[HN Gopher] A History of Erlang (2007)
___________________________________________________________________
A History of Erlang (2007)
Author : vinnyglennon
Score : 70 points
Date : 2020-04-05 09:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dl.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dl.acm.org)
| mycall wrote:
| I don't understand why people don't like Erlang so much [1]. It
| has many excellent features and the runtime stability is
| unmatched.
|
| [1] https://www.codementor.io/blog/worst-
| languages-2019-6mvbfg3w...
| seagreen wrote:
| I've had trouble getting into it because the ergonomics are so
| incredibly, wonderfully, art-project level rough.
|
| For example: $ erl Erlang/OTP 20
| [erts-9.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [ds:8:8:10]
| [async-threads:10] [kernel-poll:false] Eshell
| V9.2 (abort with ^G) 1> 2 + 2 1> 2 + 2.
| * 2: syntax error before: 2 1> 2 + 2. 4
|
| Note the trailing whitespace(!) after the last `2 + 2. `,
| necessary for the result to be printed.
|
| I was coming from Haskell which has its own very serious
| tooling and ergonomics problems. Trying Erlang made me realize
| things could be even worse. My internal model in my head of
| language designers/promoters is COMPLETELY wrong, I have
| absolutely no idea how people could spend time promoting
| languages with such strange tooling to a general audience with
| any expectation that it will work.[1]
|
| [1] Not to say that these languages/tools aren't awesome.
| Trailing whitespace matters semantically absolutely not at all.
| But if you're trying to promote a language with meaningful
| trailing REPL whitespace to a general 2020 audience there is
| some terrible mismatch between your expectations and your
| actual chance of success.
| moreoutput wrote:
| What am I missing here? I see no meaningful white space when
| running the same logic. I would expect this from any language
| when expressions aren't properly terminated.
|
| Eshell V10.4 (abort with ^G)
|
| 1> 2+2
|
| 1> 2+2.
|
| * 2: syntax error before: 2
|
| 1> 2 + 2.
|
| 4
|
| 2>
| WilliamEdward wrote:
| It's gaining a good track record because big industry giants
| are using it, but it's hard to force functional languages on
| people. The majority of people will learn OOP for a number of
| reasons unrelated to how good it is, while functional is
| becoming more like a niche artisanal craft.
| johnmarcus wrote:
| In me experience using Phoenix, it takes an eternity to
| compile. I imagine that turns a lot of folks off to begin with.
| 1_player wrote:
| Eternity? My 50kloc Elixir project compiles about the same
| time as my 10kloc next.js/React project.
|
| I've never noticed any compilation issue on my machine,
| though it's a beefy one (and still JS takes ages)
| [deleted]
| 1_player wrote:
| What a stupid list that is. Rust, Typescript, Elixir, Haskell,
| C not worth learning in 2019?
|
| If you know zero languages, yeah, go learn Javascript, Python
| or (ugh) Java. If you know one or more language, the ones
| listed above are definitely worth your time.
|
| You might find it a little hard to make a career out of knowing
| only Elm, but you might not grow very much professionally
| without widening your horizons a bit either.
| imglorp wrote:
| All true, plus other advantages, but I think there are some
| business requirements that prevent adoption. The syntax and
| runtime model are unfamiliar and there aren't enough users to
| get dependable critical hire biomass on a new project. Lots of
| management would rather have a lot of average, commoditized
| labor than a little rare, elite few.
|
| It's especially tragic because we keep repeating the same
| mistakes and discoveries over and over that OTP+Erlang solved
| ages ago. Eg most environments are still dinking around with
| clumsy hacks to help with GC and concurrency issues.
| cpach wrote:
| _"Lots of management would rather have a lot of average,
| commoditized labor than a little rare, elite few."_
|
| Very well put and probably very true.
| lostcolony wrote:
| It is. Management will invariably say "We want the best!",
| and they may even pay comparable to FAANG levels, but when
| it comes to language/runtime, it's "We need to be
| consistent" and "We need something we can hire for".
|
| Meaning even if management understands that a
| language/framework can be a competitive advantage, they
| will still be optimizing for lowest common denominator.
| rukittenme wrote:
| I like erlang. But erlang's syntax doesn't do it any favors.
| Might as well use elixir. Still the beam.
|
| I also don't think the beam's benefits are necessary for the
| vast majority of software which makes it perma-niche. "Why use
| erlang when I can use python, a database, and a distributed
| task queue?"
|
| I also really like Elm so I was sad to see it in the poll
| position, but I also don't base my language choices off of
| someone's blog.
| macintux wrote:
| Unfamiliar syntax is not the same as bad syntax. Erlang's
| syntax is much simpler than Elixir's, and generally more
| concise.
| crusso wrote:
| I guess it depends upon what you mean by "unfamiliar".
| Erlang's syntax is unnecessarily divergent from a lot of
| mainstream languages. So much so that it makes it more
| difficult for mainstream developers to get into.
|
| Elixir was modeled after Ruby for a reason. That reason was
| Ruby's very approachable and intuitive syntax.
