erlang

by kennon at 03/03/07 9:42AM
[erlang](http://www.erlang.org) is one of those languages that just makes me *wish* that I had some sort of application that really needed it. Otherwise I can't really justify the time needed to learn how to use it.


But with a useful [application](http://www.erlang.org/ml-archive/erlang-questions/200601/msg00003.html), it looks *really* cool.


Or you can check out the super-sweet [video](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5830318882717959520) by ericsson
  • kennon
    I'm about 45 minutes into a source compile of erlang on my mac right now :)
    by kennon at 03/03/07 9:46AM
  • kennon
    Something like this would be pretty awesome when combined with Amazon's E2 (servers on demand) service
    by kennon at 03/03/07 9:47AM
  • kennon
    it *does* seem very similar to haskell in a lot of ways. is that just a feature of true functional languages (guards, etc), or do they share some design history?

    in any case, erlang seems like a *useful* language in a way that haskell just never quite did.

    at uni when we studied haskell, instead of doing cool stuff like mathematical formulae, we had to write a battleship game. it was hell, but we did it. but the whole time i was just thinking how much easier it would have been in another language.
    by kennon at 03/03/07 10:22AM
  • cognitivelink
    Both, I think -- ML might be the common ancestor. Functional languages really come in two different flavors: Prolog and ML.
    by cognitivelink at 03/05/07 11:06AM
  • lilspikey
    Prolog isn't really functional, it's declarative. yes.
    by lilspikey at 03/05/07 11:27AM
  • lilspikey
    Prolog was quite good fun at uni (after you got it), but I found it difficult to do anything "normal" in it. GOFAI inference and all that was great, but it got annoying once you had to start doing "cuts" to tweak control flow (based on the backtracking engine being used).
    by lilspikey at 03/05/07 11:30AM
  • nickg
    ejabberd2 was written in erlang, its pretty sweet.
    by nickg at 03/05/07 8:41PM