Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pron 3972 days ago
> There is absolutely no reason to switch to the JVM when the EVM is a beast of its own.

I think there is, if you want to concentrate your limited resources on the language and its phenomenal libraries while letting an enormous team working on the world’s second-largest open-source project take care of the VM for you, while at the same time giving you better performance and a wider reach. There are many more organizations that would adopt Erlang if it were on the JVM.
1 comments
vezzy-fnord 3971 days ago
Completely ignoring the massive resources it would take to make the switch in the first place.

Erjang doesn't cut it. It's an incomplete research project that works on the basis of bytecode translation. Further, the disadvantages with regards to global GC are clearly listed. You say that it'll only keep improving, but that's essentially taking a leap of faith that the JVM developers will eventually get to parity with a feature you already have.

"Limited resources" is a red herring and FUD, plain and simple. Nor is "wider reach" guaranteed in the slightest. Wider reach is not intrinsically a good thing, either. Organizations for whom Erlang is out of reach simply because it doesn't use the JVM are absolutely petty and there is no loss from them not using it, IMO.

link
pron 3971 days ago
> Completely ignoring the massive resources it would take to make the switch in the first place.

If I'm suggesting it, I obviously believe that the cost/benefit is worthwhile. I don think the effort required is massive.

> You say that it'll only keep improving

I say that it has already improved enough.

> Organizations for whom Erlang is out of reach simply because it doesn't use the JVM are absolutely petty

Not petty, but rational. Those organizations already have millions of lines of code, and lots of knowledge and experience on the JVM, and the reasons for choosing Erlang aren't compelling enough given the adoption cost. But if you lower those costs...

All I'm suggesting is simply lowering the adoption costs of an upcomer, rather niche tech with a small ecosystem (which would also, I'm convinced, considerably improve the tech).

link