5 ms·

If only the Erlang VM would be a little bit faster at string operations and number crunching at runtime. Using Elixir is really really great, but if I could do

If only the Erlang VM would be a little bit faster at string operations and number crunching at runtime. Using Elixir is really really great, but if I could do some heavier text analysis without resorting to NIFs it would be great. Maybe we need some NumPy equivalent or the like for the Erlang VM.

eggy 10y ago
I wonder if this is where Pony lang will fit in? It is an OO actor-model new language that is supposed to be real fast, and yet have all of the positives of Erlang. I believe it is currently duplicating the OTP features as well if I understand it correctly [1]. You don't send a 'poison pill' to kill off actors like in Erlang's more manual management. It is automatic in Pony. [1] http://www.ponylang.org/ http://www.ponylang.org/
- anonyfox 10y ago
  I am fed up with OOP languages for now and Elixir itself as a language just "clicks" for me, like Ruby did years ago. I worked with dozens of languages in the past, and only very few of them made me outright happy while reading/writing: Ruby (earlier versions), Elixir and more increasingly: Rust. Others have advantages, too, but finally I value my own happiness higher than individual features. It's an emotional thing. This aside, Elixir already maps to the way I think about problems, with pattern matching, piping and OTP it is a breeze to translate (or: "streamline") complicated business requirements into "sequential" code that is very easy to read, write, test and maintain. For me, any task that software should accomplish is basically a initial state, a target state and I just have to fill the gaps with the needed transformations in between, mostly sequential but also some in parallel. So: result = state |> func |> func |> func |> func. and every "func" is defined for special cases individually through pattern matching on its arguments. It incredibly clean and easy to understand how stuff works even for curious non-tech stakeholders. With the old OOP systems you can "model things" in different ways and then define interactions between. This works also, but is way more complicated in the long run IMO. As I said, Elixir is quite a perfect language for me. Its just that the occasional raw computation tasks are slow. Something like NumPy/SciPy to call into would be a major improvement here. Not only this, but actually Elixir (and Erlang) is a incredibly cool language to learn AI concepts because of the way how OTP works, especially when grasping ANN. For general ML techniques the language itself is very great, but ... slow.

eggy 10y ago

I wonder if this is where Pony lang will fit in? It is an OO actor-model new language that is supposed to be real fast, and yet have all of the positives of Erlang. I believe it is currently duplicating the OTP features as well if I understand it correctly [1]. You don't send a 'poison pill' to kill off actors like in Erlang's more manual management. It is automatic in Pony. [1] http://www.ponylang.org/ http://www.ponylang.org/

anonyfox 10y ago
I am fed up with OOP languages for now and Elixir itself as a language just "clicks" for me, like Ruby did years ago. I worked with dozens of languages in the past, and only very few of them made me outright happy while reading/writing: Ruby (earlier versions), Elixir and more increasingly: Rust. Others have advantages, too, but finally I value my own happiness higher than individual features. It's an emotional thing. This aside, Elixir already maps to the way I think about problems, with pattern matching, piping and OTP it is a breeze to translate (or: "streamline") complicated business requirements into "sequential" code that is very easy to read, write, test and maintain. For me, any task that software should accomplish is basically a initial state, a target state and I just have to fill the gaps with the needed transformations in between, mostly sequential but also some in parallel. So: result = state |> func |> func |> func |> func. and every "func" is defined for special cases individually through pattern matching on its arguments. It incredibly clean and easy to understand how stuff works even for curious non-tech stakeholders. With the old OOP systems you can "model things" in different ways and then define interactions between. This works also, but is way more complicated in the long run IMO. As I said, Elixir is quite a perfect language for me. Its just that the occasional raw computation tasks are slow. Something like NumPy/SciPy to call into would be a major improvement here. Not only this, but actually Elixir (and Erlang) is a incredibly cool language to learn AI concepts because of the way how OTP works, especially when grasping ANN. For general ML techniques the language itself is very great, but ... slow.