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0 pointsnell6y ago0 comments

> The cases were Erlang shines are very hard to replicate in these languages.

I'm just beginning to get interested in the Erlang ecosystem. Could you please add more color to this and give some examples where Erlang shines? IIRC, Whatsapp backend used to be on Erlang.

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8 comments · 5 top-level

adrr6y ago· 2 in thread

That would make sense that whatsapp backend is in Erlang. Erlang was developed for telecommunication systems where you need performance and the ability to hot swap code.

sitkack6y ago

Erlang's hotswap and Python's hotswap are of comparable power, ie, both are crappy. Being able to do something isn't the same as doing it well.

You can hot swap all languages.

pritambaral6y ago

If you're claiming that Erlang is no better at hot-swapping code than "all languages", you haven't seen Erlang's hot-swapping abilities.

"All languages" provide you the ability to run arbitrary code, and thus theoretically support hot-swapping, but if you try to put it into practice you'll soon run into real obstacles you hadn't considered that either bite you or at the least make your job a lot harder. Erlang provides those practical solutions that make hot-swapping easy (in other words, practically possible).

TL;DR: On the question of buy vs. build when it comes to hot-swapping abilities, Erlang falls on the left while "all languages" start at the right.

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ksec6y ago· 1 in thread

>IIRC, Whatsapp backend used to be on Erlang

Used to be? I know WhatsApp switched from FreeBSD to Linux and swapped hundreds bare metal servers to thousands of VMs. I dont think WhatsApp ever swapped / rewrote their system in another language under Facebook.

thijsvandien6y ago

There was some confusion about that a little while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21111662

rlander6y ago

Basically anything that is protocol-oriented like WhatsApp. A lot of people will say fault tolerant, low latency, highly available and massively concurrent systems, and they’ll be right, but I think that’s only half the story. You also get a battle-tested blueprint for building these kinds of distributed systems. You will find a pattern here and there in other languages and VMs, but the cohesiveness of the package (language + BEAM + OTP + observability + patterns) is something really unique. Compare this to the Java ecosystem, where there are dozens of concurrency primitives and an even greater number of distributed systems libraries and frameworks like Akka, Mesos, Zookeeper, Storm, Flink, Samza, Heron, Helix...

sbalea6y ago

If the problem you're solving can be easily split into many independent, low volume, maybe long running, communication oriented tasks, you owe it to yourself to look into the Erlang ecosystem. Think handling signaling for calls, chat connections, inputs from millions of IoT endpoints.

niels_bom6y ago

Afaik it still is.

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