Re:Ask HN: Why isn't Erlang more popular?
by 501 on Friday February 21, 2014 @05:40PM
(#7279944)
I've posted these before[1]:
* No public bug tracker
* epmd's security (or lack thereof)
* Can't insist that epmd be started separately (`erl -no_epmd` won't start epmd but it also won't start epmd's gen_server)
* Can't swap out epmd because while `erl -epmd_module foo` is there, `net_kernel:epmd_module()` is barely used. (Although I don't think its interface is documented anyway)
* No built-in way to hook UNIX signals
* While the documentation itself is pretty good, it's presentation is lacking and it's difficult to quickly correct mistakes as you run into them
* It can be difficult to reason about when a shared binary will be garbage collected
* OS packaging (I'm thinking of Debian/Ubuntu) of Erlang and Erlang apps tends to be more harmful than helpful (old packages, namespace conflicts, etc)
To them I'd add:
* No agreed upon build tool (rebar while prevalent isn't universally accepted)
* Community libraries often have no support for upgrades or aren't packaged properly for releases
* Can't upgrade SSL if you're using it as a carrier
* No standard code format tool like gofmt (yes I know about erl_tidy, no it doesn't provide the same functionality as gofmt or it'd see similar use)
* Not enough infrastructure around built around edoc; where's the godoc or godoc.org work-a-likes? (yes I know about erldocs.com, it's no godoc.org)
* No public bug tracker
* epmd's security (or lack thereof)
* Can't insist that epmd be started separately (`erl -no_epmd` won't start epmd but it also won't start epmd's gen_server)
* Can't swap out epmd because while `erl -epmd_module foo` is there, `net_kernel:epmd_module()` is barely used. (Although I don't think its interface is documented anyway)
* No built-in way to hook UNIX signals
* While the documentation itself is pretty good, it's presentation is lacking and it's difficult to quickly correct mistakes as you run into them
* It can be difficult to reason about when a shared binary will be garbage collected
* OS packaging (I'm thinking of Debian/Ubuntu) of Erlang and Erlang apps tends to be more harmful than helpful (old packages, namespace conflicts, etc)
To them I'd add:
* No agreed upon build tool (rebar while prevalent isn't universally accepted)
* Community libraries often have no support for upgrades or aren't packaged properly for releases
* Can't upgrade SSL if you're using it as a carrier
* No standard code format tool like gofmt (yes I know about erl_tidy, no it doesn't provide the same functionality as gofmt or it'd see similar use)
* Not enough infrastructure around built around edoc; where's the godoc or godoc.org work-a-likes? (yes I know about erldocs.com, it's no godoc.org)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801706