[Erlang Forums] [Erlang/OTP Proposals/Proposals: RFC] Re-visiting EEP-0055

[Austin Ziegler]

No, Stansilav, I’m an engineer. I’ve shipped software in ~35 different
languages, which means that I aim to get ship done.

If the only thing you can take away from my messages here is that I’m a
"fanboy", then it is not my judgement in question.

I will reiterate that this EEP was filed by someone who primarily writes in
Erlang and wishes to see it in Erlang because they believe it would be
beneficial in one of several different ways.

The main objections that I have seen over the last two years on this have
boiled down to:

- It makes Erlang look like Elixir
- It doesn’t add enough value
- It’s a new sigil, and new sigils are by definition bad

The first position, which is essentially what I have seen from you and
several others, can be disregarded as emotional hyperbole. The second and
third positions are worth discussing, but the level of emotion in the
thread have resulted in little productive discussion on them.

The first and third positions have ultimately precluded substantial
discussion on the second and have discouraged possible explorations to see
if the second position is, in fact, true. As I understand it, the Erlang
compiler has changed pretty substantially in OTP23, OTP24, and OTP25
(particularly with the introduction of the JIT in OTP24), which means that
the introduction of a new sigil *might* permit the compiler to emit better
(I’m being purposely vague here) code.

The OTP implementation team thinks that it’s interesting and while they may
not pick it up, they might. If they do, I hope that they look at Loïc’s
suggestion, because I *am* of the opinion that adding a sigil should be a
rare event, but adding a sigil that allows for greater future extensibility
just *might* be worth it, even at the cost of a little bit of verbosity.

In the end, you’re probably not going to listen and dismiss what I’ve said
as fanboyism, but that doesn’t actually affect me.

-a

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 12:43 PM Stanislav Ledenev <s.ledenev@REDACTED>
wrote:

> There were multiple arguments from a bunch of people.
> The principle of the main one is "Render unto Caesar the things that are
> Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's".
>  If you like Elixir no one objects on this. Just leave Erlang alone.
>
> But you just could not or don't want to listen.
> Perhaps because you are a fanboy not an engineer if you can't see such
> simple arguments.
> And It's pointless to argue to argue with fanboys.
>
> пн, 25 апр. 2022 г. в 18:14, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@REDACTED>:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 10:58 AM Stanislav Ledenev <s.ledenev@REDACTED>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> One question - why? Just because we can?
>>> Erlang is doomed, Sorry Joe, we f**d things up.
>>>
>>
>> I really can’t help but laugh at over the top reactions like this and
>> those who can’t help but bash Elixir because they don’t like the syntax.
>>
>> What if this syntax (or some other syntax) helps the compiler generate
>> better (safer, faster, *whatever*) code? How would anyone know unless it
>> gets tried? Why would anyone want to try it when they know that a certain
>> vocal subset of the community are going to be pitching embarrassing fits
>> over it?
>>
>> If this is introduced in OTP 26, then stop upgrading. Seriously. Stay on
>> OTP 25 or before. But seriously, stop acting like children about this and
>> saying that things are fucked up (because they’re not; you just don’t like
>> this because you don’t like it). The only *real* objection that I’ve
>> seen that makes sense to me is from Loïc, which is that it might be better
>> to enable *annotations*, even if the only annotation initially available
>> is for pinning. (My personal feeling on the annotation concept is that
>> `^pin Variable` doesn’t feel right to me, but maybe `^pin:Variable` or
>> `^pin{Variable}` or `^{pin}Variable` or something else, although more
>> sigil-y, would be clearer.
>>
>> I mostly use Elixir, but often read Erlang codebases. On the Elixir core
>> mailing list, there are frequent redirects to approach something as a
>> possible PR to Erlang/OTP because it’s something that should benefit all
>> BEAM languages.
>>
>> Telemetry started as an Elixir library, but was quickly changed to a pure
>> Erlang approach because it makes more sense to be something that all BEAM
>> languages can use.
>>
>> Elixir has — and I suspect both LFE and Gleam both have — *enhanced *the
>> BEAM through wider exposure, code contributions, and other contributions.
>> If you can’t argue a feature request like in this EEP on its merits (or
>> lack thereof) without trying to bash Elixir, then maybe you don’t actually
>> have an argument, but an emotional outburst, and should just *discard* your
>> rant after writing it.
>>
>> -a
>> --
>> Austin Ziegler • halostatue@REDACTED • austin@REDACTED
>> http://www.halostatue.ca/ • http://twitter.com/halostatue
>>
>

-- 
Austin Ziegler • halostatue@REDACTED • austin@REDACTED
http://www.halostatue.ca/ • http://twitter.com/halostatue
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