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Oct 15, 2019 at 19:03
Reflections on ten years of Erlang, teaching novel ideas to newcomers, and whether 'killer apps' get more contributors or just more users:
Ten Years of Erlang
Ten Years of Erlang
For my ten years in the Erlang community, I decided to cover a few topics such as hype phases and how this related to Erlang, the ladder of ideas within the language and how that can impact adoption, what changed in my decade there, and what I think Erlang still has to bring to the programming community at large.

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I regularly see the phrase "all Xs are Ys, but not all Ys are Xs" in teaching material. Even material for children! I have to re-read it every time. I very much prefer "Y is a more general category than X" or "X is a subset of Y". Do people find this phrasing helpful, or is it poor pedagogy?
Jul 27, 2024 at 04:13
Bril is a cute intermediate language for teaching (think simplified LLVM IR): https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/blog/bril.html The idea of providing a standard JSON format to help students write basic passes is really elegant.
Bril: An Intermediate Language for Teaching Compilers
Bril: An Intermediate Language for Teaching Compilers
I created a new intermediate language, called Bril, for teaching my funky open-source, hands-on compilers course. Because it’s for education, Bril prioritizes simplicity and regularity over more typical compiler priorities like performance and concision. This is an overview of Bril’s design, its quirks, and the ecosystem that has grown up around it since 2019.