The Next Mainstream Programming Language: A Game Developer's

[Tristam MacDonald]

It is also nice to know that Erlang has been used for desktp software (and not just parallel computing, servers...). The open-source wings3d modeller is written in Erlang. www.wings3d.com

Bruno Medeiros Wrote:
> 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