Erlang. The Ron Paul of programming languages.

The difference is that you can't benchmark Ron Paul, George Bush, Barack Obama, and John McCain. (You can look at voting records.)

If comparing languages was all about benchmarking, wouldn't we all be just using assembler?

Well, there are function points/LOC. I guess you don't want to go only on voting records either. But they are important. Unquantifiables are important too.

Ha! It's true! Except instead of an army of social news up-voters, it's mostly just the one guy and his blog.

What's Common Lisp?

I'm thinking either Barry Goldwater or Eugene McCarthy, kind of a toss-up.

Let's think about it:

* Was huge in the 80s

* Had a big downturn in the 90s

* Everyone speaks fondly of it today but doesn't really want to go that way?

It's gotta be Reagan.

Ralph Nader.

Now that's just cold.

I thought that was Forth.

I wonder if slashdot has got a form for this sort of thing yet ;)

Your twitter architecture will fail due to:

  ( ) Database replication issues
  ( ) Inability to prevent spam
  (x) Immaturity of the libraries in your chosen language
  ...

Immaturity? Erlang is far more mature and tested than most language runtimes we use.

Why do people keep assuming Erlang is "new"?

It was meant to be a lighted joke about how so many people are proposing ways to fix twitter it reminds me of slashdot a few years ago where people were trying to fix spam and they started responding to each suggestion with a list of flaws with Xs next to the ones that applied in that case. I'm not making a point about erlang, i dont really know anything about erlang, but maybe i touched a nerve so i apologise.

I got it. Downmodding your original post was silly.

hm, not working for me, I hit "Send" and nothing ....

Maybe this means the start of blog postings like "Why is Twoorl Down?!?!" and "How to Fix Twoorl's Send Problem"

Twoorl is broken in IE and FF3 I believe.

I hope such blog posts start appearing. It means Twoorl will have hit prime time :)

Looks really nice.

Coincidentally, I've been working on something extremely similar the past week, though my project has a twist that I think Twitterers are going to enjoy. I'm going out of town for a few days, but hopefully I'll be able to release early next week. And it's in Django.

I can't log in again after having logged out. If I am putting in the wrong password it is not notifying me in anyway. It just takes me back to the public timeline. There is no way to retrieve the password.

Why use a database at all?

Mostly for convenience. ErlyDB makes working with databases very easy. I didn't see a compelling reason to use any alternatives.

Although I use MySQL, I haven't used any relational features. The app doesn't do any joins.

Does it use transactions?

Very cool. Now it only needs an API, IM backend and SMS'ing ;) Twitter should hire Yariv :p

Sadly Twitter is now staffed by Scala guys who's enthusiasm for Scala gets in the way of their ability to consider Erlang.

Man I wish this had been developed on django.

1700 LOC can't be that hard to port :)

You might be able to do that with Stackless Python. But it will be a bit wordier.

very very cool.