erlang this. scala that. learn lisp.

i caught a link to a post by tim bray:

"The E-Word · Erlang disruption. Erlang influence. Erlang (and Erlang and Erlang) database substrate. Erlang for C#. Erlang thoughts. Erlang for Web 2.0. A first Erlang program. Erlang influence. Erlang distributed DBMS. Erlang message passing. Erlang (and Erlang and Erlang) for Jabber and Atom and IPC.

Erlang. Erlang."

Each of the 'E-word's points to a link that shows the general use the language is being pushed to. It is not the new Java, though, as you might have read elsewhere.

it is interesting how much press a language that has been around this long is only beginning to get; but then it is "payback time", as Joe Amstrong mentions here. I found Erlang (and Scala) through search on functional languages when I started to learn Scheme (Lisp) late last year.

One thing though; I disagree with Tim on: "I think that the human mind naturally thinks of solving problems along the lines “First you do this, then you do that”.

Programmers are trained, and over time learn to recognize (and solve problems) in the patterns they are introduced to. Just as people are taught (or learn) to code imperatively, they can adopt functional ideas and patterns, once they learn how to recognize and form them.

When you cannot 'really' do assignment in a language, you are forced to wonder if you actually need assignment. And each time you have to make a copy of value, just so you can change some state in it, you know you are communicating that, indeed, that change was needed. So, you can approach it from the "it's different" perspective or you can choose to call it "hard".

Languages like Scala and Erlang are definitely going to continue to be part of mainstream developer conversation as we move into an ever more concurrent world. More than languages though, it is important that people are able to make clear and proper abstractions of the problems they are trying to solve, before mapping them onto the limitations (or lack thereof) of their favorite language. And it is important that programmers understand the underlying issues that each language and programming paradigm (or fad) tries to solve, so they can map these to their favorite language too. Meanwhile, as you might have read elsewhere, learn Lisp; it would make you a better problem solver and coder in every way.

Cheers,
eokyere

erlang support in jedit

working in a new language is always fun; even doubly so, if it is in a certain language called erlang ;) ... what sucks though, is setting up new IDEs and dev environments; over the last week, or so, I have used and thrown out:

erlybird -- because it is pre-alpha; slow as a dog; and shows errors for perfectly accurate erlang code (in the rabbitmq codebase I am currently working on) ... but like I said, it is pre-alpha, so those things are to be expected
erlide -- because I have had it kill-dash-nining eclipse, for every code compile

beautiful thing about erlang is, programs written in the language are naturally concise, and so you can get by without the need for an IDE; which is quite a mindset change for me--don't get me wrong; I'll use an IDE if there was a good one out there; but I don't need it, like I do when I switch back to working on the Java/Flex bits of the stuff I work on.

anyway, jedit has good syntax highlighting support for erlang; and good macro, regex, and scripting (BeanShell) support, so you can customize to fit stuff not supported ootb

Update(3 Sept)
FIXED!

Update (22 Aug)
one thing I failed to mention is that erlide has a really good code outline feature, that shines when you have code that has a lot of pattern matching going on. Plus it is actually quite snappy for 'normal' usage; so I investigated the problem a bit; as it turns out, I had modules with identical names, in different projects and Vlad confirmed over email that it is actually a bug, which is why eclipse was hanging. Bug filed here.

Add eclipse monkey to this, and erlide is a pretty kewl erlang tool, afterall (after the bugfix, of course) :)


Cheers,
eokyere