I have recently proposed, in a competition of research projects, the development of an application in the field of distributed systems using functional Erlang language. Here is what the one of the reviewers said :
"Unfortunately the innovative character claimed to be the implementation using the Erlang language turns this work into a simple academic exercise targeted at training Erlang programmers. Erlang graphics toolkits are primitive, and reading any non-trivial Erlang code requires a firm understanding of recursion, a kind of abstract thinking that many people find difficult. Erlang is also lacking in libraries compared to other languages; in my experience, for any given task, there is zero, one, or at most two Erlang libraries available for the job."
You agree in principle with this answer? How do you comment?
In my opinion, the reviewer has made a number of incorrect statements:
1) Implementation using Erlang language:
Erlang is a functional concurent programming language for the applications that require high reliability. The most important strenght of the language is that it provides an excellent support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance, allowing to programmers to write a robust and clean code for multiprocessor, multicore and distributed systems. Erlang has capability to implement non-stop (live upgrade) systems. Erlang has an original philosophy of treating the errors of the system totally opposed to any other programming language.
For these reasons, and the others unexposed here, an application made in another language can not be translated in any way in Erlang. To be programmed in Erlang, the architecture of the any application have to be reconsidered in a specific way, resulting in entirely new solutions, whose implementation can not be imagined in other languages.
2) Erlang libraries:
OTP (Open Telecom Platform) is a large collection of libraries for Erlang to do everything! Erlang can be named "Erlang/OTP" - the language and the libraries. OTP is also open source.
3) Erlang graphic toolkit:
wxErlang is a state-of-the art GUI programming system, compatible with wxWidgets (C++ library for Windows, Linux, OS X, etc), in the same family with wxPython, wxPearl, wxRuby, etc.
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