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> , but I don't think it's much more "robust" than, say, Linux, It is much more robust than Linux. If Linux kernel has a segfault and crashes, it takes everyth
by rdtsc 9y ago
> , but I don't think it's much more "robust" than, say, Linux,
It is much more robust than Linux. If Linux kernel has a segfault and crashes, it takes everything with it when it panics. If one of the million Erlang processes which has an isolated heap crashes, it can probably safely restart (maybe with a few other ones it is linked with).
- tomsmeding 9y agoBad analogy, but another commenter has already pointed this out. :) But I do suppose that Linux has a higher chance of having a kernel panic than BEAM having an internal segmentation fault, simply since Linux has more code and thus a larger surface area for bugs.
- rdtsc 9y agoRight, right. Agree. I think the right comparison is running on Linux vs running on BEAM VM. Linux became popular, among other reasons, because it allowed for strongly isolated processes. Those can crash, stop and that's fine. Other processes of other users don't even care or notice. Erlang VM solved the same problem for an application environment - millions of lightweight processes and run, individually crash restart because they are isolated. To extend the analogy: running with threads that share memory between themselves is a bit like running on a Windows 3.1 machine - were if the calculator is broken it can crash and overwrite the memory used by the word processor