On 20/11/2011 04:58 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 11/19/2011 12:35, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> It's not like you just write the code in
>> Erlang and it magically becomes reliable.
>
> No, of course not. You certainly have to write the code to be
> fault-tollerant. The difference is that in Erlang it's much easier, and
> you have bunches of libraries to help out.

Other than providing a library that says "if this thread dies, restart 
it", I'm not sure what help the libraries actually provide. (Then again, 
I'm not very familiar with Erlang.) Certainly the dynamic loading and 
hot code swapping makes things easier.

>> Well, if there's a module named "Cookies", then it's a pretty good bet
>> what that does.
>
> Yeah, if only everything was named that well.

As I wrote a bit further down, it's sometimes how /possible/ to name 
everything perfectly.

>> Yeah, that could work. I mean, it wouldn't work with my usual iterative
>> prototyping method, but hey...
>
> You would be surprised. You can still write a one or two sentence
> comment at the start of a function before you code it. It's no harder
> than deciding what to name the function and the arguments. And of course
> you go back and fix the comments as you code.

The usual problem is that I start writing all the code, and half way 
through I suddenly discover that due to some interaction I hadn't 
thought of, the program basically won't work the way it's currently 
structured. (Or won't work very well, anyway.) I don't think writing 
comments would prevent that. It might make a useful to-do list, however.

>> Unfortunately, every PC on Earth has a web browser installed.
>
> And, more importantly, every firewall has a hole for port 80. *That* was
> the real impetus.

To this day I have never yet seem a firewall which blocks *outbound* 
traffic. So I don't see why this would even be an issue.

>> why Hotmail got started. (And as best as I can tell, that's where this
>> whole crazy idea originated.)
>
> Nah. There were lots of systems putting apps over http because it would
> go thru firewalls long before anyone tried to reimplement stuff that
> everyone already had software for like email.

Really?

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