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> Based on this I'm guessing that Erlang is one of those functional languages that are great for mathematical proof-like software development but not practical for solving actual problems because the world is mutable and the language constructs are not.

It was actually designed to solve actual problems. Specifically, extremely high reliability in some of Ericsson's core networking gear.

I'd recommend Learn You Some Erlang[0] if you intend to look at it again. It explains the language, then OTP (the Open Telephony Platform - a framework for defining Erlang process trees and failure modes), then basic outside communication and disk storage.

[0] http://learnyousomeerlang.com/

You misunderstand his point. He isn't saying that Erlang is a toy language, he is saying that documentation makes Erlang look like a toy language.

i.e. showing him how his thought was wrong doesn't change the fact that many other people will probably make a similar thoughts.

No, I understood the OP's point, I just decided to point them towards a better resource in the case that they do want to learn more about it at some point. I agree that the Erlang site is utterly dreadful.

Fair enough, just misunderstood your tone, my apologies.

Yessum, it is indeedy...

For the record, only one generation of equipment used Erlang/OTP. As a part of Ericsson's hardware platform, it was very short-lived.

What did subsequent generations of equipment use?

Ffs, you're not looking at some small product that an unknown company built. You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey? Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website?

> "that the online reference doesn't cover interaction with anything outside of your program" This does NOT mean it does not teach you IO. The full bullet point is

> "How to communicate with the outside world and/or software written in other languages (ports). There is however a separate tutorial for this, Interoperability Tutorial"

It means it won't teach you FFI in a tutorial.

> "guessing that Erlang is one of those functional languages that are great for mathematical proof-like software development but not practical for solving actual problems because the world is mutable and the language constructs are not."

I don't know how you got to this dumb conclusion when "What is Erlang?" on the main page clearly states:

> Erlang is a programming language used to build massively scalable soft real-time systems with requirements on high availability. Some of its uses are in telecoms, banking, e-commerce, computer telephony and instant messaging. Erlang's runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.

> You're looking at something that is really well-known. What does the website of Google convey?

The Google comparison is comical. You are wildly over-estimating how well known Erlang is, even in the dev community.

> Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website?

Most devs learn a new language when it helps them solve a problem. Anyone who needs to solve the problems that Erlang addresses has already at least looked at Erlang.

This thread was also directed at those who have never used Erlang. Starting with the Erlang website makes eminent sense.

Specific example :

Compare the Erland and Rust websites. I've never used Rust or Erlang. I can confidently say that the Rust website does a better job of familiarizing a new user with the language. It's not just a matter of the Rust syntax being C-derived, either. It's simply harder to find any useful information on the Erlang website.

Rust :

    * code sample on landing page  
    * comprehensive tutorial linked directly from landing page

Erlang :

    * no code on landing page  
    * "quick start guide" which is basically a link to a non-free book 
    * Getting to actual code requires 3-4 clicks from the landing page
    * e.g. Documentation -> Course -> Sequential Programming

Conclusion : The Erlang website isn't as useful as that of at least 1 other non-mainstream language.

The last thing Erlang should put on its website to get new uses is Erlang source. Certainly the most off putting part of it.

That is a great idea, assuming the new users of Erlang will continue to be able avoiding Erlang code

> Starting with the Erlang website makes eminent sense

Of course it does. But stopping at the Erlang website because of the website makes much less sense. Find some other way to know more about the language and then decide whether you'll use it or not.

Remember that the title of this thread is "Why isn't Erlang more popular?", not "Why Erlang is so great you'll try multiple times to seek out documentation for it".

>You are wildly over-estimating how well known Erlang is, even in the dev community

Well, it's pretty well known in the competent dev community. Some guy doing CRUD apps for some enterprise might not know it, true.

lol. This silly elitism needs to die.

Why, because all programming endeavours are equally hard or important, and all programmers have equal skills?

In this make believe scenario, the world is divided neatly into opposing camps of "competent devs" and "enterprise CRUD devs". It's dismissive, cheap analysis at its best. It's a straw man whose only real purpose is to embolden us with a smug sense of superiority.

It's also empirically correct.

I've worked for enterprise.

Also I didn't say it is divided "neatly". Why do people always assume that when you talk about a group of people being Y, all of them must be Y?

It's enough that the statistical majority of them be Y (e.g 90% of enterprise developers not really knowing about the wider world outside enterprise software practices). That there will be exceptions it's obvious -- there are exceptions everywhere.

"Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website?"

Kind of! Irrespective of Erlang's site, a well-maintained, informative, and newbie friendly website is often a signal. Maybe it's not a very accurate signal. But it's a signal which suggests that, for lack of a better term, the community exists and has its act together.

There are enough other things to occupy programmers' time. People adopt heuristics like these — "how professional/modern does the website look?" — as a way to save time.

> Do you really decide whether you'd learn a language by looking at its website?

I certainly could see myself doing that. It's usually indicative of the leadership and community that's associated with the language. In Erlang's case I understand that it's pretty niche in the big scheme of things, and that might be the reason. In terms of languages if the information presented isn't on the level of Java, PHP, Ruby, Python and others it comes off as sub-par. That may not be the reality but it's the perception IMO.

Imagine you know nothing about Erlang, as the poster was pretending. How do you decide if it's worth your time to learn more about that language/platform? Certainly what the official website tells you factors into that largely.

You seem to be looking into this from the perspective that everyone must already know what Erlang is all about, so there doesn't need to be an effort to reach out to new users - which would contradict the questions the OP is asking.

