3 ms·

Joe Armstrong About Erlang (interview)

30 points by silentbicycle 16y ago

fogus 16y ago
Classic quote: You've been reading my OOP sucks blogs. I saw a blog yesterday, they said Erlang is actually more object oriented, truer to the spirit of pure object orientation than all object oriented languages. You could take two views: you could say either Erlang isn't object oriented - which I used to say a few years ago - or you could say it's more object oriented than all the object oriented languages.
- davidw 16y ago
  Which is a bit glib though; because, especially if you've got something like OTP, you do a variety of things "underneath" that have nothing to do with sending messages back and forth.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    And most OO languages devolve to imperative masses within methods. You could see Erlang as an OO/functional language (similar to OCaml, except asynchronous and dynamically typed) whereas C++, Java or Python are OO/imperative.
    - davidw 16y ago
      If you really wanted to see it that way, I think something like Reia might be a more interesting way of capturing it, myself. OTP has too much boilerplate for my tastes.
jeff95350 16y ago
"[in OO programming] I also have what you would call the categorization problem: which object do I put my code in?" It seems to me like object-oriented style forces hierarchies onto the problem. It's fine to use hierarchies when it is a part of the problem, but when it's not, it causes all kinds of problems. Erlang doesn't seem to impose hierarchies at all.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Erlang doesn't seem to impose hierarchies at all. True and not true, if you see Erlang as an object oriented language you still have three hierarchies at least: 1. for a given behavior, should it be packaged as a process or as a function? And if it's a function, in which module does it live? Granted, erlang's modules are "flat" so you don't get much of a hierarchy here. 2. Processes are organized in trees, because to send a message to a process you need a reference to it (its pid). Processes can be opted out of a tree by registering it globally, but that's about it. You could argue it's more of a bush as processes can communicate in a ring or with one another. 3. Supervision trees are most definitely hierarchies.

30 points by silentbicycle 16y ago

fogus 16y ago

Classic quote: You've been reading my OOP sucks blogs. I saw a blog yesterday, they said Erlang is actually more object oriented, truer to the spirit of pure object orientation than all object oriented languages. You could take two views: you could say either Erlang isn't object oriented - which I used to say a few years ago - or you could say it's more object oriented than all the object oriented languages.

davidw 16y ago
Which is a bit glib though; because, especially if you've got something like OTP, you do a variety of things "underneath" that have nothing to do with sending messages back and forth.
- masklinn 16y ago
  And most OO languages devolve to imperative masses within methods. You could see Erlang as an OO/functional language (similar to OCaml, except asynchronous and dynamically typed) whereas C++, Java or Python are OO/imperative.
  - davidw 16y ago
    If you really wanted to see it that way, I think something like Reia might be a more interesting way of capturing it, myself. OTP has too much boilerplate for my tastes.

jeff95350 16y ago

"[in OO programming] I also have what you would call the categorization problem: which object do I put my code in?" It seems to me like object-oriented style forces hierarchies onto the problem. It's fine to use hierarchies when it is a part of the problem, but when it's not, it causes all kinds of problems. Erlang doesn't seem to impose hierarchies at all.

masklinn 16y ago
> Erlang doesn't seem to impose hierarchies at all. True and not true, if you see Erlang as an object oriented language you still have three hierarchies at least: 1. for a given behavior, should it be packaged as a process or as a function? And if it's a function, in which module does it live? Granted, erlang's modules are "flat" so you don't get much of a hierarchy here. 2. Processes are organized in trees, because to send a message to a process you need a reference to it (its pid). Processes can be opted out of a tree by registering it globally, but that's about it. You could argue it's more of a bush as processes can communicate in a ring or with one another. 3. Supervision trees are most definitely hierarchies.