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Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

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Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#141

Post by mh- »

jerf wrote: post #56
Nogwater wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not knowing enough about Erlang/OTP or Go: Would it be possible for more of OTP to be replicated in a Go 2.0? What's missing? What would it take? What can never be replicated?

You can recover a substantial portion, but there's a few things you can't quite get back. Since Go is a mutable-state language, and also a shared-state language (isolation is by convention, not by language design), you have to live with the consequences of that. In my supervisor tree implementation, the restart of a monitored goroutine is just to fire off a new goroutine on the exact same object again; if you still h…

really looking forward to that blog post. I clicked to your github profile in your other comment upthread, but realized I was already following you there after seeing gomempool. :)

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#142

Post by Consultant32452 »

Luc wrote: post #92
gordonguthrie wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's doing this in good faith because I, the original poster, asked him too. This is the best answer on the page (for me).

But this doesn't tell you anything, other than that someone who's not interested and pressed for time won't put any effort into it. It's a trivial result.

If someone tells me to try out a new language I generally give it about 10-15 minutes. If I'm not running hello world by then I'm not interested in something I'd be taking a casual interest in. The only time I'm giving it more than 15 minutes is when I have a real business need for it or want to enhance my resume with something that has a lot of businesses seeking that skill. Python, for example, I was easily able to get up and running in under 15 minutes with a hello world and now I use it regularly for lots of little tasks. I can't be fussed to toy around something that takes too much work/infrastructure to get up and running. There's other options out there I can be more productive in faster.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#143

Post by gordonguthrie »

vertex-four wrote: post #109
Guvante wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand his point. He isn't saying that Erlang is a toy language, he is saying that documentation makes Erlang look like a toy language. i.e. showing him how his thought was wrong doesn't change the fact that many other people will probably make a similar thoughts.

No, I understood the OP's point, I just decided to point them towards a better resource in the case that they do want to learn more about it at some point. I agree that the Erlang site is utterly dreadful.

Yessum, it is indeedy...

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#144

Post by gordonguthrie »

asattarmd wrote: post #119
brown9-2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you know nothing about Erlang, as the poster was pretending. How do you decide if it's worth your time to learn more about that language/platform? Certainly what the official website tells you factors into that largely. You seem to be looking into this from the perspective that everyone must already know what Erlang is all about, so there doesn't need to be an effort to reach out to new users - which would co…

I'm not saying that Erlang shouldn't reach out to new users. I'm saying that new users should look past the website and put in a little effort to know about Erlang. Dismissing a language because of the its website is not just right.

Come on! I am writing LuvvieScript a compile-to-javascript dialect of Erlang.

This is a list of compile-to-javascript languages: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

Is any developer going to give every language on that list the same consideration?

No. Not possible.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#145

Post by gordonguthrie »

Luc wrote: post #113
pdabbadabba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if the question is "Why isn't Erlang more popular?" then I would think that pointing out that "someone who's not interested and pressed for time won't put any effort into it" is a perfectly fine answer. The clear implication is that the resources currently available for would-be Erlang adopters require an unrealistic level of interest and time to get them over the hump. It tells an Erlang evangelist precisely w…

> the resources currently available for would-be Erlang adopters require an unrealistic level of interest and time to get them over the hump. The person who can't be bothered to even find 'Learn You Some Erlang' also won't have the motivation to learn Erlang. It does take effort, but there now are many good resources available (unlike the situation just a few years ago).

The person who can't be bothered to find something they don't know exists. Seriously?

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#146

Post by thedufer »

I haven't used or looked at Erlang, but bear with me.

* no package manager

This is _huge_. For example: I currently work very heavily with node.js. I understand all of the many, many problems with javascript. NPM single-handedly makes up for all of them put together, in my eyes.

Which is to say - an amazing package manager can make a poor language. A decent package manager (pip, for example) allows a nice language to shine, but won't make or break it. Lack of a package manager could probably kill just about any new languages these days (and Erlang - correct me if I'm wrong - appears to have the popularity of a pretty early-stage language right now).

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#147

Post by rvirding »

I am not going to enter into a syntax argument I have already given my views on that here http://rvirding.blogspot.se/2014/01/erlang-syntax-again-and-... . My main point is that the syntax is simple and that it fits the semantics much better than anything based on an Algol like syntax would, even one which uses ';' in the "normal" way.

And one reason it works is because it has built-in those features for building fault-tolerant systems which, for example, Go lacks. Borrowing from NASA "Failure is not an option".

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#148

Post by codygman »

cia_plant wrote: post #38

I think the majority of programmers are very conservative about language, they use whatever they already know, be it Java, C#, C++, ruby, etc. A minority are more fashion-driven - if something seems like the hot new trend they'll jump on it, scoffing at the old-fashioned crap their coworkers are using. Erlang unfortunately is not fashionable, and it's hard to predict or control fashion. A smaller minority are driven…

"once you've strayed from the safety of Java/C#/etc., it seems like you might as well go all the way and get into Haskell"

This is exactly what has led me to Haskell. I was doing Python but got interested in Go for Channels and Static Typing. It turned out Go's static typing was a little to weak for me, so it's unsurprising that I came across Haskell shortly thereafter.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#149

Post by rvirding »

erichocean wrote: post #129
timje1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's amazing and powerful if you need 1m+ client connections per server. Outside of the epic scale engineering problems of facebook, twitter, google, amazon, whatsapp... It's very difficult to get anything done with Erlang. If you have fewer than a million people using your application at a time, you're probably better off writing it in a more normal language.

It's amazing and powerful if you need 1m+ client connections per server. It's pretty dang easy to do that today with LuaJIT/C, and you don't get any of the other baggage (weird syntax, sub-standard string handling, lack of libs, etc.). I'm literally building something that is right in Erlang's wheelhouse—exactly what is is designed for, and I'm not using it, despite knowing that, because it's easier for me to get exa…

Yes, and you will end up reimplementing a lot of what is already in Erlang and most likely not as well either. Virding's 1st rule.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?

#150

Post by seancribbs »

mpd wrote: post #135

There's a lot that I like about Erlang the language, but using it in production left a sour taste in my mouth due to difficult-to-find documentation, difficulty in testing the code, and (especially) the misery that is mnesia. It was a poor fit with our cloud-based infrastructure, and once the mnesia database began corrupting itself weekly, requiring a full rebuild, it was an easy decision to move to another solution…

mnesia is indeed a frequent choice by newbies for queryable storage in Erlang, but I've found few production systems use it for similar reasons to the ones you describe. Nowadays you're more likely to see external datastores (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc) used except for transient/in-memory stuff which can be stuffed in ETS.
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