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Every time I read something about the weird Erlang syntax I get so tired and try and tell myself not to get into the discussion, it's not worth the effort, some
by rvirding 14y ago
Every time I read something about the weird Erlang syntax I get so tired and try and tell myself not to get into the discussion, it's not worth the effort, some people will never just never learn, etc. But sometimes I can't help myself. So some of my thoughts on this:
- Syntax is the easiest part of learning a language. It's all written down and its just a RTFM. And yes, I have written a lot of C and lisp and prolog and erlang and ... and I never have problems with the syntax.
- If people worry so much about the syntax what happens when they get to the semantics?
- Seriously, why would you want to Erlang to have similar syntax to a language with different semantics? In my view that would be asking for trouble. I think one reason why I haven't had trouble with mixing languages is that both the syntax and the semantics are different. C looks like and behaves like C while Erlang looks like and behaves like Erlang.
- The erlang syntax is actually very simple, much simpler than the languages you would like it to look like.
I will now stop before I say something nasty.
I liked the blog.
- petrohi 14y agoWhen semantics are very different and syntax tries to pretend they aren't to create false familiarity this will lead to some very painful brain-splits later on. I can assert from my own experience with alternating the use of = between Erlang and C++. Glad you liked the blog.
- rvirding 14y agoYes, in retrospect using = was probably not a very good choice. I will admit some things in Erlang didn't receive much thought before being added while to some things we gave a lot thought; for example the language/systems basic properties and the semantics of concurrency, message passing and error handling.
- hassy 14y agoIt's almost an acid test: the person complaining either has only a cursory familiarity with Erlang or is someone who prefers style over substance.