Hacker News Reader

Comment by dschiptsov | Hacker News Reader

It is not just "matters". It is a deeply-researched and well-engineered explicitly concurrent programming language by smart and passionate people. It is a very rare example of first-class project, compared to the common nonsense, like Java or, god forbid, NodeJS.)

If it is not that popular (which is rather good) it is not a language's fault. It is due to inability to acquire and maintain an appropriate mindset.

btw, there is a nice lecture - http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Erlang%2BJoe%2BA...

View on HN

> language by smart and passionate people [...] compared to the common nonsense, like Java or, god forbid, NodeJS.

Are you implying that creators of Node and Java are stupid and lack passion? It seems like you are... And it's a) not relevant here at all; b) simply not true.

> It is due to inability to acquire and maintain an appropriate mindset.

It's debatable, but I tend to agree here.

> If it is not that popular (which is rather good)

Not popular often means you have to write libraries or code yourself that in a more popular language would already be sitting around ready to use. In other words, in a business context, it might cost you more money to use a less popular language.

> it is not a language's fault

I don't agree. I think for instance that Erlang could likely have a more C like syntax, and that would have bought it more users. There's plenty of other stuff that you can do to make a learning curve relatively easy, so that people can slowly start out and get to know a language.

Of course there are factors beyond the control of a language's designers and proponents, but looking at things like PHP and Ruby, you can certainly get popular without, say, having huge corporate backing.

> Erlang could likely have a more C like syntax [...] so that people can slowly start out and get to know a language

This reminded me about famous Linus rant against C++ - in the same vein it can be argued that "cryptic" (actually very readable and consistent IMHO) syntax would be a win even if it did nothing more than keep C (style) programmers out of Erlang development :)

You're certainly right from business perspective, however.

In what way is Java not a first-class project? That "common nonsense" had some of the greatest minds in computing behind it.

Guess you didn't get the memo that worse is better.

That "common nonsense" you speak of (aka Java) runs on billions of devices and handles trillions in revenue. Erlang keeps legacy phone switches running. It's like people who say X language is amazing and lament the crap that is English.

Who cares?

English runs the world economy.

> Guess you didn't get the memo that worse is better.

In what sense? Why do I have to paste this link: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html here of all places?

Unix, Linux and Java just to name a few highly successful worse is better paradigms. List the number of multi-billion dollar Lisp startups - I can think of only one that comes close - ITA ($700 million), and that was bought out by a C++/Java shop, namely Google.

Don't take my word for it, ask a famous Lisper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_Better

The lisper follows up his essay with another: http://dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf (this IS written by Richard Gabriel, only under pseudonym, look at your wiki article: "Gabriel later answered his earlier essay with one titled Worse Is Better Is Worse[3] under the pseudonym "Nickieben Bourbaki" (an allusion to Nicolas Bourbaki)." - last line of "Effects" section) which presents slightly different opinion :)

Also, I'm afraid Java is a perfect counterexample for "worse is better". It does everything and then some, but there are better (like, worse - less complicated, easier to use, more focused) solutions for almost everything Java does... And Java is still insanely popular.

Lastly, you seem to want to equate popularity with quality, and then you give Linux as an example. Surely, Windows is better because it's installed on many more PCs than Linux?

Worse is a fuzzy term - let's define it. Worse in this case means things that can be used by many average people to do the things that they want without mental contortions and actually ship useful products to billions people.

Java does that. Linux does that. Windows does that. Lisp doesn't.

And note - your article wasn't written by the author - it was written by someone else.

Ok, this is what I was asking at the beginning, writing the question: "In what sense?"

You're entitled to your own definition of words, in this case you defined "worse" (and this definition is very popular, too!) and it's ok. My perspective is different and so my definition is - I don't care about "average people" at all, I like very much "mental contortions" and I enjoy making more than shipping, and so "worse" for me means something different altogether.

I just wanted to what you meant by "worse", really. I won't agree with you here, but I understand and accept your opinion.

I edited my previous post in reply to your note at the end.

You'll notice that most successful systems empower the common man (or unit) (capitalism/democracy/distributed systems/self-policing/bottom up ideas) and the most "ivory tower"/"top down" like systems don't perform nearly as well (totalitarianism/communism).

There are limits of course, and always complexity, but distributed incentive based systems appear to empirically work rather well.

This reminds me of a great quote.

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" -stroustrup

If you have to write about how your language matters, you have already missed the point. If it mattered, people would be using it.

You make phone calls, right?

I bet you or a friend of yours chats on facebook[1] or Watsapp[2]...

[1] http://www.erlang-factory.com/upload/presentations/31/Eugene...

[2] http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/01/1-million-is-so-2...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com