The last thing Erlang needs is to be overrun by a million wanna-be hotshots/ninjas/cut-and-paste programmers. Erlang has a reputation and that reputation is in part because by the time people discover Erlang they actually need it.
The last thing Erlang needs is to be overrun by a million wanna-be hotshots/ninjas/cut-and-paste programmers.
If the message you're going for is "don't sacrifice the goals of the language to appeal to a broader audience," I agree. But I don't think there's much value to be found in that kind of elitist attitude. Python, ruby, JavaScript etc are powerful, fun, easy to learn, and useful, and their wide adoption has lead to them being higher-performance, having boatloads of useful libraries, and improved them as languages. A language is not hurt by more people using it, even if those people are "wanna-bes" (whatever that means).
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The last thing Erlang needs is to be overrun by a million wanna-be hotshots/ninjas/cut-and-paste programmers. Erlang has a reputation and that reputation is in part because by the time people discover Erlang they actually need it.
If the message you're going for is "don't sacrifice the goals of the language to appeal to a broader audience," I agree. But I don't think there's much value to be found in that kind of elitist attitude. Python, ruby, JavaScript etc are powerful, fun, easy to learn, and useful, and their wide adoption has lead to them being higher-performance, having boatloads of useful libraries, and improved them as languages. A language is not hurt by more people using it, even if those people are "wanna-bes" (whatever that means).
"Languages have positive network externalities":
http://www.welton.it/articles/programming_language_economics