| [deleted]
| lostcolony wrote:
| It makes it easier for people to dismiss it; it actually
| is easier to learn.
|
| Erlang it took me two weeks to become proficient enough
| to write useful things, without any real FP background.
| That includes leveraging OTP.
|
| Even with that in place (plus a lot of Java, Javascript,
| some others, plus many more years of experience), it took
| me longer to be comfortable with Elixir, and there are
| still bits that surprise me or bite me (pinning a
| variable to match it rather than rebind it, macros, etc).
| Jtsummers wrote:
| What's hard about Erlang's syntax? People keep telling me
| it's hard, but I was literally failing out of college at
| the time and still managed to learn it without much
| trouble (perhaps a month of occasional practice). I give
| that context because I can't imagine that I was
| struggling that much with school if I'm significantly
| above average for our field.
| crusso wrote:
| "People keep telling me it's hard"
|
| Shouldn't that be enough to let you know that people at
| least don't find it to be intuitive?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| No, because no one has ever explained how it's hard. They
| just keep repeating that refrain, and to date I haven't
| heard it from someone who spent more than a day with the
| language or gave it any serious consideration.
|
| If people can enumerate the problems with the language
| (like I've seen or done for other languages), then I'll
| entertain the complaint.
|
| So far the closest thing to a real complaint has been
| about variables-not-being-variables (in the C, anything
| can change, sense). But this is 2020, mutable-by-default
| is a known bad idea so this is hardly novel or a
| challenge.
|
| The other reason I've heard is the lack of loops. If a
| professional programmer can't handle recursion, they need
| to go back to basics. I'm not trying to be mean with that
| one, but recursion is pretty easy.
| rukittenme wrote:
| I agree with you. Erlang is not as hard as people make it
| out to be. However...
|
| Look at this piece of code: https://github.com/erlang/reb
| ar3/blob/master/src/r3.erl#L32-...
|
| In this example the keyword "end" ends with "", ";", and
| "." all within 6 lines of each other.
|
| In this example the keyword "ok" ends with "" and ";".
|
| In this example `Self` "exclamation marks" `Ref`.
|
| All of this is easily understood with some experience but
| you have to admit that `erlang.send(Self, Ref)` is much
| more easily understood than some symbol that has to be
| googled. And consider this, a junior dev is going to be
| overwhelmed with all the syntactic sugar. They're just
| learning how to define and call functions.
|
| All of these issues matter if your goal is to on-board as
| many hobbyists and juniors as possible. (Which shouldn't
| be the goal of every language).
|
| I'm very happy with Erlang. I don't want it to change.
| h91wka wrote:
| I have long since learned that dismissing languages based on
| their syntax is very punitive, as novel and powerful
| languages very often come with unfamiliar syntax. Syntax is
| the least difficult thing to learn. Things like type system,
| approach to concurrency and memory management are orders of
| magnitude more important.
| elcritch wrote:
| Generally true, but there's also such a large convergence
| on Algol style syntax these days that your mind builds up
| familiarity with them. That makes groking them quicker.
|
| Well for me looking at Erlang code is akin to looking at
| 'vase or two faces' photo, due to lower case being atoms
| and uppercase being variable names. And I dislike having to
| change ',' to '.' or vice versa when editing lines. Though
| three ',' and '.' endings do have an elegance to them.
|
| Elixir is nice in that it is similar enough to Julia that I
| can copy and paste pieces of code and make minor edits to
| translate. Even javascript is relatively similar if
| map/reduces are used. Python is a bit harder due to white
| space blocks and list comprehension.
| davidw wrote:
| The ,.; line endings are a PITA when you refactor. I've
| heard them referred to as 'ant turd tokens'. It's a minor
| nitpick though, I still like Erlang a lot.
| elcritch wrote:
| lol, that's a unique description. A good linter could fix
| them, but they drive me crazy. I tend to shift lines
| around more than any other editing.
| rukittenme wrote:
| Sure but I'm talking about on-boarding and generating
| developer interest. Appeal to junior developers and
| hobbyists is critical for large scale adoption. And like it
| or not a hobbyist's barriers to entry are different than a
| senior software engineer's.
| h91wka wrote:
| > Appeal to junior developers and hobbyists is critical
| for large scale adoption.
|
| Hmm, I have personally trained Erlang to half a dozen
| juniors and interns. Any person who knows basics of
| programming can pick it up and write/fix mundane business
| code in less than a month. And I am a horrible teacher.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| The more I've played with Erlang, the more I've liked its
| syntax. What I don't like is dealing w/ strings in Erlang.
| salimmadjd wrote:
| 100%! I actually prefer it now over elixir. Once you get to
| use it and spend a few weeks working with it, it becomes so
| expressive and it feels so clean to read and understand.
| [deleted]
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I actually find Erlangs syntax a breath of fresh air. Coming from
| Python, this may sound odd, but there's something soothing about
| it.
|
| I much prefer Erlangs syntax to Go, for example. I also much
| prefer Erlangs syntax to Elixir; I never liked ruby either, so
| there's perhaps no surprise there.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| i completely agree.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-04-06 23:00 UTC)