Have you used erlang? Pattern matching is a big part of it, and pattern match failures always result in errors. So, if you have some function foo() that always returns ok or {error, Reason}, then in the "follow the happy path" style, you'd just have a line reading "ok = foo(),", and then if foo actually returns something else, you get a "crash". There's no assuming anything there, it's just the way the language works.
Yes I have. but I see the erlang blindness still runs strong. Just because you have pattern matching doesn't mean you don't have bugs cause by humans. It can be syntactically correct and also logically not match the problem domain.
For example what if you screw up and forget to encode that it SHOUDN'T return OK?
you know that many other frameworks also have these safeguards right? Java server frameworks have been doing it forevever. You can code dirty if you want and deal with no issues or you can be error prone. Hell you can do the same thing in go. You can catch panics. It's not pretty but you can definitely do it.
I forgot one can only point out strengths of erlang not problems with humans coding in general. all hail erlang.
Logical errors are always an issue, regardless of the language.
As for Erlang's problems, it does have a fair number of warts and special cases, but the biggest of them all is that it's still a niche language. We actually had to dump Erlang for new projects in favor of Go. That may sound ridiculous, but filling positions involving Erlang was next to impossible (even with candidates without any prior knowledge of the language).
Why wouldn't it, if you're pattern-matching correctly? And in any event, it seems far easier to get into that situation in Go (which ignores errors unless you explicitly check for them) than in Erlang (which crashes on every error because restarting is cheap)
My point is... "Pattern matching correctly"... assumes no mistakes on the coder's part. Go back and re-read my comment. Or don't. Downvote me because I dare question your skill in the context of the mighty erlang.
I would never downvote someone simply for disagreeing, and certainly not unless I was 100% sure they were wrong or it was way offtopic. (And you would be surprised how often I admit I was wrong or cede a point!)
You're basically saying "well, it's still subject to logic errors." Well, that's a nonargument, because you can say that about 100% of languages in existence. That is not a criticism you can levy just against BEAM langs. And we were never arguing that BEAM magically takes care of your logic bugs. Just that it seems to handle the "set of all bugs that are not logic bugs" better.
I also apologize for erlang/elixir fans being rabid and insufferable. ;) A lot of us have dealt with many other langs (I spent years on Ruby and other OO langs) and we're enjoying the unexpected (to us) benefits of this new/old world, that's all. Joe Armstrong is basically Einstein AFAIC...
