Google Wave

[Tim]

I'm pondering how Google Wave will change the communications
landscape, and how this may (or may not) indirectly drive the growth
of non-Java-ish technologies.

If you consider that g-wave should enable mass distribution then along
with the growth of massively parallel processors, especially on mobile
devices, then it seems likely that the pressure on the IT industry to
Erlang type technology (i.e. inherently reliable, scalable and
distributable) will only increase.

Or perhaps I should say that the use of those technologies may become
a more important factor in differentiating those entities that will
thrive and those that will subsist or fail.

This really could be a landmark technology. I'm thinking about
previous milestones such as widespread adoption of the mouse, GUI,
client/server, RDBMS, e-mail, www, etc. Will g-wave be that
significant ? My bet is that eventually it will be seen in that
context.

[Chris Kleeschulte]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Tim <timlewis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm pondering how Google Wave will change the communications
> landscape, and how this may (or may not) indirectly drive the growth
> of non-Java-ish technologies.

I agree totally, but I would pose this question to the group. I have
been hacking around with Stackless Python recently and I wonder if
Stackless <insert your favorite imperative language here> will be a
stepping stone between OOP and purely functional languages like
Erlang? I would think so.

>
> If you consider that g-wave should enable mass distribution then along
> with the growth of massively parallel processors, especially on mobile
> devices, then it seems likely that the pressure on the IT industry to
> Erlang type technology (i.e. inherently reliable, scalable and
> distributable)  will only increase.

I remember when absorbing functional paradigms and concurrency in
general, I was looking to cram every problem into that space; Erlang
and developing concurrent applications is really cool. I then
abandoned the idea completely that Erlang is a general purpose
programming language. I really don't think that there are any true
general purpose gen 4 or 5 computer languages. I think perhaps that
Microsoft (or whoever thought up the idea of the common langauge
runtime) is correct. You focus your energy on making it easy to
leverage the right language construct for the problem at hand. To your
point, maybe Erlang will lead the way to something much bigger.

>
> Or perhaps I should say that the use of those technologies may become
> a more important factor in differentiating those entities that will
> thrive and those that will subsist or fail.
>
> This really could be a landmark technology.  I'm thinking about
> previous milestones such as widespread adoption of the mouse, GUI,
> client/server, RDBMS, e-mail, www, etc.  Will g-wave be that
> significant ?  My bet is that eventually it will be seen in that
> context.
>

I am already seeing Google Voice being a major game changer in the
venerable voice comm world, from there Google can rule video
conferencing too. From there telepresence. So I see Google Voice and
Wave converging huge markets.
>
> >
>

[Joseph Stewart]

On that note... do y'all have a wave invite to give out? I'd sure like to play with it.

-joe

[Chris Kleeschulte]

I am still waiting on my Google Wave personal account too.

Chris

[Kevin A. Smith]

As am I. A friend of mine sent me an invite two days ago and still no
sign :(

Ah well. At least I get to hack on some Erlang code :)

--Kevin