[erlang-questions] Let's count Erlang programmers in the list!

[Max Bourinov]

Hi guys,

I see that demand of Erlang on the market is rapidly grows. I think it is just beautiful news! People are realizing the power of Erlang.

Also I heard strange information that there are 2-3 thousands full-time Erlang programmers in the world and this is biggest problem of the language. I have no idea how to calculate all Erlangers, but my first thought to ask a list to reply to this mail so we all can see how many replies we have. Of course it won't count all Erlangers, but I believe that big part of Erlangers are in this list.

So, please reply just once!

Let distributed asynchronous counting begin!

Best regards,

Max

[Gleb Peregud]

1

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[Rapsey]

5 of us in my company

Sergej

[Jean-Charles Campagne]

1

Funny, I was asking the same question an hour ago as I was talking to someone else.

Cheers,
Jean-Charles Campagne

[Jared Kofron]

1

[Jesse Gumm]

1

--
Jesse Gumm
Owner, Sigma Star Systems
414.940.4866 || sigma-star.com || @jessegumm

[Tim Watson]

+1

[Michael Uvarov]

1540 users on GitHub that have Erlang code in their repositories.
We are waiting emails from them with the same message.

[AD]

1

[Thomas Elsgaard]

1

[Dmitry Belyaev]

Count me in )

[Dmitry Kolesnikov]

+1

[Kostis Sagonas]

Can we please stop this nonsense? (which I consider an abuse of the
erlang-questions list. I really do not want 1000 mails in my mailbox.)

A simple private question to the list owner would have given you this
information in a way that was less disturbing to others.

Kostis

[Pierpaolo Bernardi]

Maybe would be simpler to just ask the ml administrator how many
subscriber has this list?

I doubt that a significant fraction of us are not programmers (full
time erlangers will be less, of course).


2012/10/19, Max Bourinov <bour...@gmail.com>:

--
Inviato dal mio dispositivo mobile

[Thomas Allen]

On Fri, October 19, 2012 2:24 pm, Kostis Sagonas wrote:
> Can we please stop this nonsense? (which I consider an abuse of the
> erlang-questions list. I really do not want 1000 mails in my mailbox.)
>
> A simple private question to the list owner would have given you this
> information in a way that was less disturbing to others.
>
> Kostis

Thank you, Kostis. Nothing like arriving to 20 emails in my
erlang-questions folder after lunch, expect that some heated discussions
from earlier have developed further, and see it's all pointless "1"
bodies.

Thomas Allen

[Michael Truog]

1

[Karolis Petrauskas]

+2, although in a PoC stage.

Karolis

[Paul Peregud]

1+1

[Bryan Hughes]

+2

[Bryan Hughes]

My apologies for being a spammer.  Wasnt thinking when I did a reply-all.  And now get to add even more spam with my apology!  Hopefully everyone has message filters turned on and can just ignore this thread...

Bryan

--

Bryan Hughes
CTO and Co-Founder / Wobblesoft
(415) 515-7916

http://www.wobblesoft.com

"Art is never finished, only abandoned. - Leonardo da Vinci"

[Michael Turner]

+0.5

[Siraaj Khandkar]

I'd say that is a more meaningful data point to consider than "me too" emails :)

Although, I work with 4 awesome Erlang devs and 3 of them don't even have
Github accounts, so it's hard to tell...


On Oct 19, 2012, at 1:51 PM, rambocoder wrote:

> Just for fun, there are 1540 users on GitHub that have Erlang code in their
> repositories.
>
> https://github.com/search?q=language%3Aerlang&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Users
>
> -rambocoder

--
Siraaj Khandkar
.o.
..o
ooo

[Sergey Shilov]

On Oct 19, 2012, at 8:33 PM, Max Bourinov wrote:

> Also I heard strange information that there are 2-3 thousands full-time Erlang programmers in the world and this is biggest problem of the language. I have no idea how to calculate all Erlangers, but my first thought to ask a list to reply to this mail so we all can see how many replies we have. Of course it won't count all Erlangers, but I believe that big part of Erlangers are in this list.
>
> So, please reply just once!
>

+1

[Varuna]

Hello Folks,

+1 on FreeBSD8.0 + Erlang R14B04 (erts-5.8.5).

