5 ms·

I wonder why Google never adopted Erlang. Collectively, google believes they are right and the world is wrong. Anything pre-existing is dirty and unworthy of

by seiji 13y ago

I wonder why Google never adopted Erlang. Collectively, google believes they are right and the world is wrong. Anything pre-existing is dirty and unworthy of their genius if they didn't invent it themselves. So, even though we have 20 years of Erlang and production concurrency experience out there in one solid language, it's just ignored (except for parts they want to get "inspired by"). All of that is fine in isolation, but then the fadsters jump in. You know who they are. They're the people who live to consume fads and only do the latest thing without any consideration to what came before. Soon you'll have thousands of blog posts about how Go is changing the future of programming because they invented VM-scheduled lightweight green threads load balanced over your CPU topology.

mseepgood 13y ago
> except for parts they want to get "inspired by" Go's concurrency was not "inspired by" Erlang. It was inspired by Hoare's CSP. Pike and Luca Cardelli created a CSP based language called Squeak in 1985: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.8493 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.8...
- seiji 13y ago
  I was just ranting from a base of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235030. I don't actually know anything.
cageface 13y ago
Google is heavily dependent on Java, Linux, Python, C++ etc. About two seconds of thought is all it takes to realize what an absurd claim this is. Google is almost alone in building internet services at its scale. The people calling for adoption of exotic tech like Erlang without understanding their unique requirements are the fadsters.
- derefr 13y ago
  "Exotic tech" is the most amusing ad-hominem insult I've heard in a while. Erlang has more users than Go, at least, and more companies you could name off the top of your head have Erlang deployed somewhere (Github and Heroku, for just two.) Also, Google doesn't have "unique requirements." They have a unique set of overlapping, pretty common requirements. Some requirements in that set (e.g. serving data on dl.google.com) could be solved perfectly well by Erlang, and could have been for years, but can also now be solved perfectly well by Go. That they are now being solved by Go is likely an effect of the "Golang advocacy group" that has formed at Google. Others can't be solved by Erlang, but can be solved by Go (e.g. CPU-bound matrix-multiplications for PageRank index calculation), or vice-versa (e.g. deploying new Google Talk daemon code without dropping the XMPP connection.) I'm not saying Google could have used Erlang for everything. I'm not even saying there's not a place for Go. Just that Erlang has been around for a long time filling nearly the same niche as Go, and if Google are really rewriting all this software for the sake of switching to a language that is more apt for the problem-domain, then they could have done that years ago, without having to develop their own little language to do it with first.
  - packetslave 13y ago
    I would say Google has a couple of fairly uncommon requirements: ridiculous scale and the fact that even a brief outage is world news. In terms of "rewriting all this software", I wouldn't say it's at all for the sake of switching to Go. It would be more accurate to say "well, we need to rewrite this thing anyway because it's no longer scalable or maintainable. Let's give Go a shot instead of C++/Java)"
    - threeseed 13y ago
      Fairly uncommon compared to your everyday website sure. But I can think of hundreds of companies that have ridiculous scale and brief outages would be newsworthy: Airline bookings, Stock exchanges, Betting markets, Postal services, Major websites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn), Online Games, Video services, Payment gateways, Banks etc.
    - banachtarski 13y ago
- seiji 13y ago
  Well, they wrote their own infringing java VM for mobile, tried to fix Python (but it didn't work out), essentially run Google Linux internally with various levels of contribution back upstream, and their C++ is (I'm just guessing here) nigh unreadable by non-übernerds.
  - marshray 13y ago
    Wrote an "infringing Java VM" now did they? Did you actually read the court's ruling on that?
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      I did, and to be honest it is not much different than Microsoft with Visual J++. Without the "Google is cool glasses" on, I came to the conclusion that Google just took enough care to avoid all the legal traps that could make them loose a suit like it happened to Microsoft.
      - marshray 13y ago
        Disclosure: I work for Microsoft but that is a very new thing (the J++ dispute was many years ago) IIRC, the J++ suit had to do with the specific terms of a license agreement that Sun and Microsoft had entered into. I don't think it was much like this where Google claimed to have done a non-infringing clean-room reimplementation claiming this didn't require a license from Sun/Oracle at all.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        Yes, this is what I mean by taking care. Google did a clean room implementation, while making a clear distinction between Java the language and Java the VM, while avoiding doing any kind of public statement that could violate the Java licensing trademark. So now you have an environment, where Java the language version 6 can be used, while Java the language version 8 is going to appear next year, without any signs of ever appearing in Android. Now, quite possibly as consequence of the litigation, Java developers targeting Android have to live with Java the language version 6 forever. The end result is no different than the fragmentation Microsoft attempted with J++, but since it is Google, it is ok to do so.
packetslave 13y ago
Collectively, google believes they are right and the world is wrong. Anything pre-existing is dirty and unworthy of their genius if they didn't invent it themselves. Someone a bit more objective might say "Google believes that it's quite hard to integrate third-party software into their huge existing infrastructure and make it work at their enormous scale." They might also say "Google believes the infrastructure they use is the right choice for their business needs, and Googlers like to tell the world about some of it, in case it's the right choice for them, too." But I'm a Googler and you clearly have an axe to grind, so it's unlikely we're going to agree.
- dalek_cannes 13y ago
  I used to work at a place that tried to reinvent everything from the wheel up, too. Over time I came to realize that avoiding third party libraries and technology stacks was more about long term support and hackability than anything else. Unfortunately, newer recruits never realize this and accept the internal stack as religion. They never bother to learn third party alternatives. We had a joke that went: "If you were ever fired and had to find a job elsewhere, you'll have to start by implementing your own X", X being a heavily used internal library that allowed an entire generation of developers to do certain things without ever knowing the underlying system calls.