I'm not saying that Erlang shouldn't reach out to new users. I'm saying that new users should look past the website and put in a little effort to know about Erlang. Dismissing a language because of the its website is not just right.

Come on! I am writing LuvvieScript a compile-to-javascript dialect of Erlang.

This is a list of compile-to-javascript languages: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

Is any developer going to give every language on that list the same consideration?

No. Not possible.

> (which doesn't bother to define what O, T, and P stand for.)

It obviously stands for Outlaw Techno Psychobitch ;).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rRb... (Erlang The Movie II)

> The first link to more documentation at the bottom of the page goes to a book's website, so that's a dead end.

Why are you saying a link to Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good [1] is a dead end? Have you missed the "Read it online" button?

[1] http://www.learnyousomeerlang.com

>The first link to more documentation at the bottom of the page goes to a book's website, so that's a dead end.

Well, you can read the book online, so how's that a dead end?

>So I'm going to stop here, and do some real work in a pragmatic language.

Well, $16B for WhatsApp, for a company with like 40 engineers, proves that Erlang can be quite pragmatic itself.

Come on. Not exactly a good faith effort, is it? Why type in a rant like this, when you could have found a wonderful tutorial on Google in one tenth of the time it took you to write this?

He's doing this in good faith because I, the original poster, asked him too. This is the best answer on the page (for me).

But this doesn't tell you anything, other than that someone who's not interested and pressed for time won't put any effort into it. It's a trivial result.

Well, if the question is "Why isn't Erlang more popular?" then I would think that pointing out that "someone who's not interested and pressed for time won't put any effort into it" is a perfectly fine answer. The clear implication is that the resources currently available for would-be Erlang adopters require an unrealistic level of interest and time to get them over the hump. It tells an Erlang evangelist precisely what she needs to do: do more to sell the language to people who have little time or inclination to rally dig into a language they otherwise know nothing about. (Of course, while it may be a useful answer, it is not very interesting for the rest of us.)

> the resources currently available for would-be Erlang adopters require an unrealistic level of interest and time to get them over the hump.

The person who can't be bothered to even find 'Learn You Some Erlang' also won't have the motivation to learn Erlang. It does take effort, but there now are many good resources available (unlike the situation just a few years ago).

I believe you missed the point. When I first heard about Go, I went to the official website and I was immediately presented with a few code examples. The go tour was fascinatingly good introductory material. Furthermore, the documentation and language specification are very concise, clear and full of examples.

What am I trying to say? Put effort into presenting your language and I will put effort into going through the material.

Give me two shit and that's how much interest you will get from me.

However, I put my own effort into finding more resources. I tried Erlang, it was OK, but I wasn't very comfortable working with the syntax. I've never needed any special feature in Erlang that I couldn't accomplish in another language.

No, I get the point, but I don't agree with it, at least not to that extent.

> Put effort into presenting your language and I will put effort into going through the material. Give me two shit and that's how much interest you will get from me.

See, I really don't think it's worth courting people who have that attitude. If your motivation is _that_ low, it's probably not for you anyway. At this point, even people who don't have a real need for Erlang/OTP, but who still enjoy learning for the sake of learning, can find great introductory material.

Lots of people enjoy learning for the sake of learning, but there is an infinite amount of things out there for people to learn. If you don't spend some effort to convince people "Hey, this thing there is really worth learning!" then they won't - even if they are not lazy. No one - even non-lazy people - has the time to learn about everything.

> See, I really don't think it's worth courting people who have that attitude.

What attitude? Someone goes to a website out of curiosity, but it isn't very helpful so they leave. (Who hasn't done this?)

Erlang might be EXACTLY the thing they need, but on the subject of why Erlang isn't more popular--subpar marketing is more than relevant.

The person who can't be bothered to find something they don't know exists. Seriously?

It tells you that the primary route to finding out about Erlang for someone who knots nothing about it (ie Google it and have a nosey) its no bloody good.

If someone tells me to try out a new language I generally give it about 10-15 minutes. If I'm not running hello world by then I'm not interested in something I'd be taking a casual interest in. The only time I'm giving it more than 15 minutes is when I have a real business need for it or want to enhance my resume with something that has a lot of businesses seeking that skill. Python, for example, I was easily able to get up and running in under 15 minutes with a hello world and now I use it regularly for lots of little tasks. I can't be fussed to toy around something that takes too much work/infrastructure to get up and running. There's other options out there I can be more productive in faster.

100% of erlang tutorials are for fibonnaci.

I once challenged Scott Fritchie to give an Erlang talk at our local ruby group (rum.mn) without implementing Eratosthenes' sieve, and sure enough he did, using elevators of all things.

I was so impressed with Erlang that i'm still banging my head on it nearly 10 (half-hearted) years later.

I never understood why every language has a plethora of fibonnaci tutorials. "DO THE FIBONNACI IN X USING Z PROGRAMMING PARADIGM" ok thanks, no more please.

Because you already:

1. Know what the Fibonnaci numbers are.

2. How to compute them.

3. Said computation is straight-forward, but it requires some form of looping (either recursion or iteration) and some form of arithmetic.

The combination of those traits means that if I present code to compute the Fibonnaci number for an arbitrary number in some random programming language, you can infer a lot about that programming language. In other words, the only variable in that situation is the programming language itself, which allows you to use the other information you already know to learn about that language relatively quickly.

I don't think so.