Just started to understand Erlang and I do have a good learning curve ahead.
Any idea if Erlang has been ported onto hardware other than those provided by
Ericsson?

With regards,
Varuna
Eudaemonic Systems
Simple, Specific & Insightful

IT Consultants, Continued Education & Systems Distribution
+91-88-92-47-62-63
http://www.eudaemonicsystems.net
http://enquiry.eudaemonicsystems.net

[Michael Gebetsroither]

On 2012-10-19 19:33, Max Bourinov wrote:

1

kind regards,
Michael Gebetsroither

[o...@cs.otago.ac.nz]

One fairly obvious point: the number of Erlang programmers
is one thing, the number of people who subscribe to this list
is a different thing, and the number of people replying is a
third, completely different, thing, which is irredeemably
useless for estimating the first.

[Maxim Treskin]

I know ~20 erlangers in Novosibirsk

--
Max Treskin

[David Goehrig]

As someone actively hiring Erlang programmers, I'm far less interested in how many existing programmers there are, and more concerned with how to train new programmers. Right now, I have a team of 8 engineers learning Erlang, and plan on hiring 8 more for the team before the end of the year. Because we are hiring experts in other fields (video engineers, machine learning, hardware engineering, graphics processing, rights management) and teaching them Erlang.

Our pool of new hires are constrained by:

1.) domain knowledge in a component of our infrastructure
2.) self directed individuals who require minimal day to day supervision
3.) a willingness to learn Erlang

This turns out to be a great fit as the personality profile favors T shaped individuals. (A little of everything + world class specialty) but that category of individual is already rare enough that adding #2 becomes a positive boon. People want to work on this team because they get to learn Erlang.

It turns out the difficulty in training them is not Erlang's syntax, or the globally distributed infrastructure they're reworking. It is the cycle of learning itself:

1.) Why would I ever want to use ________?
2.) Wow ________ is cool! I'm going to rewrite everything using ________!
3.) WTF were the thinking when they implemented ________, it is far too complex!
4.) Oh $#!+ I need rewrite everything again as a proper __ application.
5.) repeat cycle again ad nauseum infinity.) goto 1

This cycle goes through several iterations that seem to repeat for each group, where they discover the value of bits of OTP by reinventing it piece by piece.

I wish there way a way to fast track this learning by devising a fiendish set experiments to get them to do all the wrong things quickly. A "Learn Erlang the Wrong Way" course, to distill months of painful lessons into a few short weeks :)

Granted, you are probably still doomed to repeat those lessons for the next 2 years as they get ingrained in practice.

How have other's experiences been with Erlang training programs / seminars?


-=-=- da...@nexttolast.com -=-=-

On Oct 19, 2012, at 1:33 PM, Max Bourinov <bour...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I see that demand of Erlang on the market is rapidly grows. I think it is just beautiful news! People are realizing the power of Erlang.
>
> Also I heard strange information that there are 2-3 thousands full-time Erlang programmers in the world and this is biggest problem of the language. I have no idea how to calculate all Erlangers, but my first thought to ask a list to reply to this mail so we all can see how many replies we have. Of course it won't count all Erlangers, but I believe that big part of Erlangers are in this list.
>
> So, please reply just once!
>
> Let distributed asynchronous counting begin!
>
> Best regards,
> Max
>

[Loïc Hoguin]

That's from these observations that I designed my entry-level training
course. It took me so long to learn Erlang and then get to OTP that I
thought there should be an introductory training that shows you all the
bigger steps you will want to take, from basic Erlang to releases and
distribution. Of course in 3 days you don't get much practical
experience from it but at least you can answer the questions "what
should I use?" and "why does it work like this?", questions that I wish
I knew much earlier than I did.

--
Loïc Hoguin
Erlang Cowboy
Nine Nines
http://ninenines.eu

[Henning Diedrich]

Hi Dave,

to help a talented beginner, I found it can be very productive to use the actual project and its requirements, lay the needed functionality out clearly and get started top down, providing a framework of the build environment, the expected supervisor and app structure and seed Common Test suites. If the product is too big, sub-dividing it into apps may work.

