As elementary as this talk is I find it to be a wonderful bridge for modern programmers to start to understand the Erlang code they might have inherited. One of my specialities these days is checking an old Erlang codebase and seeing if its viable to port it to something modern developers enjoy, like Node.JS or Go. A lot of the time I end up explaining and advocating continued use of Erlang rather than porting most of the code; its a bit of a hurdle to learn and find developers but it honestly produces extremely solid fault-tolerant applications in cases where the other languages just don't quite cut it without a ton of babysitting and overhead.
In computing, variables are bound to values. Binding of values is an issue of "scope" and "extent". Traditionally, "constants" are not local, they're global otherwise they're not constants if they have different values in different places. Erlang variables are bound once within scope of the function, but their extent ends when that call exits/returns. During the next call, the variable can have a different value. Since the value varies over time, it *is* still a variable (not a constant).
As elementary as this talk is I find it to be a wonderful bridge for modern programmers to start to understand the Erlang code they might have inherited. One of my specialities these days is checking an old Erlang codebase and seeing if its viable to port it to something modern developers enjoy, like Node.JS or Go. A lot of the time I end up explaining and advocating continued use of Erlang rather than porting most of the code; its a bit of a hurdle to learn and find developers but it honestly produces extremely solid fault-tolerant applications in cases where the other languages just don't quite cut it without a ton of babysitting and overhead.
In computing, variables are bound to values. Binding of values is an issue of "scope" and "extent". Traditionally, "constants" are not local, they're global otherwise they're not constants if they have different values in different places. Erlang variables are bound once within scope of the function, but their extent ends when that call exits/returns. During the next call, the variable can have a different value. Since the value varies over time, it *is* still a variable (not a constant).
Interesting.
ignore jqtube, This is designed to be a introduction to the language. Not as a instruction on how to code in Erlang
Very good session. Served his purpose. Here am I sitting with my first Erlang book.
Awesome lecture.
Have to present this in class but just have 10 minutes...and sooo much to talk about.
Well not really I guess. If you do algebra, you declare x = 100 then later on declare x = 10, whereas x = x but it means 100 = 10. It's a bit wrong.
Thank you, great introduction!
Pretty good intro to Erlang!.
very nice talk!
great teaching!
great... thanks :)