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Erlang is completely different then rust (or C, Ada, FORTRAN). Why, on a topic about (an amazing language that is) erlang would you talk about other languages.

by gens 9y ago

Erlang is completely different then rust (or C, Ada, FORTRAN). Why, on a topic about (an amazing language that is) erlang would you talk about other languages. Especially when they are nothing like erlang.

rdtsc 9y ago
It is not completely different. Both Erlang and Rust emphasize safety at the top of their feature lists. That is contrast with most other languages / platforms.
- gens 9y ago
  It is COMPLETELY different from rust. Not only in the syntax, but also in the things it does and how it does them. http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content A lot of languages "emphasize safety at the top of their feature lists". By a lot i mean A LOT. If you have to compare, Erlang is similar to Haskell. Rust is nothing like erlang.
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    > COMPLETELY different from rust. Not only in the syntax Why bring syntax as the first thing? What does that have todo with memory safety. > By a lot i mean A LOT. You mentioned Haskell and Ada so far. Which I agree with. What are the other ones?
    - gens 9y ago
      I also mentioned FORTRAN. A 10min investigation would bring fruit to your curiosity. But wth.. Lisp, scheme, closure, modula and smalltalk are the ones that come to my mind now that offer ONLY safe data access (modula3 has "unsafe" keyword, but only when talking to outside code). Actually R, awk, bc, shell and such are also like that, but not really general purpose. Languages that are "memory safe" by default, but include "unsafe" memory access (that come to my mind now) are C#, F#, C++ and such (Rust goes into this "category"). All functional languages are, AFAIK, "memory safe" by default (well.. you could make a functional language that lets you go out of bounds, but that wouldn't be a "pure" functional language). In fact, as far as i know, there are more programming languages that ARE "memory safe" then ones that are not. One could just go over the wikipedia list [0] and.. list them out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages While somewhat on the topic of functional vs "Turing" languages, here's a couple of videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eis11j_iGMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eis11j_iGMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQD7-AOjMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQD7-AOjMI So.. the only thing that prompted you to talk about Rust is memory safety ? EDIT: > Why bring syntax as the first thing? What does that have todo with memory safety. Because the question i asked was "Can i ask why do you mention rust ? By that i mean what prompted you to write about rust here and now." and your answer was (paraphrased) "they bout emphasize memory safety", as if that was the only defining factor of a programming language.
      - rdtsc 9y ago
        > C#, F#, C++ Ok if C++ is memory safe, what's a memory unsafe language then? If concurrency units (threads, co-routines) share a heap they are not memory safe. In Rust they do but Rust provide compile time checks for make sure access is safe. awk, bc not production level languages. I think you're being disingenuous there. > the only thing that prompted you to talk about Rust is memory safety ? Yes > they bout emphasize memory safety", as if that was the only defining factor of a programming language. If you know anything about both languages that's at the top of their features list, which I mentioned. > I also mentioned FORTRAN. Ah interesting. So initializing a variable in FORTRAN would put that in thread local / separate heap?
        gens 9y ago
        > awk, bc not production level languages. I think you're being disingenuous there. First of all, we are talking about programming languages here, not about how widely they are used in "production". I know that awk is used in one giant company to do an important thing (aka dealing with money). It wouldn't surprise me to find that bc is also used in "the industry". On that note, the TIOBE index lists Java, C, C++ and C# as being the most widely used languages. Awk is number 33, just below Ada, Prolog and Erlang. Rust is not even on the list, a list where assembly of all things holds the 14'th place. (bc is in the same group as rust there) Erlang is also used for plenty of "heavy" things, notably in the telecommunication and banking industries. Haskell is used by facebook for their spam filter. WhatsUp is written in erlang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnX3B9oaKzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnX3B9oaKzw > If you know anything about both languages that's at the top of their features list, which I mentioned. Not everything is about "features". > If concurrency units (threads, co-routines) share a heap they are not memory safe. If you want to talk about concurrency you should mention "Communicating sequential processes", where from Rust did take some wisdom, but Go (as a popular example) went full in. Functional programming (lamda calculus) also lends itself extremely well to "threading", intrinsically so. I think that discussions are about learning things, clarifying things and such "nonsense". But this discussion seems to be all about "winning at any cost". So.. goodbye.
im_down_w_otp 9y ago
The majority of the post was about a cool/interesting way Erlang does something and praising the linked article. The very last statement was a passing commentary about something that seemed conceptually correlated to the commenter. I'm really confused by the hyper-sensitivity. With the exception of Javascript conversation threads--- where they're overwhelmed by React vs. X---almost all other language focused threads on HN are full of people making comparison and contrast statements to different things.
- gens 9y ago
  If i went into every thread about rust and mentioned how Ada is great (or any other language, including C), id' get downvoted. Why is that ? "Hyper-sensitivity" ?
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    I've not done that in every thread on Rust, but I have made similar comments in Rust threads about areas where Ada has it beat with regard to some parts of the type system and compile-time guarantees and checks. If I was ever downvoted, it was not below base post karma (1).
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    > i went into every thread about rust and mentioned how Ada is great (or any other language, including C), id' get downvoted. If you just mentioned that Ada is great without a reason you might get downvoted or just asked to provide support for you statement. If you provide a reason or compare some of the features Ada has and how they might be better in some cases, I don't think you would be. Compared to other forums, I think HN is pretty good about that.

