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Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

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Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#51

Post by pmarreck »

stcredzero wrote: post #48
jimbokun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If true, it's astounding so few programmers wrote systems that handle such astounding amounts of data.

That's what people used to think of Symbolics Lisp machines. Customers would assume Symbolics had a team of thousands of programmers, when really it was about a dozen.

One of my favorite CS profs had one of those. I remember visiting his office hours so he could show it off to me.

I didn't do well in the class (it was a bit out of my league at the time) but I ended up in a career in software dev anyway

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#52

Post by pmarreck »

dudul wrote: post #12

I really like Erlang and Elixir, but I'm really worried when I see a tech stack that is still trying to figure out deployment and runtime configuration of systems. I'm not trying to be inflammatory here. As per many resources such as "Phoenix in Action" deployment is still a major culprit. And Dockyard themselves (one of the major Elixir shops, where McCord works actually) have a full time guy on the payroll to try t…

For managed deployment (with a free tier) check out https://www.gigalixir.com/

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#53

Post by davidw »

josevalim wrote: post #40
the_clarence wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Elixir more than just a ruby syntax of erlang? Because I prefer Erlang’s syntax.

Elixir is more than syntax. Or rather, it is not even about the syntax :) This is a common question, so I even gave a talk about it some time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5fMQcSy3y8 Elixir features meta-programming, structs and protocols, first-class documentation, strong focus on the tooling, some abstractions that make concurrency more accessible (such as tasks and streams), etc. However, Erlang and Elixir…

> They have the same data-types (with the same names and even the same syntax for almost all of them),

As someone who mostly has just used Erlang, but has looked at Elixir some, I think one of the things I appreciate about Elixir is some of the Erlang warts that you've managed to work around, like having strings be Erlang binaries.

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#54

Post by davidw »

francescoc wrote: post #21
jimbokun wrote: post #15

I had never watched Erlang the Movie before, this is truly a gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKfKtXYLG78 This is a great way to explain the benefits of Erlang. Anyone who has tried to write robust, distributed systems should immediately see the benefits. Even all of these years later.

I use Erlang the Movie and its Sequel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRbY3TMUcgQ&t=9s whenever I teach my classes at Oxford Uni. #studentlife :-)

I dearly wish he'd make more videos. I also loved 'MongoDB is web scale' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#55

Post by eeZah7Ux »

dhab wrote: post #39

My limited understanding of erlang/elixir is that it helps easily run actor model programs (fail-safe loosely defined as something with retries built-in) in a grid of long-running interconnected instances. With more and more focus on "serverless" development that I am being exposed to, I am curious to know if it is a good fit in this space. Say if you are constrained to use AWS serverless solutions - sqs, sns, dynamo…

No. Kubernetes & friends implement most of the features of Erlang in a language-independent manner.

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#57

Post by PopeDotNinja »

schpaencoder wrote: post #37
the_clarence wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Elixir more than just a ruby syntax of erlang? Because I prefer Erlang’s syntax.

You have macros in Elixir

Erlang has macros...

http://www1.erlang.org/documentation/doc-4.8.2/doc/extension...

...but I think they work differently, or are more limited in scope.

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#58

Post by Maultasche »

Sileni wrote: post #18
binaryapparatus wrote: post #5

What an amazing language. I am working on a Elixir project, with a lot of Erlang peaces used directly. Integration is flawless and beautiful to observe. I do have many languages in my toolbox but only few of them were truly exciting for me, Haskell six or so years ago and Elixir/Erlang/OTP this year.

I've really wanted to dig into functional languages like this, because I love the theoretical benefits they provide, but haven't really sunk my teeth into one in a way that would let me understand the flavor. Let me ask, were you immediately drawn to Haskell and Erlang, or was it a feeling that grew while working with them? Would you recommend working with Haskell or Erlang directly before trying out a language like…

Before learning Elixir, I used functional-like functionality in C# (LINQ) and Javascript (particularly Rambda and Bacon.js) before learning Elixir, and I found that was plenty of preparation to understand Elixir. There's no need to start off with another functional language prior to learning Elixir.

I'm currently learning Elixir and writing about it so that anyone interested in Elixir can learn with me as I learn it. The goal is to help other learn Elixir as well.

I make some comparisons to features in C# and Javascript, and the occasional reference to other languages like Python, but you don't have to know any of those in order to benefit.

If you're interested, come check it out: https://inquisitivedeveloper.com/

Re: Twenty Years of Open Source Erlang: A Retrospective from the trenches

#60

Post by Jedi72 »

the_clarence wrote: post #34
andruby wrote: post #8

I used Erlang before Elixir and it was awesome, albeit with a syntax that required getting used too. I've often looked at bridging the gap between Ruby and Erlang, and closely watched and tested solutions like Reia [0], Erlectricity [1] and Ernie [2]. I was delighted when Jose started getting involved in the space and released Elixir. Thanks Jose! [0] http://reia-lang.org [1] https://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/05…

Is Elixir more than just a ruby syntax of erlang? Because I prefer Erlang’s syntax.

Can we please have one BEAM thread where this isnt brought up? Its such a minor thing. I went from erlang to elixir and whilst at first I really missed atoms that start with a colon, you get used to it. Its 90% the same ideas, and Elixirs pipe operator is worth any small syntax niceties erlang has. No language is completely without its quirks even erlang (unless you LIKE endless repituons of the same variable into var_1, var_2, etc - and no, this doesnt reduce bugs http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2016/01/comparing-elixir-an... )
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