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Erlang/OTP 29.0

erlang.org

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Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#51

Post by worthless-trash »

copx wrote: post #39

Is anyone still using Erlang for green field projects? I know there are plenty of Elixir enthusiasts here, I mean plain ol' Erlang. If you are still using Erlang, why do you prefer it to Elixir?

Yes, this year alone

- New IOT thing on atomvm.

- Application server written in erlang.

- TUI framework (still WIP).

Why do you prefer it to Elixir:

- Elixir doesn't pose any real advantage for me over erlang, i'm sure there may be be some, but it fits my brain easier. I'd probably even love to make it a social event to learn/get help, but I never seem to find anything that suits.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#52

Post by worthless-trash »

hparadiz wrote: post #36
out_of_protocol wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ActiveRecord is more pleasant to work with than the ORM of Phoenix IMHO, but not everyone shares the same feeling. Well, depends on what you do. Ecto is closely follows SQL logic and allows to translate weird sql queries into code directly. All queries are explicit, e.g. you either do preload(...) or can't access nested records at all, no chance of N+1 by design. Changesets are also different and are just functions…

It's fun watching other languages orms be 10 years behind in design. Your example is a common anti pattern from PHP orms 15 years ago.

Could be wrong, but i dont think thats an orm.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#53

Post by ksec »

frays wrote: post #43
ksec wrote: post #13

Does anyone knows if WhatsApp is still based on Erlang?

Yes. I’ve been using Erlang since the early 2010s, right around the time we (the tech industry) discovered that WhatsApp was supporting over 400 million active users with only like 30 engineers. I reached out to one of their engineers at the time (when I still lived in the US) who kindly responded to some of my questions via email. We ended up meeting for coffee and still stay in touch to this day. I can tell you tha…

I don't think we ever got an actual figure but I often wonder how many of those 30 engineers were actually using Erlang, i expect most of them are iOS and Android engineers.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#54

Post by blandflakes »

conradfr wrote: post #35
faangguyindia wrote: post #14

Who even uses Erlang? I used Rails and then i tried Phoenix and it was lot more difficult to get things done. I don't understand Phoenix hype For solo devs, Rails is arguably most productive webapp system. LLM is very good at writing ruby rails code. Much better than writing django in my experience even though python training corpus is huge. I write my experimental apps in Rail when it stabilizes, i do a Go rewrite.…

Phoenix is mostly interesting because of OTP and channels (and LiveView I guess but it's not a choice I would make in 2026) so if you don't need what they bring... Ecto is not bad as well. Claude Code is very good at writing Elixir. Surprise, you'll be more productive with what you know, LLM or not.

Is your disinterest in LiveView because you'd prefer the more common SPA/API separation, or some other reason? I'm curious because as a mostly backend engineer I view LiveView as sort of a killer tool for the sorts of apps or tools I'm likely to build.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#55

Post by jfim »

blandflakes wrote: post #54
conradfr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phoenix is mostly interesting because of OTP and channels (and LiveView I guess but it's not a choice I would make in 2026) so if you don't need what they bring... Ecto is not bad as well. Claude Code is very good at writing Elixir. Surprise, you'll be more productive with what you know, LLM or not.

Is your disinterest in LiveView because you'd prefer the more common SPA/API separation, or some other reason? I'm curious because as a mostly backend engineer I view LiveView as sort of a killer tool for the sorts of apps or tools I'm likely to build.

Not the parent, but since the liveview state is on the server side it means that one server can't support a large number of concurrent sessions, for some value of large.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#56

Post by out_of_protocol »

hparadiz wrote: post #36
out_of_protocol wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ActiveRecord is more pleasant to work with than the ORM of Phoenix IMHO, but not everyone shares the same feeling. Well, depends on what you do. Ecto is closely follows SQL logic and allows to translate weird sql queries into code directly. All queries are explicit, e.g. you either do preload(...) or can't access nested records at all, no chance of N+1 by design. Changesets are also different and are just functions…

It's fun watching other languages orms be 10 years behind in design. Your example is a common anti pattern from PHP orms 15 years ago.

1) that's not an ORM

2) after ~8 years of using it, i find it ergonomic, light on congitive load and good for long term support

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#57

Post by hparadiz »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #56
hparadiz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fun watching other languages orms be 10 years behind in design. Your example is a common anti pattern from PHP orms 15 years ago.

1) that's not an ORM 2) after ~8 years of using it, i find it ergonomic, light on congitive load and good for long term support

Calling it not an ORM just cause it implements a DTO is splitting hairs. It's an ORM. If you are hydrating an object that saves to storage and you are manipulating it's life cycle and then casting types between your storage primitives and your language primitives from memory to disk you are writing code that every other ORM is writing and it's not special.

As soon as you add use Ecto.Schema to your model it's an ORM.

> But it doesn't require a database and queries have to be explicit!

yea yea that's a feature of every ORM

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#58

Post by toast0 »

ksec wrote: post #53
frays wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I’ve been using Erlang since the early 2010s, right around the time we (the tech industry) discovered that WhatsApp was supporting over 400 million active users with only like 30 engineers. I reached out to one of their engineers at the time (when I still lived in the US) who kindly responded to some of my questions via email. We ended up meeting for coffee and still stay in touch to this day. I can tell you tha…

I don't think we ever got an actual figure but I often wonder how many of those 30 engineers were actually using Erlang, i expect most of them are iOS and Android engineers.

Ok so this [1] is the December 2013 blog with 400 million monthly actives and 50 employees.

I don't have access to anything anymore, but 30 engineers sounds about right.

At that time, I think was about Two on Nokia S40, two on S60, two on Blackberry, two on WP. I think three on Android, three on iOS. One or two on voip (shhh, it won't be out until summer 2014). I probably missed one or two people that floated around different client projects.

So, something like 17 on server?; we were not a 100% Erlang shop of course (our web page was just PHP, our blog was still Wordpress at that time (hiss), but I can only think of onen server person who wasn't doing much in Erlang.

There were also a lot of people wearing many hats. Several client team members had significant contributions to server work and some work the other way too.

Try as I might, I never did convince the S40 team to run Erjang though.

[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/400-million-stories

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#59

Post by solid_fuel »

faangguyindia wrote: post #14

Who even uses Erlang? I used Rails and then i tried Phoenix and it was lot more difficult to get things done. I don't understand Phoenix hype For solo devs, Rails is arguably most productive webapp system. LLM is very good at writing ruby rails code. Much better than writing django in my experience even though python training corpus is huge. I write my experimental apps in Rail when it stabilizes, i do a Go rewrite.…

> I don't write directly in Go because, it consumes lot more token when the app scope is unknown but it's very efficient for rails.

The absolute irony of writing this whole ramble and then revealing that you're not even the one writing the code.

Re: Erlang/OTP 29.0

#60

Post by conradfr »

blandflakes wrote: post #54
conradfr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phoenix is mostly interesting because of OTP and channels (and LiveView I guess but it's not a choice I would make in 2026) so if you don't need what they bring... Ecto is not bad as well. Claude Code is very good at writing Elixir. Surprise, you'll be more productive with what you know, LLM or not.

Is your disinterest in LiveView because you'd prefer the more common SPA/API separation, or some other reason? I'm curious because as a mostly backend engineer I view LiveView as sort of a killer tool for the sorts of apps or tools I'm likely to build.

I just strongly dislike the layout engine ;) Also yeah deployment with active socket connections is not always ideal.

Not writing api routes for the frontend (when you don't also have a mobile app etc) is nice though, and pairing it with PubSub for UI updates is a cool trick.

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