rich


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