Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
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Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#2Yeah, it's got some visibility. The question is: will they be able to run with it? Erlang does some stuff really well, and other things not so well. Will it remain the right tool for a specific job, or something people also use for a variety of tasks? Despite knowing and liking Erlang, my guess is that the first is likelier to occur:
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#3I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#4Erlang may be getting the "recognition" it deserves, but... the "break" it deserves? Really?
Come on guys, give Erlang a break.
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#5I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
I'd be a bit scared of using Erlang for crawling since the actual text processing capabilities of the language are pretty weak. Crawling seems like the kind of thing where you'd want a message queue style system (potentially written in Erlang) that co-ordinates plenty of individual crawling processes written in a language better suited for text handling.
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#6> Facebook chat is a heavy erlang user
Heavy? They must be going by Facebook's user base, not amount of code (the system is a hybrid of multiple languages) or even actual usage (they just launched it, I doubt everyone has switched over from IM yet, if they ever will).
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#7I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
Erlang is best for software that works like telco switches, i.e., you have the need to route thousands of messages in real-time.
Chat, IM, SMS, message queues, etc. are all well-suited for Erlang. Tasks that involves lots of I/O and parsing, not so much.
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#8I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
I'd be a bit scared of using Erlang for crawling since the actual text processing capabilities of the language are pretty weak. Crawling seems like the kind of thing where you'd want a message queue style system (potentially written in Erlang) that co-ordinates plenty of individual crawling processes written in a language better suited for text handling.
Thanks for the tip. I'll bear that in mind.
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#9I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
Erlang is best for software that works like telco switches, i.e., you have the need to route thousands of messages in real-time. Chat, IM, SMS, message queues, etc. are all well-suited for Erlang. Tasks that involves lots of I/O and parsing, not so much.
Thanks
Re: Erlang is at long last getting the break it deserves.
#10I've not tried it yet, but we have to do a particular distributed crawler app for something and it's been recommended to look at it. For me if a language is amazing at something then it would be prudent to focus on that. I often use more than one language in my projects - the best language for the particular job.
Erlang is best for software that works like telco switches, i.e., you have the need to route thousands of messages in real-time. Chat, IM, SMS, message queues, etc. are all well-suited for Erlang. Tasks that involves lots of I/O and parsing, not so much.
So you're suggesting that IM, Chat, SMS and message queues aren't about Parsing and I/O?
Erlang has weaknesses, but certainly those are not it. Basically, Erlang excells at writing servers. Take a look at YAWS (http://yaws.hyber.org/) for a web server written in Erlang that can actually outperform more traditional web servers in very realistic scenarios.
If I had to name a weakness or two of erlang offhand:
1. Integrating foreign code with Erlang is very different from traditional FFI and requires some initial legwork (libraries like Erlectricity http://github.com/KirinDave/erlectricity/tree/master , for example).
2. String manipulation. Erlang doesn't have a real string type. Its string libraries and core string type assume using linked lists for strings, which is spectacularly inefficient. However, there is a movement and a proposal to change the string type to Erlang binaries and provide an alternative string library. Hopefully that will address the problem.
Other than that, it's a reasonably fast and rock-solid implementation of an FP language with a mountain of solid IPC library code integrated at the language level.