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Comparing and contrasting Erlang’s BEAM with Java’s JVM taught me an absolute ton about software engineering.

by codyb 4y ago

im_down_w_otp 4y ago
It taught me way more about sales and adoption than anything else. As a former Erlang developer it never ceases to amaze me that an entire language, standard library, toolchain, and runtime that's entirely dedicated to and on-paper perfectly technically suited for the most pervasive "backend" development challenges of our time somehow managed to effectively blow a 20-year technological headstart and failed to leverage the notoriety that should have come from several super high-profile "trendy" commercial use cases in the 2006-2013'ish era. Such that it's still relegated to general obscurity and is seeing its core competencies taken over by a hodgepodge of other languages and technologies that started much later but became rapidly more popular while also still arguably doing a worse job at those things than Erlang did.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  Erlang could be the literal silver bullet and people wouldn't use it because it's a funny looking language. I showed it to all my developer friends back around 2008 (I found out about it because a competitor used it and open sourced some of their stuff) and the only comments I ever got was how weird it looked. No one gave a shit about anything else. The story it told me wasn't about sales, it was about how shallow most developers are. Once nodejs came out it was the final nail in the coffin - callback hell solves all your problems, no funny looking language necessary!
  - valenterry 4y ago
    As nice as the beam might be, erlang is just not a great language by the judgment of many people, including me. Elixir can't make up for it either. I refuse to use a dynamically typed language for anything bigger than a couple hundred lines. On the JVM you have languages like Clojure and Scala, which both are top class in their domains imho. I wish there was the same for the beam.
    - worble 4y ago
      It's young but there's https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam
      - valenterry 4y ago
        I've actually seen that one, but I don't think it's close to being ready yet.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      I prefer Clojure to Elixir, but I'm surprised you mention it considering you refuse to use dynamically typed languages for non-trivial projects. I wish clojerl were more than just someone's side project.
      - valenterry 4y ago
        There is the ever going war between dynamically vs statically typed. I can only conclude that this comes down to personal preference, but maybe also a bit experience (since I would prefer to work with Clojure over Java even for a big project any day). I simply like to put in a lot of focus during certain times to make the compiler understand what I'm trying to do and then go to "autopilot" later and have the compiler tell me exactly all the places I have to change (and often how) when I implement something new or fix a bug.
        bcrosby95 4y ago
        I think it's mostly trading some problems for others. I work mostly with static typing but prefer dynamic typing, and I don't feel that static typing offers much benefit for most programs I work on. I actually really enjoy the assertive style of Elixir/Erlang. I think that while they are dynamically typed languages, the assertive style rests somewhere between dynamic and static typing, and in fact offers some safety benefits over your average statically typed language: while you don't get it at compile time, this idiomatic code offers benefits at runtime that most people don't bother with in other languages.

Comparing and contrasting Erlang’s BEAM with Java’s JVM taught me an absolute ton about software engineering.

by codyb 4y ago

Comparing and contrasting Erlang’s BEAM with Java’s JVM taught me an absolute ton about software engineering.

It taught me way more about sales and adoption than anything else. As a former Erlang developer it never ceases to amaze me that an entire language, standard library, toolchain, and runtime that's entirely dedicated to and on-paper perfectly technically suited for the most pervasive "backend" development challenges of our time somehow managed to effectively blow a 20-year technological headstart and failed to leverage the notoriety that should have come from several super high-profile "trendy" commercial use cases in the 2006-2013'ish era. Such that it's still relegated to general obscurity and is seeing its core competencies taken over by a hodgepodge of other languages and technologies that started much later but became rapidly more popular while also still arguably doing a worse job at those things than Erlang did.

bcrosby95 4y ago
Erlang could be the literal silver bullet and people wouldn't use it because it's a funny looking language. I showed it to all my developer friends back around 2008 (I found out about it because a competitor used it and open sourced some of their stuff) and the only comments I ever got was how weird it looked. No one gave a shit about anything else. The story it told me wasn't about sales, it was about how shallow most developers are. Once nodejs came out it was the final nail in the coffin - callback hell solves all your problems, no funny looking language necessary!
- valenterry 4y ago
  As nice as the beam might be, erlang is just not a great language by the judgment of many people, including me. Elixir can't make up for it either. I refuse to use a dynamically typed language for anything bigger than a couple hundred lines. On the JVM you have languages like Clojure and Scala, which both are top class in their domains imho. I wish there was the same for the beam.
  - worble 4y ago
    It's young but there's https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam https://github.com/gleam-lang/gleam
    - valenterry 4y ago
      I've actually seen that one, but I don't think it's close to being ready yet.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    I prefer Clojure to Elixir, but I'm surprised you mention it considering you refuse to use dynamically typed languages for non-trivial projects. I wish clojerl were more than just someone's side project.
    - valenterry 4y ago
      There is the ever going war between dynamically vs statically typed. I can only conclude that this comes down to personal preference, but maybe also a bit experience (since I would prefer to work with Clojure over Java even for a big project any day). I simply like to put in a lot of focus during certain times to make the compiler understand what I'm trying to do and then go to "autopilot" later and have the compiler tell me exactly all the places I have to change (and often how) when I implement something new or fix a bug.
      - bcrosby95 4y ago
        I think it's mostly trading some problems for others. I work mostly with static typing but prefer dynamic typing, and I don't feel that static typing offers much benefit for most programs I work on. I actually really enjoy the assertive style of Elixir/Erlang. I think that while they are dynamically typed languages, the assertive style rests somewhere between dynamic and static typing, and in fact offers some safety benefits over your average statically typed language: while you don't get it at compile time, this idiomatic code offers benefits at runtime that most people don't bother with in other languages.