I agree, I don’t know python but a friend and I were discussing a problem and he wrote in python, I wrote in Perl and much like a Spaniard talking to an Italian, we got through with only a few double-checks.

The Erlang code you cited ( from Wikipedia ) doesn’t immediately share its secrets, nor does erlang have a ‘build a blog in 15 minutes’ screencast. Screencasts sold me on Textmate and Rails - perhaps Yariv will deign to do a “Here’s why you totally gotta use Erlang” screencast.

I think that conceptually, ErlyWeb is both simpler and more elegant than Rails, partly because of ErlyWeb’s design and partly because it’s based on functional semantics rather than OO/imperative semantics. This elegance also makes it easier to use IMO. But I guess I may be biased :)

-module(start).
-export([boot/0, boot/1]).

Now, a friend of mine with no Python background read his friend’s Python source code because his friend asked him to debug the code (his friend was a little bit clueless). My friend can read, understand and fix the code quite fast with no help of manual whatsoever.

I kinda agree with him.. Python does look easier than Erlang. Your argument is kind of biased unless you can pick some random human being and gave him/her an Erlang code to be modified.

-module(start).
-export([boot/0, boot/1]).

Those lines don’t look intuitive at all.

neither these lines

compile() ->
erlyweb:compile(”/path/to/app/blog”,
[{erlydb_driver, mysql}]).

To say that ErlyWeb framework is easier than Rails is also a little bit misleading (given that people thought Rails is easy)

I was tempted to check out Rails thanks to their great marketing scheme: make your own blog in 15 minutes.

I downloded eBook of Rails (the thiniest one from Bruce A. Tate, a half-baked book just to generate some sales). Followed some example from chapter 1 to 3. Concluded that if you really need to use Rails, you have to learn Ruby.

Learning Ruby takes quite some time. It’s not easy. Learning Ruby the crappy way is easy. Learning Rails by going through examples DOES make it look easy.

But rolling a professional product in Rails IS not easy.

For me, Rails is sort of a trap. It looks easy when they do it on their screencasts but in actuality, it is not (especially if you need to extend Rails to the next level).

I admit it, I’m fascinated by the idea of Erlang….but…well. Here’s the thing.

I’m an IT programmer ( boo! hiss! ). I design applications and glue services together (what yegge called serverware). It’s hard for me to understand what Erlang can do for me because the evangelists are usually talking at a crazy-smart Comp Sci PhD level of implementations.

I think this is something where PHP, Perl, Python, and (lately) RoR have excelled. Within 2 tutorials at O’Reilly, you can see how “Oh this can be used to make something better / easier for end users”.

Re: Haskell / Erlang . It’s a cool language and i loooove languages ( philo. degree and all.. ) but a series of example solutions in the have not appeared. When i search for examples of Erlang I’ve not yet seen a problem I have that Erlang would rock at.

Maybe this is all just a problem with my problemset….

I admit that the erlang mechanism is more elegant.