Re: Industry versus academia

[Michael Vanier <address@hidden>]

> From: Luke Gorrie <luke@bluetail.com>
> Date: 21 Feb 2003 23:45:20 +0100
> 
> Michael Vanier <mvanier@cs.caltech.edu> writes:
> 
> > My conclusion after reading what you wrote is that there are only two kinds
> > of language evolution that can happen:
> > 
> > 1) Industry-initiated and supported languages like java and C# that are
> >    very conservative languages whose main purpose is to make things easier
> >    on the average programmer without burdening them with much that's new.
> > 
> > 2) Grass-roots languages that come from academia or from motivated
> >    programmers (e.g. ocaml, lisp variants, perl, python, etc.).
> 
> Which category would Erlang come under?
> 
> Cheers,
> Luke
> 

I'm not an expert on the history of Erlang, but it is kind of an exception
to this rule in that it's a functional language that came from industry.
However, my understanding is that Ericsson has essentially turned its back
on Erlang (I seem to recall that no new projects are being developed in
Erlang there anymore; correct me if I'm wrong), so in that sense it's not
an exception.

Mike