4 ms·

Erlang Inventors Talk Language Future

24 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

plinkplonk 15y ago
the infoq page layout is annoying (there is a button for a full page transcript) and I didn't see much (if anything) about the future of Erlang but there is some very interesting discussion there Q: There are a lot of ideas about implementing several languages on top of the same VM. So the JVM has started for Java and it has Java inside like and all the bytecode is Java like and then people try to implement other languages or whatever, even Erlang but also various languages like Scala and Ruby and other things. Is it a good idea? Joe Armstrong: No, it’s a silly idea. ... Because the virtual machine is good at nothing. I mean it’s equally bad for all languages, slightly better for Java than other machines, if you look at the JVM instructions set and the .Net instructions set, you can’t detect integer overflows and other things. If you look at JErlang because we do exact arithmetic you have to detect the overflows into big numbers if you want. So you have to do the multiplication twice with higher precision and compare and see you got an overflow, because you can’t get a hold of the overflow flag which is in the instructions set. So something like the low level virtual machine is much better. Forget this stuff it was a mistake. It will be a historical parenthesis. Robert Virding: I don’t think so actually. ...It might survive Java ... Joe Armstrong: But the good thing about the JVM is the brilliant implementation. But I don’t think the abstraction things are very good. You have to distinguish them...
- MichaelGG 15y ago
  The JVM (and with lesser adoption, the CLR) is what allows us to have new languages while at the same time seamlessly using tons of libraries. Calling it "a silly idea" seems excessive. The JVM has 15 years so far, and seems to be gaining traction for new languages. If anything, this is an argument for making somewhat more extensible VMs, or VMs that aim to provide a more comprehensive feature set. FWIW, unlike the JVM (afaik), the CLR does have checked instructions for overflow/underflow. Although I think the point was to nicely detect overflow to efficiently switch datatypes.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  I came here to write about how I hate the infoQ page layout too. The content on infoQ is really great, but I really dislike the page enough that sometimes I skip the content. If the webdevs are reading it, a more basic intuitive layout would be nice.

24 points by jemeshsu 15y ago

the infoq page layout is annoying (there is a button for a full page transcript) and I didn't see much (if anything) about the future of Erlang but there is some very interesting discussion there Q: There are a lot of ideas about implementing several languages on top of the same VM. So the JVM has started for Java and it has Java inside like and all the bytecode is Java like and then people try to implement other languages or whatever, even Erlang but also various languages like Scala and Ruby and other things. Is it a good idea? Joe Armstrong: No, it’s a silly idea. ... Because the virtual machine is good at nothing. I mean it’s equally bad for all languages, slightly better for Java than other machines, if you look at the JVM instructions set and the .Net instructions set, you can’t detect integer overflows and other things. If you look at JErlang because we do exact arithmetic you have to detect the overflows into big numbers if you want. So you have to do the multiplication twice with higher precision and compare and see you got an overflow, because you can’t get a hold of the overflow flag which is in the instructions set. So something like the low level virtual machine is much better. Forget this stuff it was a mistake. It will be a historical parenthesis. Robert Virding: I don’t think so actually. ...It might survive Java ... Joe Armstrong: But the good thing about the JVM is the brilliant implementation. But I don’t think the abstraction things are very good. You have to distinguish them...

MichaelGG 15y ago
The JVM (and with lesser adoption, the CLR) is what allows us to have new languages while at the same time seamlessly using tons of libraries. Calling it "a silly idea" seems excessive. The JVM has 15 years so far, and seems to be gaining traction for new languages. If anything, this is an argument for making somewhat more extensible VMs, or VMs that aim to provide a more comprehensive feature set. FWIW, unlike the JVM (afaik), the CLR does have checked instructions for overflow/underflow. Although I think the point was to nicely detect overflow to efficiently switch datatypes.
kenjackson 15y ago
I came here to write about how I hate the infoQ page layout too. The content on infoQ is really great, but I really dislike the page enough that sometimes I skip the content. If the webdevs are reading it, a more basic intuitive layout would be nice.