Re:Joe Armstrong About Erlang (interview)
by masklinn on Monday November 29, 2010 @01:14PM
(#1951163)
> Erlang doesn't seem to impose hierarchies at all.
True and not true, if you see Erlang as an object oriented language you still have three hierarchies at least:
1. for a given behavior, should it be packaged as a process or as a function? And if it's a function, in which module does it live? Granted, erlang's modules are "flat" so you don't get much of a hierarchy here.
2. Processes are organized in trees, because to send a message to a process you need a reference to it (its pid). Processes can be opted out of a tree by registering it globally, but that's about it. You could argue it's more of a bush as processes can communicate in a ring or with one another.
3. Supervision trees are most definitely hierarchies.
True and not true, if you see Erlang as an object oriented language you still have three hierarchies at least:
1. for a given behavior, should it be packaged as a process or as a function? And if it's a function, in which module does it live? Granted, erlang's modules are "flat" so you don't get much of a hierarchy here.
2. Processes are organized in trees, because to send a message to a process you need a reference to it (its pid). Processes can be opted out of a tree by registering it globally, but that's about it. You could argue it's more of a bush as processes can communicate in a ring or with one another.
3. Supervision trees are most definitely hierarchies.