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"I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

erlang.org

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Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#41

Post by krenoten »

Here's an interesting lecture (sorry, I couldn't find a non-split version) he gave at a university in Sweden (where Erlang has a much greater influence, ahhh the sanity of Northern Europe ;P) note - the sound is dim for the first few moments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIhawQ1G0I

He goes into some of the choices that went into Erlang, and some interesting experiences he had as the project went forward. He gives a different list that he feels the students in attendance should learn: C, JS, LLVM Assembler, one of ruby or python, and one of Erlang or Haskell.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#42

Post by calinet6 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #11

To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Scheme/Clojure Javascript?! Over Ruby or Python or Lua? What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? From my experience there is only two reasons to learn Javascript: to be able to build web app…

What is it with people liking a specific language in general? Didn't you read the whole post?

"Today there is an unhealthy concentration on language and efficiency and NOT on how things fit together and protocols - teach protocols and not languages."

Exactly. Forget the language. Use it if it works for what you need to do. Learn to program correctly, learn how things fit together, how you can use languages together and for the right purpose; learn the fundamentals, learn algorithms, and you'll build quality software in whatever language you choose.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#43

Post by brendten »

klibertp wrote: post #38
3pt14159 wrote: post #11

To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Scheme/Clojure Javascript?! Over Ruby or Python or Lua? What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? From my experience there is only two reasons to learn Javascript: to be able to build web app…

Argh. How could you read this post and still miss the point so badly? It is not about languages, it is about ideas . And the fact that you need years to master each of these languages because of ideas they are built upon, not because of such trivial things as syntax. I strongly suspect that Joe would be equally comfortable with this list was C substituted with Go, Smalltalk substituted with Io or JavaScript substitut…

If I could upvote you twice I would.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#44

Post by ricardobeat » 

    if you want a quick fix go buy "learn PHP in ten
    minutes" and spend the next twenty years googling for 
    "how do I compute the length of a string"
pretty much summed up the PHP experience :)

    If ALL applications in the world were interfaced by 
    (say) sockets + lisp S expressions and had the 
    semantics of the protocol written down in a formal 
    notation - then we could reuse things (more) easily.
nodejs apps are usually very close to that: small modular services interacting via sockets + events using json, protocol buffers, etc. Much like the unix pipe philosophy applied to servers.

If you didn't study CS and want to improve your knowledge of algorithms, I found Coursera classes to be very good.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#45

Post by davidw »

kapuhy wrote: post #16
3pt14159 wrote: post #11

To me, this list is great except for one small thing. - C - Prolog - Erlang - Smalltalk - Javascript - Hakell / ML /OCaml - LISP/Scheme/Clojure Javascript?! Over Ruby or Python or Lua? What is it with people liking Javascript. I really don't get it. What can I do that is so beautiful or mindbending that I can't do in python? From my experience there is only two reasons to learn Javascript: to be able to build web app…

Javascript has some unique concepts, while Ruby or Pyton are just mix of features also present in Smalltalk or LISP. So learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those.

> learning Ruby has no added value if you already know those.

Maybe learning it just as a learning exercise is not so valuable, but Ruby is fantastically useful at getting shit done in the real world with a language that's pretty good. For instance, try and do this in standard Erlang:

    stdout_str, stderr_str, status = Open3.capture3(command)
You can't. I've been complaining about it since 2004, others have sent patches, and you still can't easily handle stderr and stdout as separate streams with open_port.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#46

Post by rdtsc »

ghc wrote: post #12

Just for a moment, consider who this man is and what he has done. We would all do well to take a step back and consider his manner of response. Notice that he continued learning new languages after creating Erlang (instead of just evangelizing it at the one true language). He did not immediately say "choose these three languages" as if they were the only ones you could possibly learn. Does it really help our professi…

This man is a legend. Not just being the father of Erlang (and that's probably enough to make him a legend). But it really is his attitude and his desire to never stop learning, never settle. He is still working and tinkering.

https://github.com/joearms?tab=activity

He is also a regular at the Erlang mailing list:

http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#47

Post by pekk »

xradionut wrote: post #31
pekk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript is a very different language from Python. It is in some ways more flexible and less prescriptive. You point out one of the non-overlapping use cases. Javascript performance has seen really intensive efforts. Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather…

"Javascript has grown a rather nice async ecosystem that Python just doesn't have. It's also exciting for people from the standpoint that everything feels newer and more up for grabs. Python is a rather old language." Python old? Not to be snarky, but I've got programs for the PDP-11 that dated Python's great-grandmother. Excitement in a language doesn't cut it, I respect productivity, environment and progress. For a…

Python is, objectively, decades old. For some people that would make it less exciting. Excitement produces buzz and popularity and encourages development effort which creates real and useful code.

I vastly, vastly prefer Python. But we are NOT helping Python AT ALL if we bring it up to trash Javascript every time it's mentioned, without making any argument more specific than "I used a PDP-11".

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#48

Post by peteretep »

laumars wrote: post #19
peteretep wrote: post #8

"Hello, Joe?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIjfIjssLE

Joe Armstrong did help create Erlang with Bjarne Dacker: Erlang was created at the CSLab by an initial team of Joe Armstrong, Mike Williams and Robert Virding. http://www.erlang-factory.com/conference/SFBay2010/speakers/...

Unless I'm mistaken, you can see him in the link posted, too, making phone calls to the other developers...

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#49

Post by bo1024 »

praptak wrote: post #20
ghc wrote: post #12

Just for a moment, consider who this man is and what he has done. We would all do well to take a step back and consider his manner of response. Notice that he continued learning new languages after creating Erlang (instead of just evangelizing it at the one true language). He did not immediately say "choose these three languages" as if they were the only ones you could possibly learn. Does it really help our professi…

> Even on Hacker News I've seen vitriol directed at [...] To be fair, the author himself is pretty vitriolic about C++: "I saw C++ coming and read the book - or at least tried to read the book - there's a dent in the wall behind my piano, where the book hit the wall - Improvements to C should make things easier not more complicated, I thought"

I read this more as memoir than as present-day judgement.

Re: "I couldn't really learn Erlang, 'cos it didn't exist, so I invented it"

#50

Post by huherto »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #26

"Things improved - I went to CERN and used the CRAY1 this could compile 100K lines of FORTRAN in 1 picosecond (ie about a zillion times slower than my mobile phone today)" I don't like how he mixes together some precise numbers (, RAM size) with completely unrealistic (you can't do anyting in a picosecond, you can't compile 100k likes of code without noticing the time it takes the even today on any hardware.

yeah, yeah, I was also confused. But see the comment of sgt below(or above). It is sarcasm.
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