The Next Mainstream Programming Language: A Game Developer's Perspective :: Redux

[Bruno Medeiros]

Brad Anderson wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> I read in a recent article (I think it came from Slashdot, but not sure)
>> that a new programming paradigm is needed to make concurrency easier,
>> just in the same way as OO (and class encapsulation) improved on the
>> previous data abstraction paradigm to make code cleaner and easier to
>> write. Just in the same way as structured programming (ie, using
>> functions/scopes/modules) improved on the previous paradigm of
>> sequential/global/goto-using code, so to speak.
> 
> http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/articles/erlang.html
> 
> search for "Concurrency Oriented Programming"
> 
> BA


Hum, again Erlang, interesting. I had heard a bit about it before, on an 
article (again don't remember where) about a comparison between Apache 
and a web server built in Erlang. On a multicore machine Erlang did much 
because of it's massively parallel capabilities, etc..
This makes Erlang very interesting, but one must then ask questions 
like: What restrictions does Erlang's approach have? Does it have 
disadvantages in other areas or aspects of programming? Is it good as a 
general purpose programming language, or is it best only when doing 
concurrent applications? Can any of it's ideas be applied to imperative 
languages like D, Java, C#, etc.?
I personally am not looking deep into this (never had the use to study 
concurrency in-depth so far), I'm just pointing out that a lot of things 
have to be considered, and I have a feeling that there must be some 
downside to Erlang, or otherwise everyone else would be trying to bring 
Erlang aspects into their languages. Or maybe Erlang is just taking 
momentum. Time will tell.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D