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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?

#111

Post by nousernamesleft »

vertex-four wrote: post #107
nousernamesleft wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that there is so much maths talk surrounding Haskell really doesn't help Nor does it hurt. It only provides something for people to point to while they say "look, people are talking about something I am not interested in, therefore haskell is too hard and I shouldn't bother trying". >And I've watched many, many discussions about Haskell go into deep arguments about category theory You are not required to pa…

> So do it? A huge part of a programming language is, in fact, its community. I'd say that's more important than the language itself; any given feature can and will be replicated, but the community cannot be. I cannot get the maximum out of Haskell if I cannot get involved in its community, which is heavily CS-oriented.

If you don't want to learn haskell then don't. It is the weird insistence on making up ridiculous excuses that I have a problem with. Making up a strawman version of "the haskell community" is entirely unnecessary. Once again, a web designer with no CS education of any sort can do it without any problems at all. Your excuse is obviously baloney.

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

#112

Post by Jtsummers »

jderick wrote: post #50

I've used it and I like it alright. I like the CSP style communication and automatic serialization especially. However, I probably would seek another alternative in the future. Here are my primary concerns. 1. Erlang performance is not very good (forcing significant FFI usage which is a pain). 2. Debugging code which is a mix of Erlang and C is difficult 3. Weakly typed language seems unsuitable for larger projects.…

Re 3: A nit, it's not weakly typed, it's dynamically typed. The type of a variable X may be an integer or a list. But you can't ask for the head of an integer or multiply a list by 3. That said, I half-agree with you. I find static typing or tools which can perform static analysis to be a great benefit in working with larger projects or other coding with other people. Tools for static analysis exist for erlang and come with the standard install, dialyzer.

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

#113

Post by Luc »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #108
Luc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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

#114

Post by gloob »

vertex-four wrote: post #107
nousernamesleft wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that there is so much maths talk surrounding Haskell really doesn't help Nor does it hurt. It only provides something for people to point to while they say "look, people are talking about something I am not interested in, therefore haskell is too hard and I shouldn't bother trying". >And I've watched many, many discussions about Haskell go into deep arguments about category theory You are not required to pa…

> So do it? A huge part of a programming language is, in fact, its community. I'd say that's more important than the language itself; any given feature can and will be replicated, but the community cannot be. I cannot get the maximum out of Haskell if I cannot get involved in its community, which is heavily CS-oriented.

It's unclear to me whether you want "to write a program" or to "get the maximum out of Haskell". Those are two very different goals.

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

#115

Post by JackFr »

arh68 wrote: post #62

Popularity is probably the worst metric for a programming language. Programmers conflate popular for good pretty often. They line up often, but they are orthogonal. The original question is loaded. Why not ask "What usually increases a language's popularity? How can these effects be applied to Erlang?" Now the answers are a bit more useful, a bit more constructive: * write more, better docs (Erlang for Java programme…

Marty DeBergi: I was just wondering, does this mean uh...the popularity of the group is waning?

Ian Faith: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. I just think that their appeal is becoming more selective.

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

#116

Post by brown9-2 »

asattarmd wrote: post #91
DougWebb wrote: post #33

I haven't looked at Erlang before, so I thought I give it a quick look. Google led me to the Erlang home page[1], which has "What is Erlang" (sounds good) and "What is OTP" (which doesn't bother to define what O, T, and P stand for.) Following the Erlang Quickstart [2] link, I get a page that doesn't really tell me anything about the language. It demonstrates a program that implements a factorial function, then tells…

Ffs, you're not looking at some small product that an unknown company built. You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website? > "that the online reference doesn't cover interaction with anything outside of your program" This does NOT mean it does not teach you IO. The full bullet point is > "Ho…

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 contradict the questions the OP is asking.

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

#117

Post by asattarmd »

doktrin wrote: post #106
asattarmd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ffs, you're not looking at some small product that an unknown company built. You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website? > "that the online reference doesn't cover interaction with anything outside of your program" This does NOT mean it does not teach you IO. The full bullet point is > "Ho…

> You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? The Google comparison is comical. You are wildly over-estimating how well known Erlang is, even in the dev community. > Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website? Most devs learn a new language when it helps them solve a problem. Anyone who needs to solve the problems that Erlang addres…

> Starting with the Erlang website makes eminent sense

Of course it does. But stopping at the Erlang website because of the website makes much less sense. Find some other way to know more about the language and then decide whether you'll use it or not.

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

#118

Post by wonderzombie »

asattarmd wrote: post #91
DougWebb wrote: post #33

I haven't looked at Erlang before, so I thought I give it a quick look. Google led me to the Erlang home page[1], which has "What is Erlang" (sounds good) and "What is OTP" (which doesn't bother to define what O, T, and P stand for.) Following the Erlang Quickstart [2] link, I get a page that doesn't really tell me anything about the language. It demonstrates a program that implements a factorial function, then tells…

Ffs, you're not looking at some small product that an unknown company built. You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website? > "that the online reference doesn't cover interaction with anything outside of your program" This does NOT mean it does not teach you IO. The full bullet point is > "Ho…

"Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website?"

Kind of! Irrespective of Erlang's site, a well-maintained, informative, and newbie friendly website is often a signal. Maybe it's not a very accurate signal. But it's a signal which suggests that, for lack of a better term, the community exists and has its act together.

There are enough other things to occupy programmers' time. People adopt heuristics like these — "how professional/modern does the website look?" — as a way to save time.

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

#119

Post by asattarmd »

brown9-2 wrote: post #116
asattarmd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ffs, you're not looking at some small product that an unknown company built. You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website? > "that the online reference doesn't cover interaction with anything outside of your program" This does NOT mean it does not teach you IO. The full bullet point is > "Ho…

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.

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

#120

Post by pessimizer »

skittles wrote: post #77

Erlang needs a production quality web server that is a fully compliant OTP application, and mnesia needs to have its dependency on dets abstracted away so that other storage engines can be used (relational database of choice, dynamodb, etc.). This would give a web developer a single platform that is extremely fault tolerant and scalable. This sort of thing may be possible (by using an embedded web server wrapped in y…

Yaws, Cowboy and Mochiweb are production quality, and are in production.
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