[jacquesm]

That's an interesting development.

I'm pretty sure that the syntax of Erlang is one of its main stumbling blocks, it is very far off the beaten path (and imo ugly), which means an immediate shortage of people that can program in it.

Grafting a C like language on top of the Erlang VM should theoretically give you the same kind of stability and scalability without the drawback of having to fish in a pool with all of 5 programmers in it (and they'll be working for a telco somewhere anyway).

[iamwil]

While I don't particularly like Erlang syntax either, what I find with learning new languages is: the syntax bothers you the most at first because 1) you don't know anything about the language. 2) It's the most obvious and easy thing to pick on first.

After you get into it, I've found that syntax is usually the least of my grievances in a new language. It usually has to do with features missing from other languages.

Lately, I've been doing javascript a lot more, and at first, I didn't like typing "function() {" all the time (and still don't). But now, I find that javascript doesn't have method_missing (only FF implements non-standard __noSuchMethod__), nor can you override the subscript operator. Gah! So then a thing like typing "function() {" fades into the background.

[silentbicycle]

Indeed. Ugly syntax is such an obvious thing to complain about, but ugly semantics and ugly design are a bigger problem in the long run. (I really like Erlang's programming model, but find the syntax a bit scruffy.)

Erlang's syntax seems a lot less weird if you're familiar with Prolog, FWIW. It was a originally a DSL built on top of SICSTus Prolog, but seems to have accumulated some extra syntax along the way. Same with a lot of its other quirks.

[davidw]

Yes, Erlang's syntax is something you can still complain about a little bit even after having gotten comfortable with it. It's just not one of the language's strong points in my opinion. Of course, for a competent programmer, it's nothing more than a minor annoyance and is no reason not to use Erlang for projects where it would be a good fit.

[almost]

There's a lot more to erlang than a funky syntax. I don't think making it superficial look like something else will increase the number of people how can program it

[jacquesm]

Absolutely, but it certainly doesn't help either.

It's like with foreign languages, if you have to learn a new language but at least their pronunciation rules and alphabet are the same as the one that you already know how to use the barrier is a lot lower than if they use a different script as well.

It serves as a bridge from the known in to the unknown.

As soon as that bridge isn't there the number of people that will be able (or willing) to make the jump drops dramatically.

If this step-in-between will make the concepts behind Erlang easier to bring to the masses then more of them will eventually make the step to Erlang itself as well.

[amalcon]

I think the idea is not to increase the number of people who can, but to increase the number who want to.