I was using Erlang from time to time from 2000 or 2001. I’ve even done some commerical trading-related system in it. It’s definitely a good language for certain domains, and it has bright past and may be even brighter future. I was experimenting with some ideas in Erlang today, after long period of not using it and I should say that fairly speaking Erlang is far away from being a friendly language in terms of syntax.
What if Erlang could be considered a kind of “assembly” language for high-performance and distributed programming? What if we can use Lisp macro or Ruby metaprogramming capabilities to code generate Erlang? Taking in account the fact that Erlang code could be changed without a stop, why not generating source code on the fly and passing it to Erlang VM?
Ok, just as a nighty idea.
Hm, Erlang has quite good metaprogramming capabilities by its nature. Especially, with OTP’s means to non-stop code upgrade, etc. Look @ Smerl, for example.
Well, I’m not about its metaprogramming capabilities, I’m rather about simplicity of coding in Erlang, about how natural way of expressing thoughts Erlang is.