[erlang-questions] If you could rename ports, what would you call them?

[Masklinn]

On 2010-10-05, at 10:34 , Joe Armstrong wrote:
> Pids
> 
> There shouldn't be ports in the language at all (sorry) - ports should
> in all circumstances
> behave and be indistinguishable from Pids.  open_port(...) should
> return a Pid and not a port.
> 
> We should reduce the number of concepts in the langauge not increase
> them - all in the
> name of conceptual integrity.
> 
> /Joe

But they *are* two different concepts. Even if at the usage level they behave the same way from the POV of an external process, they're not created the same way (``open_port`` vs ``spawn`` and a bunch of control functions dumped into the ``erlang`` module), and you also need to distinguish them when *implementing* them. And I'm guessing that's where Tony is looking for a better name.

If down the line ports and pids are better merged (in both external interface and implementation details) then maybe "ports" as a name/concept can disappear, but I don't think that's the case at the moment, you still need to refer to them as entities separate from pids when talking about implementing things in erlang.