New article: the elephant in the room

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     <description>Recent content on Nine Nines</description>
     <generator>Hugo -- gohugo.io</generator>
     <language>en-us</language>
-    <lastBuildDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0100</lastBuildDate>
+    <lastBuildDate>Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100</lastBuildDate>
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     <item>
+      <title>The elephant in the room</title>
+      <link>https://ninenines.eu/articles/the-elephant-in-the-room/</link>
+      <pubDate>Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+      
+      <guid>https://ninenines.eu/articles/the-elephant-in-the-room/</guid>
+      <description>&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever tried telling someone why they should use

+Erlang? You boast the smaller code size, the auto healing

+mechanisms, the distribution and they seem really excited.

+They wonder why they never heard about Erlang before. And

+then you show them what the code looks like. All excitement

+goes away. The smiles disappear. Their face starts

+becoming really serious.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;You lost them. You know you lost them. They comment on the

+syntax, or perhaps you do, already admitting defeat. It&amp;#8217;s

+unlike anything they have ever used before. And they will

+most likely end up not using it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about people who already know what the syntax looks

+like? As soon as you mention Erlang, the topic of the syntax

+comes in. It&amp;#8217;s like nothing else matters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the topic of syntax didn&amp;#8217;t come up. But they&amp;#8217;re

+still not going to try Erlang because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#8217;re probably not having these kinds of interactions at

+Erlang conferences. This doesn&amp;#8217;t happen with people who are

+already somewhat interested in, or need, the features that

+Erlang provides. With them the syntax is at worst a minor

+inconvenience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;This happens because most developers are familiar with

+syntaxes that look nothing like Erlang. To be clear, I

+include language features and other concepts like objects

+as part of &#34;syntax&#34; here. Familiarity is a very important

+factor to drive adoption.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can see an example of that in the Elixir world, where

+the majority of people come from Ruby or already knew and

+liked Ruby. The 2016 survey tells us that 59% of Elixir

+developers were using Ruby primarily before. That&amp;#8217;s in

+large part because of the syntax. They will deny it of

+course and find other reasons. And yet, we don&amp;#8217;t see such

+a strong adoption of Erlang from Ruby developers, before

+or after Elixir appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Side note: have you ever wondered why the Elixir community

+is, I quote, much friendlier than the Ruby community?

+Despite having much of the same people?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Before we continue, let me be clear. I love the Erlang

+syntax. It is simple and explicit. It is powerful, especially

+when dealing with binary data. It has very few quirks.

+It has little to no ambiguity. It&amp;#8217;s great. Except for

+persuading people to use it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the years I have been writing Erlang, I have seen

+very few people point out that the syntax slows down

+adoption. We have no problem with it, so why would others?

+At the same time, people coming to Erlang come to solve

+a real problem they&amp;#8217;re having, so the syntax is fairly

+secondary. Even if they hate it at first, they know they

+can solve their problems despite the syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#8217;t build a popular product or language by solving

+people&amp;#8217;s problems though. In general you end up solving

+some problems and creating new problems. No, you build

+a popular product by &lt;strong&gt;convincing people to use it&lt;/strong&gt;. And

+you make them stay with your product by making them

+&lt;strong&gt;commit&lt;/strong&gt; to using it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take MongoDB for example. It didn&amp;#8217;t become popular by

+working, or even by being practical. It wasn&amp;#8217;t performing

+its primary function and was losing people&amp;#8217;s data. That

+didn&amp;#8217;t stop it from becoming popular. Smart people would

+knowingly use a database that was losing data. Think about

+that for a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;MongoDB of course had a huge marketing machine, and they

+focused on that. They helped organize many meetups all

+over the world, complete with various swag items given

+for free, including a small handbook about MongoDB. All

+people had to do was show up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;They didn&amp;#8217;t go tell people to look at all the weaknesses

+their product had. They focused on the strengths. On

+what would convince people to try it. People would go

+to meetups, discuss with people, commit to try it (or

+try it at meetups directly), and by doing so sell MongoDB

+to themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do we get people to meetups though? That&amp;#8217;d be the

+first step: you need to &lt;strong&gt;catch people&amp;#8217;s attention&lt;/strong&gt;.

+I believe MongoDB did this using benchmark results.

