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by 501 4495 days ago
I've posted these before[1]:

* No public bug tracker

* epmd's security (or lack thereof)

* Can't insist that epmd be started separately (`erl -no_epmd` won't start epmd but it also won't start epmd's gen_server)

* Can't swap out epmd because while `erl -epmd_module foo` is there, `net_kernel:epmd_module()` is barely used. (Although I don't think its interface is documented anyway)

* No built-in way to hook UNIX signals

* While the documentation itself is pretty good, it's presentation is lacking and it's difficult to quickly correct mistakes as you run into them

* It can be difficult to reason about when a shared binary will be garbage collected

* OS packaging (I'm thinking of Debian/Ubuntu) of Erlang and Erlang apps tends to be more harmful than helpful (old packages, namespace conflicts, etc)

To them I'd add:

* No agreed upon build tool (rebar while prevalent isn't universally accepted)

* Community libraries often have no support for upgrades or aren't packaged properly for releases

* Can't upgrade SSL if you're using it as a carrier

* No standard code format tool like gofmt (yes I know about erl_tidy, no it doesn't provide the same functionality as gofmt or it'd see similar use)

* Not enough infrastructure around built around edoc; where's the godoc or godoc.org work-a-likes? (yes I know about erldocs.com, it's no godoc.org)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801706

1 comments

Interesting set of comments...