Re: [Caml-list] Re: productivity improvement

[Eric Merritt <cyberlync@yahoo.com>]

--- Dave Berry <daveb@tardis.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> At 00:13 15/07/2002, Markus Mottl wrote:
> >Erlang is very niche-specific (though,
> fault-tolerant distributed
> >computation is surely a worthy niche). I think that
> Erlang would find
> >it tough to compete against OCaml in most other
> niches
> 
> That Erlang is niche-specific is exactly my point --
> it's a niche that is
> ripe for major productivity improvements, and I can
> believe a factor of
> 10:1 for Erlang over traditional languages within
> that niche.
> 

I would have to disagree with this guys. Erlang is no
more niche specific the Ocaml, C, C++, or any other
general purpose language. Simply becuase it was
created at Ericsson (a telecom company) and its used
primarily in telecom apps at the moment does not make
it a niche language. Now this niche mentioned is
filled very well by Erlang, but Erlang is by no means
limited to that niche. Many people that have never
seen or used Erlang by into this myth but it is simply
not the case. Granted it uses a somewhat diffrent
paradigm then the standard mainstream langauges be
they imperative or functional, but that doesn't make
it a niche langauge by defualt. Using that argument
all functional languages would be niche langauges, for
that matter so would OO languages. 

In any case, Erlang is not a niche langauge.

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