+Ironic isn&amp;#8217;t it? MongoDB gets fast benchmark results

+because they lose data, and this gets everyone to buy

+into the product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The key points to remember about this are:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;ulist&#34;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;

+&lt;li&gt;

+&lt;p&gt;

+catch people&amp;#8217;s attention

+&lt;/p&gt;

+&lt;/li&gt;

+&lt;li&gt;

+&lt;p&gt;

+show your product&amp;#8217;s strengths

+&lt;/p&gt;

+&lt;/li&gt;

+&lt;li&gt;

+&lt;p&gt;

+make people take a commitment

+&lt;/p&gt;

+&lt;/li&gt;

+&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once they commit to something, you win. Everyone will not

+end up ultimately using your product of course, but it&amp;#8217;s

+at the very least become a consideration. It&amp;#8217;s on their

+mind. Their resolve will be stronger when they ultimately

+try it and inevitably run into issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Erlang&amp;#8217;s syntax is a weakness. Almost nobody looks at the

+Erlang syntax and falls in love with it at first sight.

+No, it takes time to learn it and understand how good it

+is. You need to sell Erlang to people without showing

+the Erlang syntax. If you do show it, then you need to

+hide the parts that feel alien. Function calls are OK.

+Recursion, not so much. Maps are OK. Records, not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Avoiding code is not always possible when you try

+to sell it, especially to developers. You can however

+prepare them to accept the alien syntax by admitting

+that the syntax is not perfect before you show it.

+You can do this while praising it at the same time.

+For example, &#34;the syntax is a little out there, but

+it matches the concepts perfectly, it will all make

+sense when you start learning&#34;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;This might not be the best introduction. Someone will

+need to A/B test it to find the one that gives the

+best results. But that should give you ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;When something terrible happens, mentioning that this

+isn&amp;#8217;t the end of the world &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; you tell others what

+happened will soften their reaction. When someone

+breaks your favorite item and cries over it calling

+themselves stupid, it&amp;#8217;s harder to get mad at them,

+compared to the same event with no emotional reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our behavior is largely dependent on what&amp;#8217;s at the

+top of our mind, so it&amp;#8217;s up to you to take advantage

+of this to make your case in the best conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next time you try to make someone use Erlang, remember

+that you should aim for getting a spoken commitment

+out of them, if possible before you show the syntax.

+If that&amp;#8217;s not possible, then prepare them to accept

+the flaws or the weirdness before they see them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

+</description>
+    </item>
+    
+    <item>
       <title>Don&#39;t let it crash</title>
       <link>https://ninenines.eu/articles/dont-let-it-crash/</link>
       <pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
@@ -1020,238 +1162,5 @@ of your company&amp;#8217;s money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
 </description>
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-    <item>
-      <title>The story so far</title>
-      <link>https://ninenines.eu/articles/the-story-so-far/</link>
-      <pubDate>Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
-      
-      <guid>https://ninenines.eu/articles/the-story-so-far/</guid>
-      <description>&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;As I am away from home with little to do (some call this

-a vacation) I wanted to reflect a little on the story so far,

-or how I arrived to Erlang and got to where I am now. The

-raw personal experience. It&amp;#8217;ll be an article that&amp;#8217;s more

-about social aspect, communities and marketing a project than

-technical considerations. As a period piece, it will also

-allow me to reflect on the evolution of Erlang in recent

-years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time-- Okay this isn&amp;#8217;t a fairy tale. The story

-begins with a short chapter in 2010. The year 2010 started

-with a fairly major event in my life: the US servers for the

-online game I stopped playing a few months before, but was

-still involved with through its community, were closing. OMG!

-Someone found a way to log packets and started working on a

-private server; meanwhile the JP servers were still up. And

-that&amp;#8217;s pretty much it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward a few months and it became pretty clear that

-the private server was going nowhere considering all the drama

-surrounding it-- which is actually not unusual, but it was

-more entertaining than average and the technical abilities of

-people running the project were obviously lacking so I decided

-to obtain those logged packets and look at things myself. I

-didn&amp;#8217;t want to do a private server yet, I only wanted to take

-a peek to see how things worked, and perhaps organize some

-effort to document the protocol.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was 10GB of logs. I didn&amp;#8217;t have an easy to use

-language to analyze them, and hex editors wouldn&amp;#8217;t cut it for

-most purposes, so I had to look elsewhere. This was a good

-opportunity to start learning this PHP killer I read about

-before, which also happens to feature syntax for matching

-binaries, called Erlang. To be perfectly honest I wouldn&amp;#8217;t

-have touched the logs if I didn&amp;#8217;t have the added motivation

-to play with and learn a new language.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the time it was pretty hard to learn Erlang. In my

-experience there was Joe&amp;#8217;s book (which I always recommend

-first as I believe it is the best to learn the Erlang side

-of things; but falls a little short on OTP), and there was

-about 5 chapters of LYSE. There were a couple other books

-I never managed to get into (sorry guys), and there was also

-a few interesting blogs, some of which I can&amp;#8217;t find anymore.

