Overall a decent shill piece for Elixir (and I say this as somebody who enjoys shilling Elixir!).
That said, there is one quote that drives me bonkers:
The problem with Erlang is that its Prolog-like syntax feels obsolete. I have never seen an Erlang program and said to myself, “Wow, that was a joy to read”. Or refactor. It’s not the worst, but I personally find it to be a fairly uninspiring language to work with.
I don’t know if anybody else feels this way, but I’m getting sick and tired of people talking about how magical/inspiring/shiny/delightful a programming language/framework/library is. Maybe I’m just channeling my crufty rage from C/C++, but I really cannot stand the warm fuzzy bullshit that is infecting our industry.
These warm, fuzzy languages like Ruby? Show me a Rails project that’s still a “joy” to work on five years after the fact. Show me the magical macro tricks that don’t result in confusion and annoyance when others have to pick up the project. Show me the build pipeline that doesn’t result in so much extra bullshit for supporting a language that isn’t deployed yet and that comes with performance and debugging penalties (looking at you, JS).
The nice thing about Erlang, C, and other Old-Testament languages is that they all suck, but the suck is bounded, and frankly the suck lets you focus on the important thing: writing an app to solve your problem. This warm and fuzzy nonsense seems so masturbatory.
I really don’t understand the hate on Erlang syntax. It is incredibly simple and easy to learn. Compared to Ruby, for example, Erlang may look different but there is less of it. I wish people would be willing to invest the hour or so of effort it takes to see that the Erlang syntax is really quit minimal.
yep, i loved the erlang syntax personally. i love ruby too, and i find it an incredibly productive language, but i wouldn’t say its syntax is all that superior to erlang’s; they both have their strengths and their weaknesses. elixir does do a good job of integrating ruby and erlang syntax; in particular i like the way they’ve blended erlang’s pattern matching and ruby’s case statement.
Ive also found that there are a group of languages (Prolog, Rebol, K, etc) that just have an odd syntax which is off putting. People seem to want to be able to transfer the knowledge of valid forms language to language, which is what makes those languages such an annoyance.
Overall a decent shill piece for Elixir (and I say this as somebody who enjoys shilling Elixir!).
That said, there is one quote that drives me bonkers:
I don’t know if anybody else feels this way, but I’m getting sick and tired of people talking about how magical/inspiring/shiny/delightful a programming language/framework/library is. Maybe I’m just channeling my crufty rage from C/C++, but I really cannot stand the warm fuzzy bullshit that is infecting our industry.
These warm, fuzzy languages like Ruby? Show me a Rails project that’s still a “joy” to work on five years after the fact. Show me the magical macro tricks that don’t result in confusion and annoyance when others have to pick up the project. Show me the build pipeline that doesn’t result in so much extra bullshit for supporting a language that isn’t deployed yet and that comes with performance and debugging penalties (looking at you, JS).
The nice thing about Erlang, C, and other Old-Testament languages is that they all suck, but the suck is bounded, and frankly the suck lets you focus on the important thing: writing an app to solve your problem. This warm and fuzzy nonsense seems so masturbatory.
I really don’t understand the hate on Erlang syntax. It is incredibly simple and easy to learn. Compared to Ruby, for example, Erlang may look different but there is less of it. I wish people would be willing to invest the hour or so of effort it takes to see that the Erlang syntax is really quit minimal.
yep, i loved the erlang syntax personally. i love ruby too, and i find it an incredibly productive language, but i wouldn’t say its syntax is all that superior to erlang’s; they both have their strengths and their weaknesses. elixir does do a good job of integrating ruby and erlang syntax; in particular i like the way they’ve blended erlang’s pattern matching and ruby’s case statement.
Ive also found that there are a group of languages (Prolog, Rebol, K, etc) that just have an odd syntax which is off putting. People seem to want to be able to transfer the knowledge of valid forms language to language, which is what makes those languages such an annoyance.