4 ms·

People are always asking what is a good HN article, I'd say this is, great links to research that backs up many of the assertions. "Erlang matters today becaus

People are always asking what is a good HN article, I'd say this is, great links to research that backs up many of the assertions. "Erlang matters today because it demonstrates how these semantics can be elegantly packaged in one language, execution model and virtual machine." I think yes, in a theoretical sense this is absolutely true. The question is why is it not a language in widespread practical use?

davidw 14y ago
Here's something I wrote about Erlang a while back, and why I don't think it'll ever go mainstream: http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/09/22/erlang http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/09/22/erlang
petrohi 14y ago
One of the huge hurdles for me personally was Erlang's heritage of Prolog syntax. I actually gave up once, and only cleared it second time around. Now I can see certain elegance and succinctness in the syntax.
- seiji 14y ago
  That is the only proper way to learn Erlang. Your first week or two becomes so frustrating, you just leave for a month. Then it starts to click when you come back. Things are much easier now with line numbers in error messages though.
klibertp 14y ago
> The question is why is it not a language in widespread practical use? 1. It kind of is, I think RabbitMQ, CouchDB and Riak are doing ok, for example. 2. Both syntax and semantics are sufficiently different from "industry standard" to be a hurdle for majority of people... I'm being told. I don't understand this; the more different the language is the more interesting it seems to me and the more happy I am to learn it[1], but I heard this argument enough times to accept it as (sad) reality. [1] And there is still so many of them to learn! Take a look at any one RosettaCode page (http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator) if you don't believe me :)
- derdesign 14y ago
  Adding to your response: Big ones are using Erlang, such as Github, Heroku, Facebook and Amazon...
- codewright 14y ago
  RabbitMQ has some pretty serious limitations related to it being implemented on Erlang that keep it pretty strictly in the realm of being a message queue rather than a generic queue. CouchDB is more C++ than Erlang these days, bad example. It hasn't been mostly Erlang for a really long time. Erlang basically only does the clustering behavior, which is something Zookeeper et al. do already. Riak is the only solid example out of those you listed, and its known for having poor raw performance, excellent availability, easy clustering, and awful usability.
  - calibraxis 14y ago
    > RabbitMQ has some pretty serious limitations related to it being implemented on Erlang that keep it pretty strictly in the realm of being a message queue rather than a generic queue. Interesting, where can I learn more about this claim? What are the incompatible facets of a generic queue and Erlang? What is an example of these generic queues (or if it's only an ideal, what are its characteristics)?
    - codewright 14y ago
      Just don't use it for big, long-lived work queues and you'll be fine. If the queue gets badly backed up, you're probably fucked. Larger, longer-lived work queues are really more of a Hadoop thing, not an in-memory queue thing.
      - philsnow 14y ago
        > If the queue gets badly backed up, you're probably fucked. Isn't that true of any queue ?
        14y ago

davidw 14y ago

Here's something I wrote about Erlang a while back, and why I don't think it'll ever go mainstream: http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/09/22/erlang http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/09/22/erlang

petrohi 14y ago

One of the huge hurdles for me personally was Erlang's heritage of Prolog syntax. I actually gave up once, and only cleared it second time around. Now I can see certain elegance and succinctness in the syntax.

seiji 14y ago
That is the only proper way to learn Erlang. Your first week or two becomes so frustrating, you just leave for a month. Then it starts to click when you come back. Things are much easier now with line numbers in error messages though.

klibertp 14y ago

> The question is why is it not a language in widespread practical use? 1. It kind of is, I think RabbitMQ, CouchDB and Riak are doing ok, for example. 2. Both syntax and semantics are sufficiently different from "industry standard" to be a hurdle for majority of people... I'm being told. I don't understand this; the more different the language is the more interesting it seems to me and the more happy I am to learn it[1], but I heard this argument enough times to accept it as (sad) reality. [1] And there is still so many of them to learn! Take a look at any one RosettaCode page (http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator) if you don't believe me :)

derdesign 14y ago
Adding to your response: Big ones are using Erlang, such as Github, Heroku, Facebook and Amazon...
codewright 14y ago
RabbitMQ has some pretty serious limitations related to it being implemented on Erlang that keep it pretty strictly in the realm of being a message queue rather than a generic queue. CouchDB is more C++ than Erlang these days, bad example. It hasn't been mostly Erlang for a really long time. Erlang basically only does the clustering behavior, which is something Zookeeper et al. do already. Riak is the only solid example out of those you listed, and its known for having poor raw performance, excellent availability, easy clustering, and awful usability.
- calibraxis 14y ago
  > RabbitMQ has some pretty serious limitations related to it being implemented on Erlang that keep it pretty strictly in the realm of being a message queue rather than a generic queue. Interesting, where can I learn more about this claim? What are the incompatible facets of a generic queue and Erlang? What is an example of these generic queues (or if it's only an ideal, what are its characteristics)?
  - codewright 14y ago
    Just don't use it for big, long-lived work queues and you'll be fine. If the queue gets badly backed up, you're probably fucked. Larger, longer-lived work queues are really more of a Hadoop thing, not an in-memory queue thing.
    - philsnow 14y ago
      > If the queue gets badly backed up, you're probably fucked. Isn't that true of any queue ?
      - 14y ago