-Finally the #erlang IRC community was there but I was strictly

-lurking at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;What a difference compared to 4 years later! (That&amp;#8217;s

-today, by the way!) Now we have more books than I can

-remember, tons of articles covering various aspects of the

-language and platform, many targeting beginners but a good

-number of them also about advanced topics. We even have a

-free online book, LYSE, with more than 30 chapters covering

-pretty much everything. Needless to say I never finished

-reading LYSE as it got written slower than I learnt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Back to 2010. I wrote a parser for the logs, and

-aggregated those results into one CSV file per packet type

-so I could open them in Gnumeric and aggregate some more,

-but manually this time, and draw conclusions on the packet

-structures. That was pretty easy. Even for a beginner.

-Anyone can go from zero to that level in a day or two.

-Then, having mastered binary pattern matching, I wanted

-to learn some more Erlang, by making this aggregation

-faster. What I had done before worked, but I wasn&amp;#8217;t going

-to wait forever to process everything sequentially. So I

-looked and found a project called &lt;code&gt;plists&lt;/code&gt; (still exists,

-but not maintained AFAIK). I downloaded that project and

-replaced my &lt;code&gt;lists:&lt;/code&gt; calls to &lt;code&gt;plists:&lt;/code&gt;.

-Boom. In just a few minutes all logs were processed, and

-I had learnt something new.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is particularly interesting to note that the lack of

-a package manager or index never bothered me. Neither before

-nor after learning Erlang. My experience with package

-managers was mostly related to Ubuntu, a little Perl and

-Python, and PHP&amp;#8217;s Pear. Let&amp;#8217;s just stay polite and say it

-was always a terrible experience. So searching on the Web

-didn&amp;#8217;t feel awkward, because even if I used a tool or

-website I would have ended up doing a search or two anyway.

-This is in contrast to the package index feature in

-&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/ninenines/erlang.mk&#34;&gt;Erlang.mk&lt;/a&gt;,

-which is meant to simplify specifying dependencies more

-than anything: &lt;code&gt;DEPS = cowboy&lt;/code&gt;. It does not

-attempt to solve any other problem, and will only attempt

-to solve one extra problem in the near future, which is

-the discovery of packages. So expect some kind of website

-listing packages soon enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to use this parenthese to also point out that at

-the time there was a very small number of projects out there,

-at least compared to today. While you sometimes hear people

-complain about lack of certain libraries, it is so much

-better now than it was before! The situation improves very

-quickly, so much that it&amp;#8217;s not going to be that big an issue

-soon enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wanting to know more about that game&amp;#8217;s protocol, in the

-year 2010, I ended up starting to write more Erlang code to

-simulate a server and use the server to query the client and

-see what was happening, documenting the packets and so on.

-This eventually lead to a larger project implementing more

-and more until people got their hopes up for a revival of

-the game, all the while the now competing original server

-project died in a stream of drama and technical incompetence.

-Of course, I ended up doing what any good Internet citizen

-would do, I crushed people&amp;#8217;s hopes, but that&amp;#8217;s not important

-to our story. The important part is that before giving up

-on this project, I not only learnt a good deal of Erlang

-and a little deal of OTP (which I did not touch until 6

-months after I started with Erlang; see the paragraph

-about learning material above), but I also had an intriguing

-idea pop into my mind for what would become my greatest

-success yet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The giving up part was not easy. Having had financial

-difficulties all year 2010 and part of 2009, I resolved

-to travel back to Paris to try and make it. I ended up

-sleeping in offices for 6 months, being hosted by a shady

-person, and hearing my fair share of stories about

-the dark side of business. While there I also worked for

-another company with someone who would end up becoming

-another high profile Erlang developer. The situation

-slowly improved, I started taking part in the #erlang

-IRC discussions, giving up my status of lurker and, a

-few months into 2011, started working on the Apache killer

-project: Cowboy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the part where I probably should get accused of

-racism and other fun things, but I never did. And I think

-that speaks lots about the Erlang community. In all my time

-writing Erlang code, I can count the number of conflicts I

-had with other people on a single hand. This is the nicest

-programming community I have ever seen, by far. And the

-humblest too. The Erlang community feels like Japan. And

-I love Japan. So I love the Erlang community. I can&amp;#8217;t say

-this enough. This is something that stayed true for all

-my time using Erlang, and despite the rise of alternative

-languages that are not Japan the Erlang community has

-remained very Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first published version of Cowboy was written in

