Top all-time · #4061
Joe Armstrong
Personal blog · armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.comprogrammingsystems
Joe Armstrong writes armstrong on software, a personal blog at armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com about programming and systems. Since 2007, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Erlang's Joe Armstrong on RPC: "The road we didn't go down"”. The last post was in 2012, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link Joe Armstrong's blog for his views on Erlang design, especially why Erlang avoided remote calls that look local, and on failure handling in distributed systems.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Mainly about Erlang, programming, and anything else that takes my fancy.
Most-linked posts?
- Erlang's Joe Armstrong on RPC: "The road we didn't go down"5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2008-05-26
- UBF and VM opcocde design3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-07-21
- Armstrong on software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-29
- Itching my programming nerve2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-07-21
What Hacker News says?
For some information on why Erlang did not go the RPC way: http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/05/road-we-didn...
Comment linking /2008/05/road-we-didnt-go-down.html
on “Introducing NowJS or "How to make a chat server in 12 lines of code"”Submitted Why I often implement things from scratch (2006) as a story · 144 points
HN discussionJoe Armstrong (the creator of Erlang) said the same thing back in 2008. > The fundamental problem with taking a remote operation and wrapping it up so that it looks like a local operation is that the failure modes of local and remote operations are completely different. > If that's not bad enough, the performance aspects are also completely different. A local operation that takes a few microseconds, when performed t…
Comment linking /2008/05/road-we-didnt-go-down.html
on “Scala isn't fun anymore”Submitted Comet is dead, long live websockets as a story · 109 points
HN discussionYes. More on that from the creator of Erlang: http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/05/road-we-didn... Bye, Joe.
Comment linking /2008/05/road-we-didnt-go-down.html
on “Differential: Type safe RPC that feels like local functions”Submitted Erlang's Joe Armstrong on RPC: "The road we didn't go down" as a story · 30 points
HN discussionCan you elaborate on what exactly that is, please? I don't see mention of any new syntax on the 'Armstrong on software' blog [0]. The highlights of R17 include maps and named funs, both of which add to the grammar of the language! [0] http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Erlang/OTP 17.0-rc2 has been released.”Submitted Itching my programming nerve as a story · 24 points
HN discussionThis sounds a lot like CORBA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_Ar... ). The big problem with distributed classes is that network communication links are fragile and you need to bake how to deal with failures into your methodology. Erlang handles this in a way that Joe Armstrong explains here: http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/05/road-we-didn...
Comment linking /2008/05/road-we-didnt-go-down.html
on “Infrastructure as code”Submitted Concurrency is easy as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI think most people today would use a web front-end to Erlang/Elixir, with events over websockets (cowboy), using WebGL in the browser, with either server-side rendering (Phoenix LiveView) or client-side JS integration (pick your poison). https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view These ideas were first proposed by ... joearms, of course, way back in 2009. https://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2009/12/…
Comment linking /2009/12/comet-is-dead-long-live-websockets.html
on “WxErlang: Getting_started [pdf]”Submitted UBF and VM opcocde design as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNo idea how pg handles it, but here is an easy do-it-yourself way: http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2006/09/pure-and-sim... It doesn't matter it is in Erlang - you can do it in any language. A Lisp that implements software transactional memory is Clojure (runs on the JVM): http://clojure.sourceforge.net/
Comment linking /2006/09/pure-and-simple-transaction-memories.html
on “Ask PG: Database, flat files or other for YC News?”Submitted Content Editable as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt seems that Sweden has just approved a similar rogue law: http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/invasion-of-...
Comment linking /2008/06/invasion-of-privacy.html
on “Why the new wire tapping law is a lot worse than you think”Submitted The Road we didn't go down (what's wrong with RPC) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFollow the link mentioned on the page. http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/itching-my-p...
Comment linking /2008/06/itching-my-programming-nerve.html
on “Erlang: Scalaris Released”Submitted UBF and VM opcocde design (and why it didn't spread like XML) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhy prove anything to anyone? Just build something cool, make $$$, move on, build something else cool and make $$$, .... http://armstrongonsoftware.blogspot.com/2006/08/making-money...
Comment linking /2006/08/making-money-from-erlang.html
on “A Case for Erlang”Submitted Armstrong on software as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted JSON protocols (part 1) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted UBF and VM opcocde design as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