by seiji 13y ago

mseepgood 13y ago

> except for parts they want to get "inspired by" Go's concurrency was not "inspired by" Erlang. It was inspired by Hoare's CSP. Pike and Luca Cardelli created a CSP based language called Squeak in 1985: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.8493 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.26.8...

seiji 13y ago
I was just ranting from a base of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235030. I don't actually know anything.

cageface 13y ago

Google is heavily dependent on Java, Linux, Python, C++ etc. About two seconds of thought is all it takes to realize what an absurd claim this is. Google is almost alone in building internet services at its scale. The people calling for adoption of exotic tech like Erlang without understanding their unique requirements are the fadsters.

derefr 13y ago
"Exotic tech" is the most amusing ad-hominem insult I've heard in a while. Erlang has more users than Go, at least, and more companies you could name off the top of your head have Erlang deployed somewhere (Github and Heroku, for just two.) Also, Google doesn't have "unique requirements." They have a unique set of overlapping, pretty common requirements. Some requirements in that set (e.g. serving data on dl.google.com) could be solved perfectly well by Erlang, and could have been for years, but can also now be solved perfectly well by Go. That they are now being solved by Go is likely an effect of the "Golang advocacy group" that has formed at Google. Others can't be solved by Erlang, but can be solved by Go (e.g. CPU-bound matrix-multiplications for PageRank index calculation), or vice-versa (e.g. deploying new Google Talk daemon code without dropping the XMPP connection.) I'm not saying Google could have used Erlang for everything. I'm not even saying there's not a place for Go. Just that Erlang has been around for a long time filling nearly the same niche as Go, and if Google are really rewriting all this software for the sake of switching to a language that is more apt for the problem-domain, then they could have done that years ago, without having to develop their own little language to do it with first.
- packetslave 13y ago
  I would say Google has a couple of fairly uncommon requirements: ridiculous scale and the fact that even a brief outage is world news. In terms of "rewriting all this software", I wouldn't say it's at all for the sake of switching to Go. It would be more accurate to say "well, we need to rewrite this thing anyway because it's no longer scalable or maintainable. Let's give Go a shot instead of C++/Java)"
  - threeseed 13y ago
    Fairly uncommon compared to your everyday website sure. But I can think of hundreds of companies that have ridiculous scale and brief outages would be newsworthy: Airline bookings, Stock exchanges, Betting markets, Postal services, Major websites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn), Online Games, Video services, Payment gateways, Banks etc.
  - banachtarski 13y ago
seiji 13y ago
Well, they wrote their own infringing java VM for mobile, tried to fix Python (but it didn't work out), essentially run Google Linux internally with various levels of contribution back upstream, and their C++ is (I'm just guessing here) nigh unreadable by non-übernerds.
- marshray 13y ago
  Wrote an "infringing Java VM" now did they? Did you actually read the court's ruling on that?
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    I did, and to be honest it is not much different than Microsoft with Visual J++. Without the "Google is cool glasses" on, I came to the conclusion that Google just took enough care to avoid all the legal traps that could make them loose a suit like it happened to Microsoft.
    - marshray 13y ago
      Disclosure: I work for Microsoft but that is a very new thing (the J++ dispute was many years ago) IIRC, the J++ suit had to do with the specific terms of a license agreement that Sun and Microsoft had entered into. I don't think it was much like this where Google claimed to have done a non-infringing clean-room reimplementation claiming this didn't require a license from Sun/Oracle at all.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        Yes, this is what I mean by taking care. Google did a clean room implementation, while making a clear distinction between Java the language and Java the VM, while avoiding doing any kind of public statement that could violate the Java licensing trademark. So now you have an environment, where Java the language version 6 can be used, while Java the language version 8 is going to appear next year, without any signs of ever appearing in Android. Now, quite possibly as consequence of the litigation, Java developers targeting Android have to live with Java the language version 6 forever. The end result is no different than the fragmentation Microsoft attempted with J++, but since it is Google, it is ok to do so.

packetslave 13y ago

Collectively, google believes they are right and the world is wrong. Anything pre-existing is dirty and unworthy of their genius if they didn't invent it themselves. Someone a bit more objective might say "Google believes that it's quite hard to integrate third-party software into their huge existing infrastructure and make it work at their enormous scale." They might also say "Google believes the infrastructure they use is the right choice for their business needs, and Googlers like to tell the world about some of it, in case it's the right choice for them, too." But I'm a Googler and you clearly have an axe to grind, so it's unlikely we're going to agree.

dalek_cannes 13y ago
I used to work at a place that tried to reinvent everything from the wheel up, too. Over time I came to realize that avoiding third party libraries and technology stacks was more about long term support and hackability than anything else. Unfortunately, newer recruits never realize this and accept the internal stack as religion. They never bother to learn third party alternatives. We had a joke that went: "If you were ever fired and had to find a job elsewhere, you'll have to start by implementing your own X", X being a heavily used internal library that allowed an entire generation of developers to do certain things without ever knowing the underlying system calls.