-two weeks. A little before those two weeks, during, and

-a while after, pretty much everything I said on the

-Internets was that Cowboy was going to be the greatest

-HTTP server ever, that the other servers were problematic

-(and just to be clear, Yaws was rarely if ever mentioned,

-due to being in a perceived different league of &#34;full

-featured servers&#34; while Cowboy was a &#34;lightweight server&#34;),

-and that Cowboy will be the best replacement to a Mochiweb

-or Misultin application. This, alongside a lot of time

-spent on IRC telling people to use Cowboy when they were

-asking for an HTTP server to use, probably made me sound

-very annoying. But it worked, and Cowboy started getting

-its first users, despite being only a few weeks old. Of

-course, as soon as I got my very first user, I started

-claiming Cowboy had &#34;a lot of users&#34;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Looking back today I would definitely find myself annoying,

-this wasn&amp;#8217;t just an idle comment there. For about a year,

-maybe a little more, all I ever said was that Cowboy was

-the best. This probably made me a little dumber in the

-process (as if I wasn&amp;#8217;t enough! I know). Being French, I

-sometimes would also say things quite abruptly. To stay

-polite, I probably sounded like an asshole. I learnt to

-stop being so French over time thankfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think what was most important to Cowboy at the time,

-was three things. First, it felt fresh. It was new, had new

-ideas, tried to do things differently and followed &#34;new&#34; old

-best practices (the OTP way-- which was simply too obscure

-for most people at the time). Second, it had me spending

-all my time telling people to use it whenever they were

-looking for an HTTP server. Third, it had me helping people

-get started with it and guide them all the steps of the way.

-Mostly because it didn&amp;#8217;t have a very good documentation, but

-still, hand holding does wonders.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;To be able to help people every time they had a problem,

-I did not spend all my days reading IRC. Instead I simply

-made sure to be notified when someone said &lt;code&gt;cowboy&lt;/code&gt;.

-The same way many people subscribe to alerts when their

-company is mentioned in the news. Nothing fancy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time went on, Cowboy grew, or as some like to say,

-completely destroyed the competition, and many people

-eventually moved from Mochiweb and Misultin to Cowboy.

-And then Roberto Ostinelli stopped Misultin development

-and told everyone to move to Cowboy. This is the most

-humble and selfless act I have ever seen in the programming

-sphere, and I only have one thing to say about it: GG.

-Thanks for the fish. He left me with the tasks of improving

-Cowboy examples, documentation and strongly believed that

-the Misultin interface was more user friendly out of all

-the servers. So I added many examples, as many lines of

-documentation as we have of code, and strongly believe

-that Cowboy 2.0 will be the most user friendly interface

-out of all servers. But only time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;With the rise of the project and the rise in the number

-of users, my previous strategy (completely incidental, by

-the way, and definitely not a well thought out plan to

-become popular) stopped working. It was taking me too much

-time. The important aspects slowly drifted. If I wanted to

-support more users, I would have to spend less time with

-each individual user. This was actually a hard problem.

-You basically have to make people understand they can&amp;#8217;t

-just come to you directly when they have a problem, they

-have to follow proper channels. It becomes less personal,

-and might be felt like you don&amp;#8217;t care about them anymore.

-You have to hurt some people&amp;#8217;s feelings at this point. It

-is quite unfortunate, and also quite difficult to do. There

-is some unwritten rule that says early adopters deserve

-more, but in the real world it never works like this. So

-I probably hurt some people&amp;#8217;s feelings at some point. But

-that&amp;#8217;s okay. Because even if you make sure to be as nice

-as possible when you tell people to go through proper

-channels from now on, some people will still get offended.

-There&amp;#8217;s nothing you can do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;From that point onward the important points about the

-project was getting the documentation done, making sure

-people knew about the proper channels to get help and

-report issues, etc. Basically making myself less needed.

-This is quite a contrast with the first days, but I believe

-Cowboy made that transition successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not only did I win time by not having to hold hands with

-everyone all the time (not that I didn&amp;#8217;t like it, but you

-know, the sweat), but I also won time thanks to the increased

-project popularity. Indeed, the more users you have, the more

-annoying guys there are to tell people to use your project

-and that it&amp;#8217;s the best and everything. Which is great. At

-least, it&amp;#8217;s great if you don&amp;#8217;t pay too much attention to it.

-Sometimes people will give an advice that is, in your opinion,

-a bad advice. And that&amp;#8217;s okay. Don&amp;#8217;t intervene every time

-someone gives a bad advice, learn to let it go. People will

-figure it out. You learn by making mistakes, after all. Use

-this extra time to make sure other people don&amp;#8217;t end up

-giving the same bad advice instead. Fix the code or the

-documentation that led to this mistake. Slowly improve the

-project and make sure it doesn&amp;#8217;t happen again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

-&lt;div class=&#34;paragraph&#34;&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is my story. So far, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

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