[erlang-questions] How about a new warning? Was: Re: trouble with erlang or erlang is a ghetto

Garrett Smith g@REDACTED
Mon Aug 8 01:24:22 CEST 2011


On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 5:29 PM, Richard O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> The person in question was Tony Arcieri, who built Reia
> (see http://reia-lang.org/).  There are three things that seem
> obvious about Tony Arcieri:
> (1) He likes Ruby.  (Nobody who didn't would want to build
>    something like Reia.)
> (2) He knows rather a lot about Erlang.  (Nobody who didn't
>    *could* build something like Reia.)
> (3) He is a skilled programmer.  (Nobody who wasn't could
>    get something like Reia working and out there -- as long
>    as directories don't include dots in their names...)

I reread his post, largely due to your generous (and dignified)
representation of his position in this thread.

The crux of his argument is this:

"This is the type of error you only encounter at runtime. It can lay
undetected in your codebase, unless you're writing tests."

As if other dynamically typed languages (Ruby) excel in catching
"errors" at compile time.

This isn't even a straw man. It's straw. His post, for whatever
reason, is an emotional outburst and largely unconstructive. At least
that's my reading of it, twice.

If your average number of lines per function is < 10, honestly, this
is *really* a problem?

Nonsense.

Garrett



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