by gens 9y ago

rdtsc 9y ago

It is not completely different. Both Erlang and Rust emphasize safety at the top of their feature lists. That is contrast with most other languages / platforms.

gens 9y ago
It is COMPLETELY different from rust. Not only in the syntax, but also in the things it does and how it does them. http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content http://learnyousomeerlang.com/content A lot of languages "emphasize safety at the top of their feature lists". By a lot i mean A LOT. If you have to compare, Erlang is similar to Haskell. Rust is nothing like erlang.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > COMPLETELY different from rust. Not only in the syntax Why bring syntax as the first thing? What does that have todo with memory safety. > By a lot i mean A LOT. You mentioned Haskell and Ada so far. Which I agree with. What are the other ones?
  - gens 9y ago
    I also mentioned FORTRAN. A 10min investigation would bring fruit to your curiosity. But wth.. Lisp, scheme, closure, modula and smalltalk are the ones that come to my mind now that offer ONLY safe data access (modula3 has "unsafe" keyword, but only when talking to outside code). Actually R, awk, bc, shell and such are also like that, but not really general purpose. Languages that are "memory safe" by default, but include "unsafe" memory access (that come to my mind now) are C#, F#, C++ and such (Rust goes into this "category"). All functional languages are, AFAIK, "memory safe" by default (well.. you could make a functional language that lets you go out of bounds, but that wouldn't be a "pure" functional language). In fact, as far as i know, there are more programming languages that ARE "memory safe" then ones that are not. One could just go over the wikipedia list [0] and.. list them out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages While somewhat on the topic of functional vs "Turing" languages, here's a couple of videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eis11j_iGMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eis11j_iGMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQD7-AOjMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPQD7-AOjMI So.. the only thing that prompted you to talk about Rust is memory safety ? EDIT: > Why bring syntax as the first thing? What does that have todo with memory safety. Because the question i asked was "Can i ask why do you mention rust ? By that i mean what prompted you to write about rust here and now." and your answer was (paraphrased) "they bout emphasize memory safety", as if that was the only defining factor of a programming language.
    - rdtsc 9y ago
      > C#, F#, C++ Ok if C++ is memory safe, what's a memory unsafe language then? If concurrency units (threads, co-routines) share a heap they are not memory safe. In Rust they do but Rust provide compile time checks for make sure access is safe. awk, bc not production level languages. I think you're being disingenuous there. > the only thing that prompted you to talk about Rust is memory safety ? Yes > they bout emphasize memory safety", as if that was the only defining factor of a programming language. If you know anything about both languages that's at the top of their features list, which I mentioned. > I also mentioned FORTRAN. Ah interesting. So initializing a variable in FORTRAN would put that in thread local / separate heap?
      - gens 9y ago
        > awk, bc not production level languages. I think you're being disingenuous there. First of all, we are talking about programming languages here, not about how widely they are used in "production". I know that awk is used in one giant company to do an important thing (aka dealing with money). It wouldn't surprise me to find that bc is also used in "the industry". On that note, the TIOBE index lists Java, C, C++ and C# as being the most widely used languages. Awk is number 33, just below Ada, Prolog and Erlang. Rust is not even on the list, a list where assembly of all things holds the 14'th place. (bc is in the same group as rust there) Erlang is also used for plenty of "heavy" things, notably in the telecommunication and banking industries. Haskell is used by facebook for their spam filter. WhatsUp is written in erlang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnX3B9oaKzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnX3B9oaKzw > If you know anything about both languages that's at the top of their features list, which I mentioned. Not everything is about "features". > If concurrency units (threads, co-routines) share a heap they are not memory safe. If you want to talk about concurrency you should mention "Communicating sequential processes", where from Rust did take some wisdom, but Go (as a popular example) went full in. Functional programming (lamda calculus) also lends itself extremely well to "threading", intrinsically so. I think that discussions are about learning things, clarifying things and such "nonsense". But this discussion seems to be all about "winning at any cost". So.. goodbye.

im_down_w_otp 9y ago

The majority of the post was about a cool/interesting way Erlang does something and praising the linked article. The very last statement was a passing commentary about something that seemed conceptually correlated to the commenter. I'm really confused by the hyper-sensitivity. With the exception of Javascript conversation threads--- where they're overwhelmed by React vs. X---almost all other language focused threads on HN are full of people making comparison and contrast statements to different things.

gens 9y ago
If i went into every thread about rust and mentioned how Ada is great (or any other language, including C), id' get downvoted. Why is that ? "Hyper-sensitivity" ?
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  I've not done that in every thread on Rust, but I have made similar comments in Rust threads about areas where Ada has it beat with regard to some parts of the type system and compile-time guarantees and checks. If I was ever downvoted, it was not below base post karma (1).
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > i went into every thread about rust and mentioned how Ada is great (or any other language, including C), id' get downvoted. If you just mentioned that Ada is great without a reason you might get downvoted or just asked to provide support for you statement. If you provide a reason or compare some of the features Ada has and how they might be better in some cases, I don't think you would be. Compared to other forums, I think HN is pretty good about that.