Concretely, after two weeks of letting toy with a core functionality, use the source that was produced, embed it into the frame of the project as described above and help navigating the new, clunky iteration for another two weeks.

Be available for newbie errors for approx. 2 months: try to never allow for more than an hour of unsuccessful bug hunt before reporting up for help. Else you'll loose days.

The circle you are describing can't really be repeated too often. You take the major ______s out by introducing apps, supervisors and tests early. But refactoring only because its will make things more OTP should not be allowed before all functionality is present in my opinion. That reminds me to how Joe Armstrong said he was surprised that people understood his book to recommend using only OTP behaviors while what he meant to do was to encourage writing your own.

Best,
Henning

[Max Bourinov]

Hi David,

For me the book "Erlang and OTP in Action" worked very well.

Best regards,

Max

[Siraaj Khandkar]

On Oct 21, 2012, at 12:26 PM, David Goehrig wrote:

<SNIPPED>

> 1.) Why would I ever want to use ________?
> 2.) Wow ________ is cool! I'm going to rewrite everything using ________!
> 3.) WTF were the thinking when they implemented ________, it is far too complex!
> 4.) Oh $#!+ I need rewrite everything again as a proper __ application.
> 5.) repeat cycle again ad nauseum infinity.) goto 1
>
> This cycle goes through several iterations that seem to repeat for each
> group, where they discover the value of bits of OTP by reinventing it piece
> by piece.

Yep. That sounds very much like myself :)

> I wish there way a way to fast track this learning by devising a fiendish set
> experiments to get them to do all the wrong things quickly. A "Learn Erlang
> the Wrong Way" course, to distill months of painful lessons into a few short
> weeks :)

This is futile. The only thing you can do in a few weeks is ACCEPT things as
facts, not actually UNDERSTAND them. Until you understand, you're bound to
repeat the above cycle.

Also, the way you say "...to get them to do all the wrong things quickly..."
sounds a bit douchy. Like you just want these code monkeys to hurry up, get
their shit together and get to the assembly line...

What is missing in that scenario is MOTIVATION, which is critical for really
learning. Made-up example problems are usually boring. You need REAL problems
that people are really motivated to solve, and solid concentration time to
think about solutions. Not gonna happen in ANY course. Courses are best as
presentations of how the teacher solved his/her real problem and what he/she
learned along the way.

> Granted, you are probably still doomed to repeat those lessons for the next 2
> years as they get ingrained in practice.

Yep :)

> How have other's experiences been with Erlang training programs / seminars?

I never took an Erlang course per se, but what I said above applies to learning
anything. Not saying one shouldn't take courses, on the contrary, I feel you
should consume as much as possible given an opportunity (there're crucial bits
of info one can pickup from a course), but the only way to learn is to try
really hard to solve something, then read/listen to advice and revise your
solution. Lots of educational value in NIH. Might be the reason why people love
making new web servers :)


P.S. I think you may be missing-out on the best programmers if you constrain
the pool to domain knowledge only.

--
Siraaj Khandkar
.o.
..o
ooo

[Henning Diedrich]

Hi Siraaj,

On Oct 21, 2012, at 7:28 PM, Siraaj Khandkar <siraaj....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Also, the way you say "...to get them to do all the wrong things quickly..."
> sounds a bit douchy. Like you just want these code monkeys to hurry up, get
> their shit together and get to the assembly line...

I'll second Dave, there must be a better way.

It's not trying to skip the needed time but pin pointing what of OTP must be on the table to start out.

And it can never be "all", it's too big for that.

Henning

[Thomas Allen]

On Sun, October 21, 2012 1:04 pm, Max Bourinov wrote:
> For me the book "Erlang and OTP in Action" worked very well.

I'm a book learner, and for me it's been a combination of resources and a
roundabout path:

1. Essence: Programming Erlang (Armstrong) for a whirlwind tour of the
language and its features. Get a good feel for the essence of Erlang even
if I didn't understand quite how I'd use it yet.

2. Practice: Erlang/OTP in Action (Logan, Merritt, Carlsson): Oh, so
*this* is how I use it. Not heavy on the details, but does a very good job
of explaining the OTP mindset and practical approaches to working with the
language and tools.

3. Expertise: Erlang Programming (Cesarini, Thompson): Fills in all the
gaps with very thorough coverage of language and OTP features.

