Re:How and Why Mixpanel Switched from Erlang to Python
by cageface on Friday August 05, 2011 @09:15PM
(#2852535)
Erlang is compelling because it's been built from the ground up to support reliable distributed computing and heavily battle tested in incredibly high-volume applications. Non-blocking I/O is just the plumbing in a far more sophisticated machine.
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Re:How and Why Mixpanel Switched from Erlang to Python
by helwr on Friday August 05, 2011 @10:40PM
(#2852762)
Sophistication is often the ultimate enemy.
H. Thoreau once said "In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex.." (Walden, Princeton University Press, 1971, p.323-324)
Re:How and Why Mixpanel Switched from Erlang to Python
by cageface on Friday August 05, 2011 @11:51PM
(#2852930)
I'm a big believer in KISS. If you don't have the problems Erlang was designed to solve, Erlang is probably not a good choice. Rolling your own amateur version of Erlang on top of evented Python or Javascript is probably also not a good move though.
Re:How and Why Mixpanel Switched from Erlang to Python
by SoftwareMaven on Saturday August 06, 2011 @01:22AM
(#2853138)
I think you are confusing sophistication and complexity. Part of the sophistication of Erlang is how it simplifies the complexities of concurrent programming and, more importantly, the handling of failures in concurrent programming.
Re:How and Why Mixpanel Switched from Erlang to Python
by nirvana on Saturday August 06, 2011 @11:40AM
(#2854093)
Complexity, is the enemy.
The most sophisticated solutions are often very simple, because they were written from a sophisticated perspective, not a naive perspective.
erlang has stood the test of time, and produced great results because, really, it is very simple.
It just comes from a sophisticated perspective.