[erlang-questions] Fwd: node.js vs erlang

[Raoul Duke]

yes and no. there are things to learn *from* node, but they probably
aren't *node* itself, they are the ecosystem. :-)

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 8:12 AM, zxq9 <zxq9@REDACTED> wrote:
> On Tuesday 17 June 2014 14:41:28 Joe Armstrong wrote:
>> ... but manually converting a long lived computation into
>> a re-entrant non-blocking version is very difficult.
>>
>> The node books say something like "make sure that callbacks
>> run-to-completion quickly"
>> I would say that complying with this advice is extremely difficult. It's
>> very difficult to guess
>> which computations will take a long time, and even if you know it's
>> difficult to break them into
>> small re-entrant chunks.
>
> This.
>
> You can't hit the nail any more precisely on the head.
>
>> Node is very popular so I'm trying to understand what it is about node that
>> is attractive.
>> npm for example, looks well engineered and something we could learn from.
>> The node
>> web servers are easy to setup and run, so I'd like to see if we could make
>> equally
>> easy to use Erlang servers.
>
> "Easy" is not the same thing as "simple". A lot of people are familiar with JS
> and node.js is a fad that speaks to the web 2.0 crowd that can't/won't digest
> a serious discussion about the issues you are raising above. *Anything* in JS
> is going to be easier for this legion of web folks compared to, well, anything
> that isn't JS.
>
> You are trying to apply your deep technical expertise to a shallow social
> phenomenon. As Alan Kay somewhat recently observed, computer science has
> become pop-culture and has very little to do with engineering. I'd go further
> and say he was really talking about the software development landscape as
> applies to the web and other low-performance applications. Folks like you are
> coming from a different world than the folks that use and (especially) have
> made node.js a pop phenomenon.
>
> So, don't worry about what is popular. (Popularity is no indication of value
> -- I don't think this point needs further support.) If you do that at the
> language/platform/infrastructure level you will merely re-discover that
> Richard Gabriel was correct, marketing trumps engineering, the Huns will
> always crush an overly domesticated Rome, and worse is indeed better. IOW,
> you'll turn Erlang and its platform into Java and its vm.
>
> That would make me sad -- for so many reasons.
>
> -CRE
>
> PS: The corrolary to the above is that if the goal is popularity, then neither
> the means nor the path to success can be inherently technical in nature.
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