5 ms·

I have long since learned that dismissing languages based on their syntax is very punitive, as novel and powerful languages very often come with unfamiliar synt

by h91wka 7y ago

I have long since learned that dismissing languages based on their syntax is very punitive, as novel and powerful languages very often come with unfamiliar syntax. Syntax is the least difficult thing to learn. Things like type system, approach to concurrency and memory management are orders of magnitude more important.

rukittenme 7y ago
Sure but I'm talking about on-boarding and generating developer interest. Appeal to junior developers and hobbyists is critical for large scale adoption. And like it or not a hobbyist's barriers to entry are different than a senior software engineer's.
- h91wka 7y ago
  > Appeal to junior developers and hobbyists is critical for large scale adoption. Hmm, I have personally trained Erlang to half a dozen juniors and interns. Any person who knows basics of programming can pick it up and write/fix mundane business code in less than a month. And I am a horrible teacher.
elcritch 7y ago
Generally true, but there's also such a large convergence on Algol style syntax these days that your mind builds up familiarity with them. That makes groking them quicker. Well for me looking at Erlang code is akin to looking at 'vase or two faces' photo, due to lower case being atoms and uppercase being variable names. And I dislike having to change ',' to '.' or vice versa when editing lines. Though three ',' and '.' endings do have an elegance to them. Elixir is nice in that it is similar enough to Julia that I can copy and paste pieces of code and make minor edits to translate. Even javascript is relatively similar if map/reduces are used. Python is a bit harder due to white space blocks and list comprehension.
- davidw 7y ago
  The ,.; line endings are a PITA when you refactor. I've heard them referred to as 'ant turd tokens'. It's a minor nitpick though, I still like Erlang a lot.
  - elcritch 7y ago
    lol, that's a unique description. A good linter could fix them, but they drive me crazy. I tend to shift lines around more than any other editing.

by h91wka 7y ago

rukittenme 7y ago

Sure but I'm talking about on-boarding and generating developer interest. Appeal to junior developers and hobbyists is critical for large scale adoption. And like it or not a hobbyist's barriers to entry are different than a senior software engineer's.

h91wka 7y ago
> Appeal to junior developers and hobbyists is critical for large scale adoption. Hmm, I have personally trained Erlang to half a dozen juniors and interns. Any person who knows basics of programming can pick it up and write/fix mundane business code in less than a month. And I am a horrible teacher.

elcritch 7y ago

Generally true, but there's also such a large convergence on Algol style syntax these days that your mind builds up familiarity with them. That makes groking them quicker. Well for me looking at Erlang code is akin to looking at 'vase or two faces' photo, due to lower case being atoms and uppercase being variable names. And I dislike having to change ',' to '.' or vice versa when editing lines. Though three ',' and '.' endings do have an elegance to them. Elixir is nice in that it is similar enough to Julia that I can copy and paste pieces of code and make minor edits to translate. Even javascript is relatively similar if map/reduces are used. Python is a bit harder due to white space blocks and list comprehension.

davidw 7y ago
The ,.; line endings are a PITA when you refactor. I've heard them referred to as 'ant turd tokens'. It's a minor nitpick though, I still like Erlang a lot.
- elcritch 7y ago
  lol, that's a unique description. A good linter could fix them, but they drive me crazy. I tend to shift lines around more than any other editing.