🚀 go-pugleaf

vdemarco@whatnow (Vince DeMarco) writes:

>Why not just make a C-Interpreter and use that instead of a new
>programming language.

>This seems to give the best of everything to everyone. Best of all you
>don't have to learn yet another programming language.

I used to have a similar attitude once.  I was quite happy with C, and
I found C++ as a small step into something new.  As long as I didn't
have to maintain other peoples software, it was quite OK.

When I had to maintain software that other people had written, I found
that it was either poorly designed or impossible to read without a
really expensive environment with source browsers and stuff.

Compiling and linking could take several ours, and if you had to make
a change in one of the .h files that everyone other file included, you
just had to wait until you could test it.

Still, when people from Ellemtel started talking about their new
language Erlang, and how much better it was than traditional languages
like C and C++, I was quite a sceptic. "What's the use of introducing
yet another programming language", I thought. "It'll never compete
with C/C++ in number of users anyway."

They said that programmers where more effective in Erlang than in C:
Development time and code size was up to 10 times larger in C/C++ than
in Erlang.

Actually, their claims p*ssed me off! I didn't really believe it.
So I went to their course with a really bad attitude.

Now, I've used Erlang for about a year. I've seen it's pros and
cons. The claims where basically true. Maybe I haven't increased by
productivity by 10 times, but then, maybe I was not that bad as a
C/C++ programmer either.

The best thing with erlang is that you don't have to recompile
everything when you make a small change. You compile the file where
you made the change, that's it. You don't even have to restart your
application, the language was designed to support dynamic loading!

Programming in Erlang feels a bit like programming GNU Emacs. 
Erlang is a declarative language, like Lisp, but it *doesn't* have all
those (((parenthesis))) everywhere. IMHO, it's easier to read.

Another thing that you get with Erlang is good support for processes
and process communication. IPC and RPC is a pain to do in C, but about
as simple as assignment in Erlang.

Now, I think I've said enough. If anyone wants to know more, take a
look at the Erlang web, http://www-cslab.ericsson.se:5000

	Johan