The Erlang community

Published on August 28, 2007 in programming and programming languages. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

Matt Croydon Didn’t agree with my commentary on the Erlang community, and he’s partially right. I shouldn’t have said “we need a community” because there is an Erlang community, and I knew that. I have never been a fan of Java, and I don’t want to be stuck using the moral equivalent of Java when the multicore/concurrency thing shakes out. So if I want to be able to use Erlang (and I’ve not totally made that decision), then it needs to have a bigger, more diverse, and easier to find community.

5 Responses to “The Erlang community”

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  • Asbjørn Ulsberg
    August 28, 2007 at 2:16 am

    I completely agree. Why does erlang.org seem to be focussed on so much more than the language? As a first-time user of that web site, I’m pretty confused. Compare it to the Python.org or Ruby-lang.org websites and you’ll soon spot the differences.

  • Isaac Gouy
    August 28, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    So if I want to be able to use Erlang … then it needs to have a bigger, more diverse, and easier to find community.

    Given the current high level of expertise on Erlang mailing-lists and forums what do you hope to gain by “bigger”?

    Given how many Erlang users work in telecomms I think I understand what you mean by “more diverse” – although you might get a slightly different impression from the User Conferences and Workshops.

    Given that Google pops-up erlang.org straight-away what do you mean by “easier to find”?

  • Isaac Gouy
    August 28, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote Why does erlang.org seem to be focussed on so much more than the language?

    Maybe for experienced Erlangers there is so much more than the language.

    It looks like an old-fashioned website; to help improve it you’re comments need to be much more specific – “Compare it to the Python.org or Ruby-lang.org websites and you’ll soon spot the differences” just doesn’t help.

    - note how ruby-lang.org says “RubyConf 2007″ and erlang.org says “Sixth ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop” & “12th Erlang/OTP User Conference”

    - note how ruby-lang.org says “Ruby 1.8.6 released!” and erlang.org says “Erlang/OTP R11B-5 released”

    - note how ruby-lang.org has a side-bar “Get Started” and erlang.org has a side-bar “Getting started”

  • Ted Leung
    August 28, 2007 at 6:20 pm

    Bigger – For example, more people working on libraries for stuff besides telecom. More people to answer questions so that core people don’t burn out doing that

    Easier to find – Matt’s point was that it was harder to find. I didn’t find it hard to locate.

  • Isaac Gouy
    August 28, 2007 at 8:10 pm

    I dont’ think that was Matt’s point. I think he was being excessively apologetic

    “… it’s just smaller than you’re used to, and might be a little harder to find than most”

    in an attempt to excuse “we need a community”.

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