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Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

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Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#111

Post by mrottenkolber »

_broody wrote: post #95
mrottenkolber wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it translates into CL is quite widespread but we don't use SO (we have CLHS/good documentation, c.l.lisp, #lisp, loads of mailing lists etc.). Also SO is kind of geared towards entry level programmers, which applies to few CL folks.

Then, too, unlike other languages that frequently attract veteran programmers rather than newbies, CL doesn't appear utterly baffling to an initiate.

Yep, its not like CL isn't a good first language. You'll just find few people recommending it as such, even more since scheme also exists.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#112

Post by orclev »

Almaviva wrote: post #38
rwmj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this thing about having to find developers in a particular language. I work on a lot of OCaml programs, and have used and hired developers to work on the same programs. None of them had OCaml experience before, but they just learned it as they went along (because they are intelligent programmers). I actively don't want someone who only knows one language. Also we're using RabbitMQ (written in Erlang). At…

There's something worth talking about, which is that a sophisticated and ingenious mess is orders of magnitude more costly than a simple minded mess. My experience with brilliant functional programmers is that it's hard to know whether you're getting someone who can use it as the best tool for a job in a simple, elegant, and maintainable way, or a cargo-cultist who delights in sophistication and cleverness and purity…

That isn't unique to functional programming. I've seen my fair share of Java and C# code bases that could best be describe as baroque monstrosities. It's like the authors read Design Patterns and then decided they absolutely had to use every single pattern at least once. The clean code book is also somewhat to blame here as people who go full retard on that tend to write stupidly complicated class hierarchies just so they can never have more than 1 line of code in any given method (effectively turning most classes into proxy wrappers for other classes providing some default values).

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#113

Post by tormeh »

alttab wrote: post #21
candoprog22 wrote: post #14

1. It is good the cool kids are not drawn to Erlang because then we would end up in the state Ruby and Node are now. 2. The biggest fail in IT - "I can't find experienced developers in Erlang/ ": Most employers are muppets. Rather than hire a decent developer and allow them to learn a new tech on the role, they scour the market for candidates that are probably just lying on the resume/CV. I have already seen resumes/…

Interestingly enough, in both the start up and corporate world I've seen hiring when the developer has NO skill in the language. This was true about Java, this was true about Ruby. This was true about python... I think what would be a more interesting analysis is what cohort pre-selects themselves to functional languages, or projects where that technology is used? Out of all the software today, where is the most prom…

Compilers are well-suited for functional programming, which is why language designers seem to love it. Looping is almost never natural in a compiler. It's always recursion through trees of some sort.

I guess functional programming maps nicely to problems that do not simulate something through time and which primary work is not IO.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#114

Post by ZeroGravitas »

hga wrote: post #99
perturbation wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an O Level?

If you're familiar with the Harry Potterverse, NEWTS are modeled on O Levels. Perhaps a bit like US Advanced Placement courses and tests, but much more institutionalized, and I gather they're part of how the U.K. university system can get away with 3 year bachelor's degrees. I once worked with a Jamaican who'd earned several O Levels (Caribbean counties had their own versions of them modeled on the British system), h…

I think you are confusing O-levels and A-levels. O = Ordinary, A = Advanced, generally people going on to University would do A-levels, so leaving to get a job with only O-levels might be roughly equivalent to having a High School Diploma I think.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#115

Post by DanBC »

perturbation wrote: post #73
walshemj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened at my first job hired as a research assistant at a world leading research place. My instructions where Keith will give you an hours instruction on how to use the PDP there is a book on fortan in the company library go and learn it. Oh BTW that was leaving high school with 5 O Levels

What is an O Level?

An O level is an obsolete English qualification. They got replaced by GCSEs.

The system used to be O levels ("ordinary") for high achievers, and CSE ("certificate of secondary education") for the rest. Both of those were replaced in about 1986/1987 with GCSEs. These are taken by school children at age 16 at the end of their secondary education.

They are followed by A (advanced) levels or other further education college course.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#116

Post by hga »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #114
hga wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're familiar with the Harry Potterverse, NEWTS are modeled on O Levels. Perhaps a bit like US Advanced Placement courses and tests, but much more institutionalized, and I gather they're part of how the U.K. university system can get away with 3 year bachelor's degrees. I once worked with a Jamaican who'd earned several O Levels (Caribbean counties had their own versions of them modeled on the British system), h…

I think you are confusing O-levels and A-levels. O = Ordinary, A = Advanced, generally people going on to University would do A-levels, so leaving to get a job with only O-levels might be roughly equivalent to having a High School Diploma I think.

Oops, you're right!

So change O -> A in the above, and O-Levels in the Potterverse correspond to OWLs.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#117

Post by michaelneale »

dizzystar wrote: post #101

If I'm interpreting these slides correctly, I see an interesting bit of irony as a Clojure programmer. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked about my opinions of Erlang and I've lost count of how many times I've been told to learn Erlang because company X needs Erlang, or I should learn about scaling NoSQL databases, or whatever perception. As far as I can tell, Erlang may not have a visible mind-share, but…

I think it is used more than people perhaps realise - and if you are deep into clojure - you are probably already on the bleeding edge (at least as far as mainstream programmers are - remember there are a LOT of them) - thus would tend to come up against places that use erlang or clojure (self selecting?). (FYI I like both erlang and clojure, and have used both in anger).

I learned erlang before clojure - it I think the former helped me quickly pick up the latter, strangely.

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#118

Post by michaelneale »

CmonDev wrote: post #37
kyberias wrote: post #31

A semi-interesting observation of the graph on one of the first slides: C# is highest on StackOverflow metric because the site has been historically concentrating more on Microsoft technologies. This also shows on how the different languages are separated by the diagonal line: technologies/languages closer to Microsoft are above the line and more "open" alternatives are under the line.

How can an open free Q&A site be concentrated on something? It simply reflects what people want and need.

I was one of the first few hundred users and it was entirely .net/C# questions around this. This was mostly due to Jeff Atwood (at the time) visibility in that community - so it had a vast headstart, things have changed since then but that is how it started (well both Joel and Jeff were slightly more visible in the MS communities).

Re: Why The Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang

#119

Post by michaelneale »

CmonDev wrote: post #53
readme wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because early adopters of the website were prominent Microsoft developers. Such as Jon Skeet. This caused network effects. To suggest just because a door is opened that every developer has an equal chance of walking through is absurd. This is not evidence that the general software community wants or needs c# more than any other thing. For many developers more traditional channels of q and a are still popular, such as…

Jon Skeet is a Google developer. Well early Git adopters were Linux developers. Does it mean that GitHub is not really mainstream apart from a narrow group of people?

He is now - was a microsoft MVP earlier - he was actually forced to drop his "MVP" on joining Google (IIRC).
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