4. Art: Programming Erlang (again): Now this book makes a lot more sense,
I can understand everything Armstrong was trying to demonstrate that I
missed the first time around.

So, I'd recommend access to all three books, and of course referring
always to the Erlang/OTP documentation ... can't do without that. And
finally, reading lots of Erlang code, which goes for any language.

Erlang/OTP gives you so much, it's difficult to just "dive in" like you
can for most languages. It's a full ecosystem and you're not just learning
how to make a script run. So, I really don't think anybody should be
surprised that it takes people a while to learn. It's not difficult to
learn per se, there's just a great deal to learn (which of course pays
off)!

Thomas Allen

[Paul Oliver]

For 3 I'd also recommend http://learnyousomeerlang.com/.  This gives the best account of OTP I've seen in the wild.

[bartek]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2012 22:33:48 +0300
Sergey Shilov <hsv...@mail.ru> wrote:

>
> On Oct 19, 2012, at 8:33 PM, Max Bourinov wrote:
> > Also I heard strange information that there are 2-3 thousands
> > full-time Erlang programmers in the world and this is biggest
> > problem of the language. I have no idea how to calculate all
> > Erlangers, but my first thought to ask a list to reply to this mail
> > so we all can see how many replies we have. Of course it won't
> > count all Erlangers, but I believe that big part of Erlangers are
> > in this list.
> >
> > So, please reply just once!
> >
> +1

Meee tooo.

Bartek

> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-q...@erlang.org
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions

--
Mam wiele powodów żeby ciągle iść do przodu trzy z nich witam od progu
gdy wracam do domu... (Abradab/O.S.T.R.)

[Matthias Lang]

On Sunday, October 21, Varuna wrote:

> Any idea if Erlang has been ported onto hardware other
> than those provided by Ericsson?

If you set the bar for "ported" as low as "compiled for something
Ericsson haven't compiled for", then there are quite a few examples in
linux-based embedded devices, e.g.

http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2005/11/erlang-on-gumstix.html (2005!)

you can also see configuration files people both inside and outside
Ericsson have contributed for cross compiling in the /xcomp directory
in the source tree.

If you set the bar higher, then I vaguely recall a couple of efforts
to port to less common unix variants. AIX, I think, and probably
something else too.

Matt

[Juan Jose Comellas]

I can share my experience having had to train 15+ developers (coming mostly from a Java background) when rewriting an existing project practically from scratch.

First, try to hire people that are really interested in Erlang and genuinely want to learn it and program in it. We had a mixed group of people, and with those that were "forced" to use it the results were not that great, whereas with the ones that had wanted to learn it by themselves the results were excellent. Self-motivation is key to get people to excel at it (I know, this is probably a truism).

Second, make sure that you have several people in the project that already know Erlang very well and can act as a reference to other developers. At the beginning it's very difficult to know which one is the correct way to implement something in Erlang, especially if you're not coming from the functional programming world. Pair-programming might help for this, but we didn't have the resources to try it.

Third, keep in mind that the code the new (to the Erlang world) developers write will probably be inelegant (in Erlang terms) and not use the established Erlang features and idioms. With enough will power they'll probably get whatever they have to do to work, but it takes a while to get into the Erlang mindset (especially the let it crash philosophy), so if possible allow time for a rewrite.

BTW, I don't regret one bit making the switch to Erlang.

Good luck with it,

Juanjo

[David Mercer]

On Friday, October 19, 2012, Max Bourinov wrote:

> I have no idea how to calculate all Erlangers, but my first
> thought to ask a list to reply to this mail so we all can
> see how many replies we have. Of course it won't count all
> Erlangers, but I believe that big part of Erlangers are in
> this list.
>
> So, please reply just once!

Since you ask your question in English, I presume you want a count only of English-speaking Erlangers. Some people in that previous thread might get offended... :-)

Cheers,

DBM

P.S. Don't count me. I don't use it full-time.

[Max Bourinov]

You are right!

I will repeat in Russian: Всем Эрлангерам просьба отметиться в данном треде.

Best regards,

Max

[Rudi Angela]

I'm an aspiring Erlang programmer, I've read the relevant books and done some home projects.