5 ms·

That sounds like another nice idea. What happened to your project?

im_down_w_otp 9y ago
Ongoing, but BEAM is no longer part of my day job (though Rust is), so it's slower going and only moves occasionally forward between the hours of 12am and 3am when the rest of my family is asleep.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Thank you. I was just reading your comments and found this one: >Erlang: the general disinterest of Ericsson and the hapless stewardship of Erlang Solutions. Is that related to the reason that BEAM is no longer part of your day job? The reason I ask is that I am thinking of starting a new project with BEAM, maybe some Rust or C++ and wondering whether Elixir has taken over from Erlang due to the disinterest of Ericsson.
  - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
    Nope, not the reason. My "go-to" language when prototyping most things is still Erlang. Erlang is by far my favorite language and environment to use, and for a whole slew of things I'd still grab it for production projects/products. I moved into the world of autonomous vehicle runtime software, and tools closer to the metal with deterministic timing characteristics are a requirement.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      Thank you for the useful clarification. From what you write, it sounds like in production that, if one is attracted by the BEAM, there is less risk in choosing Erlang than Elixir. One thing that concerns me for production use is the combination of the Erlang license and the possibility of Ericsson "doing a Sun" by selling the technology to Oracle, which might lead to an Android like situation.
      - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
        Well... Elixir has a thriving community around it right now. Erlang has a lot of really mature libraries and frameworks. It's trivial to include Erlang in an Elixir project, it's slightly less simple to go the other way, but it's still doable. In either case I don't think you have much in the way of risk regarding Ericsson pulling a Sun. When I say Ericsson is "disinterested" I just mean they're not inclined to promote or progress the language with the kind of pace and/or hype required to keep a thriving and active Silicon Valley shaped community going. It's a tool that works well at exactly what it was designed for. There's no driving force trying to move it further to take over the general purpose programming world like Java had or Go has. Anyway, we're epically off topic :-) I think my email is in my HN profile, so happy to take this offline.
        delhanty 9y ago
        True - we are way off topic! Sorry and thank you again - was very interested in your experience.
    - youdontknowtho 9y ago
      What is it about Rust that helps with the deterministic timing thing you mentioned? Just not having a GC? Do you still use C or C++?
      - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
        No GC, optional runtime (no_std), etc. Yep, still use C and C++.
- troutwine 9y ago
  Don't suppose your work is online? I'd be interested to read your patchsets.
  - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
    Sitting in my FreeNAS Gogs instance, but I don't suppose there's any harm putting it up on GitHub when I'm back from traveling at the end of the week.

Ongoing, but BEAM is no longer part of my day job (though Rust is), so it's slower going and only moves occasionally forward between the hours of 12am and 3am when the rest of my family is asleep.

delhanty 9y ago
Thank you. I was just reading your comments and found this one: >Erlang: the general disinterest of Ericsson and the hapless stewardship of Erlang Solutions. Is that related to the reason that BEAM is no longer part of your day job? The reason I ask is that I am thinking of starting a new project with BEAM, maybe some Rust or C++ and wondering whether Elixir has taken over from Erlang due to the disinterest of Ericsson.
- im_down_w_otp 9y ago
  Nope, not the reason. My "go-to" language when prototyping most things is still Erlang. Erlang is by far my favorite language and environment to use, and for a whole slew of things I'd still grab it for production projects/products. I moved into the world of autonomous vehicle runtime software, and tools closer to the metal with deterministic timing characteristics are a requirement.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    Thank you for the useful clarification. From what you write, it sounds like in production that, if one is attracted by the BEAM, there is less risk in choosing Erlang than Elixir. One thing that concerns me for production use is the combination of the Erlang license and the possibility of Ericsson "doing a Sun" by selling the technology to Oracle, which might lead to an Android like situation.
    - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
      Well... Elixir has a thriving community around it right now. Erlang has a lot of really mature libraries and frameworks. It's trivial to include Erlang in an Elixir project, it's slightly less simple to go the other way, but it's still doable. In either case I don't think you have much in the way of risk regarding Ericsson pulling a Sun. When I say Ericsson is "disinterested" I just mean they're not inclined to promote or progress the language with the kind of pace and/or hype required to keep a thriving and active Silicon Valley shaped community going. It's a tool that works well at exactly what it was designed for. There's no driving force trying to move it further to take over the general purpose programming world like Java had or Go has. Anyway, we're epically off topic :-) I think my email is in my HN profile, so happy to take this offline.
      - delhanty 9y ago
        True - we are way off topic! Sorry and thank you again - was very interested in your experience.
  - youdontknowtho 9y ago
    What is it about Rust that helps with the deterministic timing thing you mentioned? Just not having a GC? Do you still use C or C++?
    - im_down_w_otp 9y ago
      No GC, optional runtime (no_std), etc. Yep, still use C and C++.
troutwine 9y ago
Don't suppose your work is online? I'd be interested to read your patchsets.
- im_down_w_otp 9y ago
  Sitting in my FreeNAS Gogs instance, but I don't suppose there's any harm putting it up on GitHub when I'm back from traveling at the end of the week.