Larry O’Brien: Erlang: What the Cool Kids Are Doing
October 15, 2007 —
(Page 1 of 2)
Geepster, n. A person who derives his or her identity by mastering complex, but lesser-known, technologies; a geek hipster.
Erlang, n. What all the geepsters are using now that they let anyone code in Ruby.
The psychology of the “early market” adopters is brutal. Enthusiasts and visionaries convincingly sing the praises of this programming language or that architectural model, articulating advantages and emphasizing the “game changing” nature of the technology. Thousands of blogs are launched, dozens of books are printed, a clutch of conferences convened: The technology is poised for total and utter dominance of the software development world! Then everyone moves on to the next thing.
I’ve long advocated the model explained in Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm,” with its ruinous chasm between “early” and “mass” markets, as the best for understanding the adoption of software development technologies. I don’t want to rehash that belief, but I feel sorry for those in the Ruby and Rails communities, who must be feeling a little jilted right now. To be clear, I believe that Ruby actually has “crossed the chasm” and will see wholesale adoption in the enterprise. Microsoft’s IronRuby project has tremendous potential when coupled with the Dynamic Language Runtime and Silverlight 1.1, while Sun’s JRuby project has not just shipped, but appears to be ticking off incremental milestones with ease.
Meanwhile, CodeGear, the company formed from Borland’s languages division, has shipped the first version of a dedicated IDE for Ruby called 3rdRail, and SapphireSteel, whose Ruby In Steel plug-in for Visual Studio has been my preferred IDE for Ruby development, has made a .NET-to-Ruby bridge available for free download. But the blogosphere’s encomiums to Ruby have definitely waned, and recent Technorati searches have been more likely to turn up sour “this would be easier in PHP” posts than the rapturous testimonies of the past few years. Such is the fate of technologies running the gantlet of the skeptical mass market.
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/31222
Most Read
Latest News
Resources
SAP unveils SAP HANA platform innovations for Big Data and spatial processing
Features include smart data access and expanded cloud deployment options
|
|
|
Alteryx raises $12 million to put Big Data analytics in the hands of all business analysts
Quest founder's firm, Toba Capital, selects Alteryx as its first analytics investment
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
|
|
Jelastic launches new version of its Java and PHP hosting platform
Jelastic today announced the launch of a new version of its ultra-scalable cloud hosting platform
|
Telerik adds back-end services to Icenium mobile tool suite
Icenium Everlive makes the suite a complete app development platform, the company says
|
|
|
CollabNet fuses CloudForge, TeamForge
New pricing structure and integration gives developers an enterprise-grade choice for dist...
|
|
|
Eclipse release train for Kepler arrives June 26
New version of Eclipse includes Stardust for business process management, and Orion 3.0 fo...
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Testing and ASQ SaaS
Demand for solutions to test applications on the cloud and for the cloud is rising signifi...
|
|
|
Get to Know the Database Decision Factors
What should you look for when choosing a relational database system? This informative arti...
|
|
|
Exploring the Database Forest
Today’s database technology landscape is more dynamic and varied than ever before. What’s...
|
|
|
Data Management Resource Guide
Today’s data is generated by more than just applications. Data is generated by trillions o...
|