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by zelphirkalt 1980 days ago
I once tried web framework after web framework, anything I could find, for Erlang. Many were outdated and I could no longer get them running. I was not an Erlang pro, so perhaps they did still work, but no instructions on how to get them working.

Some offered documentation and I followed every single step, until something did not work any longer, like adding certificates. Simply could not make it accept the certificates I created using openpgp moments earlier and of course no documentation on what the certificates need to look like. I think that was Cowboy. The lack of beginner friendly documentation made me desparate. There must be one good and simply working web framework, I thought. I found a chat for N2O and entered that, asking questions and how to do something minimal with N2O, not a whole chat, which was the starting point of the framework, the only example it came with, which it already created, when you followed the tutorial or some steps I had found. I had seen interesting things in a video about it, particularly and how it handles / creates JS inside Erlang.

When asking for help and mentioning, that no other framework had worked and that I need more documentation, which there is a lack of, I was told to stop "trolling" and to "f* off" ... That was only one person (one contributor of the framework actually), but others did not offer any insight or help either. That was when I stopped looking into Erlang in my free time, trying to get a web project going. I simply gave up at that point.

Erlang itself is a great language. I often mention it as a language, where a lot of things are already there for a looong time. Concepts, which more and more languages now adopt for themselves and hype about. I have to agree with lack of beginner friendly documentation though, which is not "Look at the code!"

1 comments

Build It with Nitrogen: https://builditwith.com/nitro

This is a really excellent book, and a great introduction to Erlang with a mature web framework.

And it's refreshing to have an alternative to the 'Rails' way.

Thank you for that recommendation. Might make me pick up Erlang with web development again in the future!