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Comment by KevinMS | Hacker News Reader

Inspires confidence in a language when drivers for a major database are side projects released on github?

This is one of the main reasons I just walked away from erlang, the ratio of buzz vs its supportive environment for the real world is very high.

I remember the last time I had to connect to mysql from erlang I had to download a few library files from some company nice enough to release them and dump them into my projects directory.

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> I remember the last time I had to connect to mysql from erlang I had to download a few library files from some company nice enough to release them and dump them into my projects directory

Forgive my ignorance in all things erlang but how is this different to connecting to MySQL from Java?

MySQL Connector/J[1] (the JDBC driver) is actually produced by the same company that makes the database?

[1]: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/

This is a very real problem with many "hyped" languages. Sure, they might seem more powerful and elegant, but if you got to spend tons of time re-implementing basic networking/web libraries, then what's the point in using them for web development.

Enter something like Clojure whose "host" platform is not just an implementation detail, but a feature.

I am a coauthor of the original emysql. I wouldn't recommend using Erlang for your average web application. I would recommend it when the problem you're solving thrives on an idiomatically distributed and fault tolerant platform.

Nowadays you add things like this as a dep to rebar.conf (the most popular build system):

    {deps, [ {epgsql, "0.2", {git, "https://github.com/Eonblast/Emysql.git", "master"}} ]}.

It seems unlikely that the Erlang standard library (OTP) is going to include database drivers. However, having to specify such things is a small price to pay considering all the amazing stuff you get for free with Erlang.

Agner is your solution!

http://erlagner.org/

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