[erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax

[Valentin Micic]

It seems like a wrong answer or a wrong question, so, how can any of this be
right?

 

V.

 

 

  _____  

From: Kevin Scaldeferri [mailto:kevin@REDACTED] 
Sent: 25 February 2009 01:26 AM
To: Valentin Micic
Cc: 'Christian'; 'erlang-questions'
Subject: Re: [erlang-questions] The Beauty of Erlang Syntax

 

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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