← Back to context

Comment by ryan-duve

7 hours ago

I just learned Erlang this year and I love the syntax. Ending expressions with periods took getting used to, but capital first letters distinguishing variables, non-rebindable variables, semicolons between function clauses, a lack of boilerplate (defmodule et al), a fraction of end keywords, commas separating expression, ... all make for a very fun to use and ergonomic language, IMO.

I haven't tried Gleam yet, though. I'm interested in the focus on simplicity but a little wary because I understand they sacrificed niceties to minimize the language footprint, e.g., pattern matching in function heads. I intend to give it a shot the next time I'm greenfielding something.

7 comments

ryan-duve

Reply
mahboi  3 hours ago

Erlang is my favorite functional language out of all the ones I've tried. The matchers, guards, etc are all done very well. But I don't like functional. I used to think it was cool, gave it a real chance using Erlang for years, and eventually decided it's not a good fit for many use cases. Like at some point the neatness of doing all loops as recursion wears off and it's just tiring. It's not like CS algo homework, and even there you often want DP/memoization.

Edit: pure* functional

  • sodapopcan  3 hours ago

    > Like at some point the neatness of doing all loops as recursion wears off and it's just tiring.

    Odd, but I believe you, lol. Elixir's list comprehensions take a `:reduce` option which makes accumulating values a bit more "familiar" and I often use over `reduce`:

        for a <- list, reduce: []
      acc ->
        [a | acc]
    end

    Not sure if there is something like that in Erlang (or Gleam for that matter).

    • mahboi  2 hours ago

      If you already have a list in Erlang, you can use map and the foldl/foldr reducers. But there's no general for-loop. You're expected to use tail recursion.

      Also tbh, I don't like reduce either. I agree with that article posted on HN a while back about devs not liking reduce. Just want to insert into my list or whatever, not have to check how exactly reduce works in this particular language.

SoftTalker  4 hours ago

I'm the same. I thought I was an oddball because so many people seemed to prefer Elixir but I like Erlang and its syntax. I wish I had more chances to use it at work but so far it's just been for hobby projects or playing with.

  • cyberpunk  1 hour ago

    There are dozens of us! Erlang is a great language, elixir just feels kinda flimsy and over-macro’d to me somehow.

    • tyre  32 minutes ago

      What was your background before Erlang? I came from Ruby, so Elixir felt much more like home than Erlang.

macintux  3 hours ago

I was fortunate enough to use Erlang professionally for a couple of years. I agree: the syntax is quite comfortable.