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I've been a noticing a trend recently whereby all the standard Erlang advocacy articles, tutorials and feature overviews are taken, have 's/Erlang/Elixir' run o

I've been a noticing a trend recently whereby all the standard Erlang advocacy articles, tutorials and feature overviews are taken, have 's/Erlang/Elixir' run on top of them and reposted as if they're all novelties of Elixir.

zabi_rauf 11y ago
Author here. My intent was never to say that this feature is something unique to Elixir. The intent was to introduce pattern matching to people new to it with a solid example. It just happened that my choice of language was Elixir and I'm aware that it wouldn't have been possible in Elixir if Erlang didn't had it in the first place :).
arthurcolle 11y ago
Binary pattern matching is commonly used in Erlang/OTP and given Elixir being used in nonspecific-to-Erlang contexts it makes sense to showcase them in the new Elixir language application context. No duplicity on the part of the author if you ask me :)
59nadir 11y ago
I don't know where you got this impression from. It's pretty much never explicitly stated that anything is Elixir-specific. It just so happens that Elixir is the top horse of today for representing the Erlang ecosystem and so that's the vehicle people choose to present the features of that ecosystem, mostly.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > It just so happens that Elixir is the top horse of today for representing the Erlang ecosystem and so that's the vehicle people choose to present the features of that ecosystem, mostly. On HN maybe, but out there it is erlang ahead by more than just a noselength. Elixir is nice and promising but by no objective measure is it 'the top horse'.
- dpeck 11y ago
  Elixir is the new fast well designed car, Erlang/BEAM is the drivetrain.
jordan0day 11y ago
I've been noticing a trend recently whereby all the standard BCPL advocacy articles, tutorials and feature overviews are taken, have 's/BCPL/[some newer language]' run on top of them and reposted as if they're all novelties of [some newer language]. Seriously, though, I don't get this critique? It's not like binary pattern matching was novel in Erlang, either. Personally, I'm just happy to see an article on binary pattern matching (in any language!) on hn.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  You mean ALGOL, not BCPL. It's just that the complete lack of mention of Erlang, the jab at OOP languages (which is ironic given the actor model is relatively OO) and presenting the reuse of an Erlang construct as an Elixir novelty reeks of magpie hype. It's like the old joke about Ruby being renamed Rails, I have a feeling Erlang is being renamed to Elixir.
  - vvanders 11y ago
    I don't think you'll find this the case in the Erlang community. Joe Armstrong has some pretty positive things to say about it: http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html

zabi_rauf 11y ago

Author here. My intent was never to say that this feature is something unique to Elixir. The intent was to introduce pattern matching to people new to it with a solid example. It just happened that my choice of language was Elixir and I'm aware that it wouldn't have been possible in Elixir if Erlang didn't had it in the first place :).

arthurcolle 11y ago

Binary pattern matching is commonly used in Erlang/OTP and given Elixir being used in nonspecific-to-Erlang contexts it makes sense to showcase them in the new Elixir language application context. No duplicity on the part of the author if you ask me :)

59nadir 11y ago

I don't know where you got this impression from. It's pretty much never explicitly stated that anything is Elixir-specific. It just so happens that Elixir is the top horse of today for representing the Erlang ecosystem and so that's the vehicle people choose to present the features of that ecosystem, mostly.

jacquesm 11y ago
> It just so happens that Elixir is the top horse of today for representing the Erlang ecosystem and so that's the vehicle people choose to present the features of that ecosystem, mostly. On HN maybe, but out there it is erlang ahead by more than just a noselength. Elixir is nice and promising but by no objective measure is it 'the top horse'.
dpeck 11y ago
Elixir is the new fast well designed car, Erlang/BEAM is the drivetrain.

jordan0day 11y ago

I've been noticing a trend recently whereby all the standard BCPL advocacy articles, tutorials and feature overviews are taken, have 's/BCPL/[some newer language]' run on top of them and reposted as if they're all novelties of [some newer language]. Seriously, though, I don't get this critique? It's not like binary pattern matching was novel in Erlang, either. Personally, I'm just happy to see an article on binary pattern matching (in any language!) on hn.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
You mean ALGOL, not BCPL. It's just that the complete lack of mention of Erlang, the jab at OOP languages (which is ironic given the actor model is relatively OO) and presenting the reuse of an Erlang construct as an Elixir novelty reeks of magpie hype. It's like the old joke about Ruby being renamed Rails, I have a feeling Erlang is being renamed to Elixir.
- vvanders 11y ago
  I don't think you'll find this the case in the Erlang community. Joe Armstrong has some pretty positive things to say about it: http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html