Would you use Erlang now when there is Elixir?

I’m not sure why but I always thought LFE was a hobby project for Robert (I mean he already created Erlang!) but after revisiting the site after its redesign it seems people are using it in production:

LFE boasts seamless interoperability with Erlang and the BEAM ecosystem of libraries. It not only has been used in stable production applications since 2015, it has also been employed by start-ups as their differentiating tech. LFE is flexible enough to be everything from your go-to scripting solution to your preferred syntax for massively scalable, soft-real time services.

I’d like to see more threads about LFE :smiley:

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I think erlang2 was his hobby project, lol. LFE is fully fledged though. :slight_smile:
I think erlang2 was his, maybe one of the others, it had some aspects of elixir like multiple modules in a file and all, but was definitely a little hobby thing that wasn’t finished.

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Reminds me of a presentation I did 10 (what, 10!!) years ago now. Erlang for Ruby developers.

Blog post:

Link directly to the presentation:

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Nice one Karmen! I enjoyed going through that! And wow - TEN YEARS!!! Think I was only just getting into programming them :rofl:

What are the most used Erlang frameworks now btw? I need to add portals for them :nerd_face:

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Thanks!

Other than the ones I mentioned: Chicago Boss and Nitrogen, I see there are others like Zotonic and Nova. I haven’t personally used them. YMMV.

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I loved these slides. Thanks for sharing!

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You’re welcome. Thanks!

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Definitely for libraries because that would be useful for a wider range of people.
I’ve also grown to adore Erlang’s syntax for its conciseness and consistency despite all its quirks.

Erlang is not the best choice for web given there’s Phoenix of course, however if Whatsapp delivers with static types I can definitely see myself writing core logic in Erlang and using Phoenix purely as a web interface.

Love both languages anyway. :slight_smile:

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You can’t get around the fact that lisp’s, and hence LFE’s, syntax is fantastic in its simplicity and consistency. It makes things so much easier, And its macros.

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No, I was never really into erlang2, that was mainly Joe. There is another Erlang2 on its way but that is the Whatsapp group working on a newer statically typed erlang.

Still think lisp syntax is the best though. :wink:

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I didn’t try to define a function in that way because I KNOW that you can’t do it like that. I was just trying to show that there is set of syntactic “weirdness” which make no sense if you don’t know why. Doing it like that also makes sense if/when you view do ... end as a block, which it is sort of, and you want to write the block start and end at the same indentation.

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I am going to reserve judgement until I’ve finished reading Programming Erlang Robert :laughing:

I was under the impression it was going to be some sort of bolt-on, here’s Anton’s post from another thread:

November is here so hopefully won’t be too long before the WhatsApp team share details :nerd_face:

I wonder if it might be something like what TypeScript is to JS…

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I hope it’s not very differnt than the Erlang we know.

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Unfortunately sharing details is getting delayed. Please see my response in Elixir forum thread for more information: https://elixirforum.com/t/facebook-is-writing-a-new-statically-typed-language-to-run-on-the-beam/29829/34

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I think that’s perfectly reasonable Anton, it makes sense holding off until you’re happy with what you’ve come up with :smiley:

Please keep us updated on your progress if you can :blush:

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Pls excuse my ignorance but what can elixir do or offer that erlang can’t and vice versa?

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Primarily its macro system, erlang’s macro’s are significantly more difficult to both create and use.

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Is this something they are trying to ‘fix’?

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Are you referencing the macro’s? Not last I heard. Erlang’s are ‘technically’ more powerful, just significantly significantly more difficult to use in comparison.

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Another difference comes from the reason why Elixir was built… to bring polymorphism.

That’s why Enum works for Enumerable, while Erlang has specific modules for each type.

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